How To Warm Up Your Cold HVAC Leads

Winter is on its way out, and spring is here to stay! That means HVAC business owners across the country need to start looking for ways to mimic the warming weather by warming up some of their cold leads. Read on to discover some of the best ways to do exactly that! 

Try a different channel.

Sometimes a lead goes cold because you simply keep trying to reach them in the wrong way. Regularly trying different methods to engage non-responsive leads can push your company to the front of their mind. Sometimes, you can get caught up in the sales funnel, continually sending emails that go straight to the recipient’s spam folder. Break that cycle by scheduling a phone call, sending a Zoom invite, or even reaching out via a social media medium such as LinkedIn. This can entice leads that simply don’t like to talk business via email. 

Examine previous interactions.

While it's tempting to simply focus on the future, the past provides a lot of useful information you can use to re-engage the leads currently giving you the cold shoulder. Looking at the last interaction that you had with a lead can give you insight as to where you went wrong with them and help you prevent that same mistake in the future. Take a look at the last few contact attempts made to see what you can do differently. Revisiting your relationship with a lead also enables you to include previously discussed subject matter in future outreach. This keeps you from repeating yourself and wasting your lead’s precious time.

Also, consider taking some time to properly segment your customer and lead databases. Identify your customers so that when you go back and analyze what has worked and what hasn’t worked, you can find correlations between those segmented groups and the methods that got the best results.

Offer some free stuff!

Nothing beats free! Everyone loves receiving a free gift, especially when that gift enhances some aspect of their lives. Offering a cold lead something for free could give them the spark they need to reevaluate their relationship with your company and offerings. While you probably want to avoid giving away services that bring in precious revenue, you can typically gift services such as inspections or quote appointments. Gifting these types of services places your company at the top of your lead's consideration list, primarily because you already have all the information you need to move on to the next step. Most customers will not want to go through the same inspection process with someone else.

Another way to give your clients the warm feeling that comes along with receiving a gift involves using digital media. Offering your leads something like a free case study on the benefits of duct cleanings or free access to a webinar on the impact of regularly changing your air filters is an easy way to push your company to the top of their list! Moves like these show that you care about more than just converting the cold lead into another customer. 

Perfect your contact methods.

An easy way to never hear from a cold lead again is to look unprofessional. When designing a marketing campaign, you might unwittingly skip steps and take shortcuts. But, beware! These shortcuts can cost you.

One place you will want to maintain a professional appearance is in your email marketing. Most HVAC business owners do not have web development or design experience, so many use an external service to create marketing emails. While this can help you accomplish the task, you have to make sure that the final product meets the ever-increasing standards of your leads. Make sure you examine the final product on both desktop and mobile devices before sending it. The email your designer delivers may look great on a desktop, but this same email might look terrible viewed on a smaller screen. Emails improperly formatted for smaller screens can wreck your email’s ability to engage with customers, causing your leads to disengage from your outreach efforts.

Send a survey.

Surveys give a non-responsive customer a great way to give you feedback and reengage. This feedback can also help you find out exactly what you do wrong and remedy your mistakes. Surveys can be based on service-specific topics, or revolve around questions about your own marketing techniques and how customers prefer to be contacted. When sending out a survey, you are asking your leads to do something for you. Thus, this strategy works most effectively when paired with a discount or some other promotional offer to show that you appreciate the feedback. 

Remember, just because a lead has seemingly ignored your every effort to earn their business, you shouldn't give up hope. Instead, keep looking for new ways to warm them up!