Communications

Communicating with customers is both an art and a science. This bulletin will include information about Email, Texting, and Telephone best practices.

It is important to remember that communicating with customers requires a multi-channel approach. Many customers receive and respond to emails, but the only method to reach others is through print, text, in person, or telephone. A balanced approach that uses all available avenues of communication will perform best. With leads, do not assume that they check their email, voice mail, or text. Use ALL THREE at the same time as necessary to be assured your clients receive your messages.

A good example of this multi-channel approach might be:

• sending marketing emails
• printing and US Mailing the ones that were never viewed
• calling everyone that has not accepted

No single method will work well in all circumstances for either marketing or transactional communications.

Email

There is a constant tension between internet service providers, spammers, and businesses. This article is a summary of our analysis of our a). email technical system, b). email creative process, and c). email sending best practices.

There is a large difference in open rates between marketing (offers) and transactional (invoice or information) emails. For marketing emails, email open rates vary by industry. Constant Contact, an industry leader in email solutions, reports that 16% is an average open rate as of December 2018. At Mosquito Squad, proposals are the majority of marketing emails sent. In every case checked, marketing email open rates exceed this industry standard.

Email Delivery Results June, 2019 

Summary	499446	6402	1.28%	3647	2755	0.55%
Franchise Territory	Recent Emails Sent	Total Bounces	Bounce %	Bounces due to Invalid Email	True Bounce Total	True Bounce %

A key takeaway here is that most bounces are due to typographical errors in the email address.

However, some internet service provider (example Optonline.net) have their own algorithms which choose to reject our emails from time-to-time. We also find that some businesses use firewall technology as in Baracuda to limit most emails from mainly business addresses. And finally some email clients such as Microsoft Outlook may be configured to reject most non-business email.

These examples are outside of the control of Mosquito Squad, and only adherence to the best practices defined in this bulletin can help mitigate these rejections. Offices involved here must find other methods to communicate with these customers, as a different email, texting, or telephone.

To check open rates for your account, see the How to Check your Open Rates in Service Minder at the bottom of this article.

A best practice in Service Minder is to set a drip campaign that will trigger on email bounce and create a task. You may then call the customer and correct or change based on their preferences.

Email Technical System

ServiceMinder CRM is continuously monitoring the technical setup of the email sending mechanism. On the delivery side, they follow all the best practices (SPF, DK signing, DMARC, and such). Then, through the integration with our delivery provider (SendGrid), we participate in all the major mail providers feedback loops for both bounces and spam complaints (user clicking the “this is spam”) button.

Mosquito Squad subscribes to Litmus, the industry-leading email tool. Analysis of our sending practices and email templates indicates that we are following best practices, including use of unsubscribe options, an example of which follows with the List-Unsubscribe you see here.

Email Creative Guide

Crafting good emails is hard and not an exact science. In general, best practice guides encourage (items in red have been implemented by Mosquito Squad marketing):

• keeping content to 600 px wide
• use content including logos that your customers will recognize
• keep information easy to understand (limit amount of text) using Tahoma font 14 dpi or larger and prefer in light grey
• do not use misleading subject lines or punctuation!
• compress photos
• do not link to static files (pdf or videos) but the use of URLs is encouraged
• include your physical address in the email 

Email Sending Best Practices

Who to send to, and when to send are covered in this section. Here is an article from them about to send emails that don't get in Spam folders. 

Send only to people that have requested information recently. That means the past season, or maybe two. Treat your customers as your friends. You would not send 27 emails to a friend asking to play golf on Saturday. Don't do something similar to your customers.

Never buy or steal emails. Reports to the Gmail “Report Spam” button for unrequested marketing emails will land the entire Mosquito Squad domain in the spam bucket for Gmail or any of the other email providers for a period of time.

Know your customers and graciously inform them of offers as they request.

How often to send is another quesiton, covered by this Campaign Monitor article. Sending Marketing emails 3-5 times every 5-8 days could be useful for a given proposal campaign might be a good metric in our industry. Change up the email template and possibly the offer for another round is a good idea. You may also want to launch follow up email campaigns to un-opened contacts, only, from an earlier campaign. This will eliminate pestering contacts that have seen your message, and choose not to act.

Again, treat your potential customers as friends that have requested information.

Marketing vs Transactional Emails

Use of Transactional Emails, sent as part of our business practices, e.g., an appointment confirmation, can be sent as necessary. The presumption is that the user has requested the service and the email and it is being sent as a part of a transaction. Encourage your clients to whitelist both mosquitosquad.com and serviceminder.io as safe senders. 

In summary, sending of email is both an art and a science. Mosquito Squad is following best practices in the creation and delivery of emails for both marketing and transactions. 

How to Check Email Results in Service Minder

To view the results of emails, go to Control Panel>>Email Queue. Results here will assist with any deliver issues you might find.

How to Check your Open Rates in Service Minder

To view your location’s open rate for a given set of marketing emails, you may check Campaigns>>Email tab. Then select the campaign.

To view current proposals across any/all campaigns, click on the Open proposals grid (list) in the left menu. It should default to the Open and un-filtered list. Note the number of open proposals. Then, click the Create Filter button below the grid. Filter Builder will pop up. Click the grey +, then Accepted Date and drop down to “Last Viewed”. Click Equals and select “Is not Blank”. This will list all Proposals that have been viewed. (note, these are not only opened emails, but also those that have been clicked into). 

Transactional emails may be inspected in the contact details under their name in the email tab. Clicking on a given email will reveal the current details about when it was sent and read. Also, bounced emails may be triaged by getting more info under the bounces tab:

https://serviceminder.io/SmtpMessage#

Additionally, you can be notified in real time by creating a Drip trigger on “Contact Email Bounced” that creates a Task to check for errors with your staff and/or the customer:

https://serviceminder.io/DripRule/Create

Texting

In the US, permission to text must be explicitly granted or you will be subject to high fines. You must get permission for both marketing and transactional texts. 

Texting must be limited to transactional, non-marketing material. - Informational, also referred to as “transactional” messages, are non-promotional text messages that communicate important information. Some examples of transactional messages include appointment reminders, welcome texts, proposal text - communication that is specifically related to the doing business actions with a customer. Permission can be granted by replying to a text message, filling out a form or even verbally.
 
Text message delivery is controlled through "The Campaign Registry", an industry consortium that manages business texting compliance. Numbers must be registered along with their intended purpose. ServiceMinder registers the campaigns for your two-way texting number to be transaction related with permission from the client granted verbally for the purposes of completing a transaction (including delivering proposals, invoices, reminders and en routes). The campaign does not include an allowance for general marketing communications. Using your two-way texting number in a manner that does not match the campaign can result in your messages being filtered, dropped or blocked. The Campaign Registry requires proof of your legal business entity so we we prompt for your legal business name (which may be different than your organization name that is presented to clients) along with your tax ID number (EIN for US businesses).
Link to the CTIA Messaging Principles and Best Practices https://api.ctia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/190719-CTIA-Messaging-Principles-and-Best-Practices-FINAL.pdf
 
Customers can opt out of text messaging at anytime by replying STOP to the text. You will no longer be able to text to that customer until or unless they reply START to the past stopped message.

Beginning in 2022, with two-way texting enabled you may direct-text invoices and proposals:

From within an invoice or proposal, click the copy link. Then, paste it into a text with in Service Minder along with a personal note. This will present the invoice or proposal to your consumer in a clickable format.

You may also access the BLUE Bar below an invoice or proposal and choose send to text or email a proposal. Nice, quick, and effective.

and send.

Automated texting is configured in SM here: https://serviceminder.io/NotificationMessages Ad Hoc emails should have a text version configured at the bottom of the edit screen for every Ad Hoc template in use.

Telephone

Telephone protocol is beyond the scope of this technical bulletin, but Caller ID is an important part of every telephone campaign, and should be verified. It is recommended that "Mosquito Squad" be used for clarity in every office and not include the location name, e.g., of the Triad.

Automated calls (robo calls) are illegal and may not be used under any circumstances.

(reviewed for updates 12/24/24)