The Most Effective Franchise Email Marketing Tips and Tactics and How To Implement Them

What is franchise email marketing?

Franchise email marketing is a strategy used by franchise businesses to engage with current and potential customers who are interested in buying a license to do business under a franchisor’s trademark.

Let’s say Jim owns a chain of car washes and wants to expand. One way he could achieve this is by selling his business as a franchise. To bring in potential franchisees, Jim started a website. A person interested in becoming a franchisee would visit this site and then input their contact information to express further interest. And now comes the fun part…

Even if a potential franchise buyer provides their contact information on your website, this doesn’t mean they’re ready to make a purchase immediately. As the franchisor, you need to stay in touch with them for as long as they’re interested, regularly reminding them about your business. This can be done through calls from your sales team or an automated email series featuring different aspects of your franchise.

Email marketing can be used for sending newsletters, promotional offers, or updates about the franchise business. By effectively utilizing it, franchise businesses can increase brand awareness and drive sales.

The benefits of email marketing for franchises

Franchise email marketing can benefit your business in several ways:

Introducing customers to your business

An email is a great way to introduce a potential customer to your business as they go through the early stages of considering buying the license to your franchise. You can include presentations, financial models, testimonials from successful franchisees, and market news in your emails. This is the time when you have your customers’ full attention so make sure you talk about yourself in a positive light.

Building better customer relationships

By regularly sending valuable email content, franchises can communicate directly with their customers and build better relationships – staying top of mind. The information you send must be useful if you want to earn a potential customer’s loyalty. Tips, pitfalls, instructions, checklists, industry news, success stories – if someone is considering starting a business in your industry, they’ll read your newsletters.

It is through chains of emails, which have certain structures and goals, that such a relationship should be built. For example, at the initial stage of acquaintance send sets of emails that gradually introduce new leads to your business and products. Such campaigns can consist of welcome emails, educational content about the product or service, and other value-driven communication pieces.

Ensuring better ROI

Out of all the marketing channels available to franchisees, 59% marketers claim that email provides the best ROI. With a targeted mailing list, franchises can send personalized communications to their customers and potential leads. You can use email campaigns to send targeted messages depending on which stage of the sales funnel a lead is in. For example, you might send an email to franchisees to thank them for referring new customers.

Automated tools and drip email campaigns allow you to send your customers tailored messages at opportune times. For example, at the very beginning of your communication, send an email that familiarizes the lead with your business, the market situation, etc. If you don’t get a response, send them a message that closes the customer’s fears about the pitfalls and how to overcome them.

Franchise email marketing vs social media marketing

With the recent shift to digital marketing, businesses are now debating which marketing channel is most effective – email or social media? Let’s explore some key points that will help you make this decision.

1. Reach. With over 4.2 billion total users, social media channels are more widespread than email. Email reach with over 4 billion users, on the other hand, is much more limited since people usually need to sign up for your newsletter or list first. But what you lose in quantity you make up for in quality: email lists are often more engaged and targeted than social media ones, which means higher conversions.
2. Cost-effectiveness. Another big advantage that franchise email marketing has over social media is its cost-effectiveness. No other marketing technique can match email when it comes to the return on investment. In fact, for every $1 you spend, you can expect to see a return of $36 (compared to 23% ROI in Linkedin as a platform with the largest return on investment). This means that businesses of all sizes can achieve great results with franchise email, whereas social media marketing may be out of reach for smaller or less well-funded companies.
3. Reliability and predictability. Email campaigns are also much more reliable and predictable than social media marketing efforts. With email marketing, you know exactly when your emails are going to be sent, who’s going to receive them, and how often you’ll be sending them. This can help you plan ahead more easily and ensure that your franchise email marketing efforts don’t get lost in the noise of social media. 

In the case of social networks, you can not fully predict how the algorithms will work and who will see your content. With emails, you’ll have a much more direct way of reaching your audience and engaging them with relevant offers and updates.

4. Personalization. Franchise email marketing also offers a lot of opportunities for personalization that aren’t available with social media marketing. While it’s possible to use tools like Facebook Ads to target specific users, franchise email campaigns typically allow you to customize messages on a much deeper level. For example, the easiest way to personalize emails is to offer a franchise business development plan based on the location of the lead. This and other personalization techniques can help you tailor your messaging and content to the needs and interests of individual recipients, which can translate into much higher engagement and conversion rates.

How to build and maintain your franchise email list

One of the most important factors in a successful franchise is having a strong and active email list. You can turn social media followers and website visitors into email list subscribers by giving them an incentive to sign up. But how exactly do you build and maintain an effective email list? 

Here are some tips to get you started:

Use nurture emails

Franchise nurture emails play an important role in the franchise sales process, acting as a valuable resource for educating and nurturing potential franchise leads. These emails communicate the unique benefits of a franchise company, while also providing useful information on topics relevant to potential franchisees, such as pricing, training, financing options, and more. By helping leads move through the sales funnel and become more receptive to dialogue with franchise business development teams, nurture emails help franchises successfully grow their businesses.

Use storytelling

Did you know that sharing a personalized story is an excellent way to nurture your franchise relationships? Franchisees usually consider multiple companies before making their final decision. By providing them with an interesting, relatable message about the history and advantages of your company, they will be more likely to take further action towards deciding whether or not to invest in your franchise.

Share your case studies

To build a franchise email list and maintain it, start with creating compelling content that potential clients will want to receive. One way to do this is by sharing your own case studies. The numbers speak for you better. By attaching statistics with numbers reflecting business profits, you can catch the attention of leads. This is what your report in email might look like:

Share how you’ve helped other franchisees, and what they have to say about your help. While it’s important that potential clients see reasons why they should work with you, it’s also important to give them something of value — like testimonials from a variety of different people or companies. Share their positive experiences.

Develop a franchise newsletter

Remaining in touch with your franchise leads is easy when you send them a monthly newsletter. Not only does it allow you to update them on news and information about your company, but it also gives you an opportunity to share special offers that they may be interested in. Franchise newsletters are also great for encouraging potential customers to take action, whether that means scheduling a consultation or taking advantage of a limited-time offer.

A franchise newsletter exists to give readers the engaging, relevant information they want. This way, you can move prospective customers one step closer to a purchase.

Choose a good timing

Timing is crucial for success with franchise nurture emails. You need to develop a series of emails, the main task of which is to tell your customers about your business, you and the franchise in general in short messages. This will keep your brand top of mind and shows them you’re serious about earning their business.

The franchise deal cycle can last from 1 month to 1 year. Potential franchisees don’t decide to buy in 1-2 days. They think for a long time, compare options, and study the materials sent in the mail. A series of emails will remind them of you. So it’d better last at least a couple of months. And the longer the series of messages, the better. But with the length, the frequency should go down.

As a result you capture potential buyers who take a long time to make a decision. For example, they get acquainted with the materials, but make a purchase only after six months or a year. 

Automation tools for franchise emails come in handy when it comes to scheduling your email content. So you can schedule emails and send triggered messages depending on actions that your customers take.

Tips to maximize the success of your campaign

Launching a successful franchise email campaign requires some careful planning and the right tools. By following these simple tips, you can increase your chances of boosting engagement and achieving your marketing goals:

Make your emails interesting and useful

No one likes receiving boring, repetitive emails that don’t provide any value. When creating content, make sure it is something your target audience will find not only relevant but also helpful. Include tips and tricks (for example, how to launch a business, how to hire staff, how to attract customers, how to implement a particular business process), success stories from other franchisees, or industry news. Keep your sales pitches to a minimum.

Optimize for mobile users

As more than a third of all emails (36,6%) are viewed on mobile devices, it is important to ensure that your content can be easily read on tablets and smartphones. Optimize your email for these devices by using a responsive design that automatically adjusts the layout according to the screen size of the device. Test your campaign on various mobile devices before you send it out to prevent any embarrassing technical glitches. There are many different services available for testing the layout of emails, which enable you to see how your message will look on various devices. These include Litmus and Email on Acid.

Don’t forget to personalize

When you send out a franchise email campaign, it is crucial to make sure that each recipient feels like they are receiving a one-on-one message. To do this, use personalization to add the recipient’s name and other details into your subject line, message body, and/or call to action buttons. 

Consider what might be relevant for each reader, such as their location or other industry-specific factors. For example, if you are targeting franchisees in California, your subject line might read: “Franchise opportunities in California: How this market can skyrocket your business”. Or if you’re sending a campaign to someone who is located in the United Kingdom, information about similar businesses in that region can help increase your chances of success.

These simple steps will help you increase your open and conversion rates and make your recipients feel valued.

Always provide a way out

Your emails should always feature an unsubscribe link so that your readers don’t feel pressured into anything against their will. If you try to conceal the unsubscribe link or neglect to include one, your subscribers will become disgruntled with you, which is the last thing you want.

Ask your audience for a feedback

Without feedback from your audience, it’ll be difficult to make your relationship with them stronger and enhance future email marketing projects. Asking for opinions, suggestions, or any other kind of feedback should become second nature when dealing with franchise leads.

One effective way to engage potential franchisees is by simply asking for their input. For example, include a question in your email that gets them thinking about how they’d approach the business if it were up and running. This will help keep their interest piqued as you guide them through the sales process.

Track your performance and optimize accordingly

There is nothing worse than sending an email campaign and not having the metrics to show that it was successful or not. This can be a waste of time, money, and effort from all sides. Make sure you have email tracking in place so you’re able to know whether your emails are getting opened, how many click throughs there are, what content is converting your readers, and so on.

Final thoughts

Franchise email marketing is a method of maintaining contact with both customers and potential leads through email communications. Franchise email marketing offers numerous benefits such as:

• Building stronger customer relationships
• Encouraging loyalty
• Increasing ROI

To successfully launch a franchise email campaign: 

1. Create interesting and useful content that will engage your target audience. This can include tips and tricks, success stories from other franchisees, industry news, or case studies.
2. Optimize your emails for mobile devices.
3. Personalize your messaging as much as possible.
4. Provide an easy way for your readers to unsubscribe if they no longer wish to receive your emails. 
5. Track and analyze your campaign performance in order to optimize and improve your efforts over time.