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Email Marketing for Architects: How to Turn Prospects Into Clients

The journey your prospective clients go through before they make the decision to work with you is a lengthy one. Unlike buying new office chairs or acquiring plush carpets for their new home, many people spend months deciding what type of architecture firm will best fit them and their needs.

Staying top-of-mind while your prospects are still in the research phase is vital to securing them as clients, but many firms overlook this important part of architecture firm marketing.

Here at Archmark, we’re huge advocates of email marketing for architecture firms. Communicating to your prospective clients through their inbox not only reminds them of your architecture firm, it also gives you the opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level.

Where social media posts and online ads can be easily missed by your prospective clients, a personalized email is much harder to ignore.

So, how do you make email marketing work for marketing your architecture firm? If you’ve read our previous blog 5 tips for improving your email marketing, consider this article as your next (and more in-depth) email marketing lesson. If you haven’t read that article yet, we suggest you do so, before reading this article.

Keep on reading to learn how to keep your prospective clients engaged with your firm and how to nurture them through your sales cycle.

“I want to do business with a company that treats emailing me as a privilege, not a transaction.” – Andrea Mignolo

Capture prospective clients on multiple channels

Whether you’re starting from zero contacts, or want to expand your existing email marketing list, there’s many ways you can grow your list of prospects. The more potential clients you have on your list, the more chances you have of winning them over.

Placing a newsletter opt-in form in the footer of your architecture firm's website might help you add 1 new subscriber a month. But, it’s not the strategic solution for building up your list of potential clients that it once was.

Clients' expectations have changed, most newsletters focus on news about you and your firm, and that type of information isn’t particularly relevant to your future clients. It may be vaguely interesting to them that you won an award, but unless they hold that award in esteem, and are familiar with the honors it bestows, how are they to know if your awards are any better than another firm’s?

What you need is a more strategic approach, one that focuses on delivering high-value information that your email subscribers can actually use.

Below are five email list growth strategies to help you nurture your list. Keep reading to see if you’re doing everything you can to build your prospect list.

Create a lead magnet

Entice prospective clients to input their email address with something of value in return—known as a “lead magnet.” This is typically a downloadable PDF or maybe a Google doc or sheet. For example, maybe it’s your checklist of what they need to do to prepare for designing a new home, your inspiration portfolio, or a guide to choosing the right architect. Whatever it is, make sure it provides relevant, helpful, and valuable information to your prospects.

Add a specific landing page on your architecture firm website

Package your email newsletter as a series or course, and design a landing page to promote it and collect sign ups. Include details to give subscribers a preview of the content they will receive access to, and even add testimonials from current subscribers to make it clear it is worth signing up for your series.

Design an opt-in popup

Adding a popup to your website homepage or a specific section of content to promote your lead magnet or series helps make sure your prospective clients can’t miss it. Use the popup to alert website visitors to the great content you have available for them, all they need to do is fill in their email.

Invite existing contacts

Don’t ignore the hundreds or even thousands of email addresses your architecture firm has collected over the years.

Inquiries that didn’t turn into clients, previous contractors and partners you’ve worked with, and past clients can become new leads or provide new referrals with some help from effective email campaigns.

Design an email specifically to invite this audience of friends, colleagues, and past clients to subscribe. Let them know what they can expect from joining your list and give them an option to opt-out if they wish.

Share on your social media

This may seem obvious, but it often gets overlooked by architecture firms. Make your social media followers and connections aware you have great content by promoting it in posts every now and then on your architecture firm’s social media accounts. Be sure to share on your own social media accounts too.

A great way to do so is to give a sneak peek or teaser of what’s included in your lead magnet or series.

Segment your audience for more effective email campaigns

Your list-building systems are working well and you’ve gathered a sizable contact list, now what? It’s time to make sure your email content is highly-relevant to your audience.

The best way to do so is to create specific audience groups based on factors like their behaviors, demographics, location, type of work, etc., aka ‘audience segmentation.’

Email subscribers want a personalized experience. In fact, 90% of U.S. consumers find personalized marketing content “somewhat to very appealing.” (Statista)

And it makes sense.

If you send the same email to a client you’ve worked with before and a new subscriber, the messaging won’t feel genuine or tuned to their needs.

The more aligned your email is with your audience, the more likely they are to trust and engage with your architecture firm as a result.

How do you create audience segments?

When you input contact information into your email marketing platform, make sure you’re adding information such as age, company name, project name, location, occupation, etc. into the right fields.

The more information you add in, the easier it is to place users into different categories like new email subscribers, past clients, project partners (e.g., engineers and contractors you’ve worked with), etc.

Now, you can create email campaigns geared specifically towards these groups of people. The emails will be more engaging to your prospective clients and relevant to where they are in the buyer journey.

Keep prospective clients engaged with automated emails

Automated email marketing campaigns, aka ‘drip campaigns,’ are a series of emails that are sent out automatically to your audience. These emails can be triggered when your user performs a specific action (like attending an event or filling out a contact form) or by a specific predetermined schedule, for example, once a month or every other Thursday.

Based on where your subscribers are in the sales funnel, your email campaigns can help move them towards taking action with you (and save you time sending emails individually and manually).

As per our last tip, email marketing is the most effective when your campaigns are unique to each audience segment, so it’s worthwhile making more than automation.

Here are four examples of automated campaigns you can create to keep your prospective clients thinking about your firm:

Welcome email series

Welcome emails acknowledge they have just signed up or subscribed and what they can expect. This first email is also your opportunity to establish your architecture firm’s unique identity with a prospective client. You can follow this up with a drip campaign -- a series of brief emails—that includes information about your approach, your story, and what makes your firm different. Always make sure to include an invitation and link to schedule an informal call in every email.

Preference emails

To stay top-of-mind with your prospective clients, it’s a good idea to send them emails with content they are genuinely interested in. Begin with sending an email with a short survey asking them what they want to see more of in upcoming emails.

For example, they could select case studies from your projects, video tours, certain architecture styles, sustainable design guides, etc. Once you have their preferences, you can create an automated series tailored to include those interests.

What’s new emails

Email is a great way to share what’s happening at your architecture firm every month and get them to visit your website—your latest blog post, and inspiration page, progress on a new project. Including a preview and a link to your newest blog in your email newsletter fits with a content marketing strategy. This gives you more mileage for the content you write for your blog and invites your subscribers to explore more on your website.

Free courses by email

Use your email campaign to educate your prospective clients. This could be details about your process and how to work with an architect, or understanding the elements of architectural design, or other topics you think they will enjoy (and even help them be prepared to be good clients!). By focusing on one subject and splitting it into a series of bite-sized lessons, you can increase engagement with your email subscribers. With each email lesson, you’ll be able to demonstrate your authority and expertise and build anticipation for the next email in the series.

You can learn more about creating automated emails in our previous blog article, 3 Basics for Managing Your Email Automation.

Show your architecture firm in a different light

To truly connect with your potential clients, use email to give them a peek behind the scenes and let them see how and why you’re different from other architecture firms.

For most people, it’s a major and long-term commitment to engage an architect for their project. Whether it’s a private homeowner looking to design their first custom home or a real estate developer planning their latest commercial office park, they have questions and need reassurance before they decide to work with you or any other architect.

Some prospective clients may have had negative experiences with an architect or contractor on a previous project, or may be overwhelmed by the scale of their project. Frustrations like these can be discouraging and keep them from taking action with you. By giving them insight into the ‘behind the scenes’ of your architecture firm, you’re giving them a more in-depth understanding of how you work and what they can expect from you.

Try including things like:

Breakdowns of costs and schedule
Video diaries of your staff/clients
Show a project from start to finish
Share details of your design process
Provide insight into how you select materials, fixtures, finishings
Interviews with team members at your architecture firm - talk about a specific project or process

With the right strategy, you can make email marketing work for your architecture firm.

No doubt about it, like any effective marketing, email marketing takes time and effort. As you make progress, be sure to track email campaign performance, test new ideas, and use different content and offers. You’ll find this experience helps you fine tune your emails and the process for best results.

What’s Next?

Just start. Gather your lists, build out your email system, and use the tips above to help you brainstorm a few content ideas and how you can make good use of automated campaigns. Keep it simple to start—cover one topic and offer one action option with each email.

At Archmark, we focus on helping architects increase their visibility and authority with a powerful online presence. Website, blogging, social media, and email content are all elements of our content marketing strategy.

To see how we can help you use strategic online marketing to attract and win more of your ideal clients, schedule your call today.