How Housecall Pro’s customers increased repeat business with personalized direct mail

Founded in 2013, Housecall Pro offers an industry-leading SaaS operating platform, modern financial services, and business solutions to help home service professionals run all aspects of their businesses. 

The Challenge

Housecall Pro provides marketing tools for home service professionals (Pros) to reach their customers as part of its SaaS platform offering. Before 2016, email marketing served as the primary channel for Pros to reach both existing and potential customers, the homeowners. However, the saturated digital landscape posed challenges for Pros in capturing homeowners’ attention. Engaging existing customers became difficult, with emails often in spam filters or buried beneath other notifications. 

Housecall Pro’s customers are home service professionals. These Pros struggled to stand out amidst the digital noise inundating homeowners. Housecall Pro explored alternative approaches, including a physical mail option for its Pros.

The Solution

After meeting Lob at TechCrunch, Housecall Pro integrated Lob’s automated direct mail solution with its field service management platform. Housecall Pro doesn't use Lob for its customer engagement (yet) but offers Lob as a tool for its Pros. Lob‘s automated direct mail serves as a powerful option for them, enabling better reach and a higher frequency of re-engagement and impact with their customers, the homeowners.

This tight integration allows Housecall Pro to offer a streamlined and efficient way for Pros to send physical mail to their customers and leverage direct mail as a powerful tool for customer retention and reactivation.

Housecall Pro uses 4x6 postcards as its primary direct mail format. Its data shows that this size postcard offers the best conversion per dollar spent, particularly for its niche in the home services industry. It's a pragmatic choice based on real-world results. The ability for their marketing to live in a more enduring way on kitchen countertops with the homeowner aware of their latent needs and the postcard prompting action helps to drive the ROI for the Pro. 

The highly personalized postcards allow Pros to choose from pre-designed templates or upload designs. The back of the postcard provides space for customized text and calls-to-action, enabling Pros to tailor messages to each customer at a 1:1 level. 

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The Results

In today's customer-centric landscape, it's crucial to consider diverse preferences and touchpoints. While digital channels continue to deliver impact, it's important to acknowledge that consumers still want and appreciate receiving physical mail. This tactile customer touchpoint has proven to be a vital and less crowded addition to Pros' marketing portfolios, complementing their digital strategies effectively and allowing them to expand their reach and engage with customers more meaningfully. 

“We've witnessed repeat usage among our Pros, a solid testament to the effectiveness of direct mail. It demonstrates how our customers effectively leverage it to navigate through the digital clutter.” - Jenn Bergner, SVP of Marketing

The results speak for themselves:

• Increased repeat business: Housecall Pro experienced increased repeat business among their Pros, with many of them regularly sending campaigns to drive their businesses. Direct mail broke through the digital noise, achieving the primary goal of re-engaging homeowners.
• Streamlined workflow: The automation of direct mail streamlined the process for Pros. Previously, they spent hours manually printing and labeling postcards. Pros could focus on their core business activities with the automated system, making the engagement process more efficient.

“This is not merely about automating a task; it's a transformative strategy. Instead of spending hours manually printing and labeling postcards, Pros can streamline the entire process, freeing them to focus on their core business activities.” - Jenn Bergner, SVP of Marketing

The Future

Housecall Pro envisions a future where dynamic personalization is pivotal in its direct mail strategy. It plans to create postcards that adapt in real-time based on customer behavior or seasonality, turning each mail piece into a responsive and evolving dialogue with the customer. 

Housecall Pro’s adoption of automated direct mail successfully addressed the challenge of breaking through the digital clutter and provided an efficient solution for Pros to re-engage with homeowners. 

In terms of increased repeat business and streamlined workflow, the results confirm the effectiveness of this strategy. As it continues to evolve, Housecall Pro sees direct mail as a valuable complement to its digital initiatives, offering an alternative yet effective means of customer outreach.

See Housecall Pro direct mail piece examples on the Best Direct Mail Campaigns.