Reply-Driven Email Workshop — Plumbers, Customer Reactivation, and Building Value for Trades
Live Webinar with Vanessa Roberts
(Raw transcription; not proofed for grammar or spelling.)
Click here for Google Doc of the transcript.
[0:01] Hey, everybody, sorry for the two-minute delay. I was still on phone audio from last week's technical trouble and I couldn't figure out what was happening. So can you let me know, can you hear me? It says my microphone is working, but I don't believe it. OK, Pauline, Adele, Kat, yes, all my girls are here. Hey, Hazel. Britt, thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, and you see my screen announcing that our email series workshop is continuing today. We're going to be working on the three-touch call-to-action reply series. And this week we're doing a continuation. We had a request for HVAC and plumbers. Last week we did HVAC and today we're gonna do plumbers. Ken, if you're here, we talked about doing a series for you on the 12-step recovery, and we absolutely can do that as well today. I'm just very curious as to how you are framing the benefit you can offer to this industry? Who are your targets? I'm not well-versed in servicing that group of clients, so that's going to be a very interesting avenue to explore while we're making those emails. If you're here, Ken, just say hey, and we can jump in after we do an email for the plumbers.
[1:32] Awesome. Everybody, if you're seeing in your email a slightly unrelated email that Brian and I have been sending out about a training tomorrow at 3 p.m. Eastern — it is not directly Small Batch System related. However, it is an incredible lead generation tool that works perfectly with the Small Batch System. So I went ahead and every Small Batch System member, I reserved a spot for you on that 3 p.m. training so you didn't have to register. I just blocked the seats because our GoToWebinar allows for 10,000 registrants, and I'll tell you right now we have 9,887 people registered. So I knew that this was going to be a huge block, so I wanted to make sure that y'all were able to attend. It's tomorrow at 3, and there are some things that are only going to be available — our guest is giving away bonuses just to live attendees, so if you can be there, I do encourage it live. If you don't see your link, if you don't have an email in your inbox with that information and you're interested, let me know. If you have a different email address you'd like to register for attendance rather than the one I chose for you, let me know. I can get that out to you, but just wanted to say it is not specifically a Small Batch training. But if you are working in the lead gen — be that for FinTitan FICA, Illusional telehealth, or even affiliate offers, or if you are looking to generate leads for yourself and you're using the Small Batch System — this is a perfect complement to the Small Batch System. So I wanted to just add that clarity because I've gotten some questions.
📌 Workshop Introduction — Recap and Today's Focus
[3:43] Vanessa: All right, I think we've got the whole crew. Just give everybody a second to log in and get started. All right, so today — let me know if my slides are still advancing right. Why is my thing not working? Okay, oh, my questions were covering up, sorry. Always juggling chat and presenting, it's tough, but Nikki is on a personal day. I had a lot of vacation last week, so. All right, so welcome back. We're continuing our deep dive into the email framework designed to generate real conversations, not just clicks, okay?
[4:29] Yes, Chu, I will grab you. Actually, let me — I got a lot of folks asking for this link, so let me just jump and grab it. All right, so I just dropped it in chat for everyone. Yes, so this is for tomorrow's training if you're interested — I'd love to see there, and we will have a recording, but there are some special things that are live only. All right. Oh, Ken — Ken, are you here on the call? Can you say hi? I've been trying to connect with Ken, but he's talking to me on Facebook instead of the call. Okay. Ken, let me see if I can get into talking to you on the call right now. Are you attending? Okay. We'll see if he pops in.
[5:49] The page you requested could not be found, but the link does not work. Well, that's terrible. Let's see. Strange. All right, let me try again. RegLink. Okay, I just — I had a typo, I'm sure. I don't know what it was, but here we go. Let me know if that works. Kat, let me send it to you too. Has this been presented to us before? No, we've never presented this before. And the call tomorrow was new also. Okay, so it all works now. Well, shoot. Let me see if I can edit this and I'll make sure this is working. Thank you for letting me know. All right. Yes, it works now — fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Okay, so let's get back on track. Sorry for the segue. I've been telling people lately, you know, how's everything going? I say, you know, I'm used to juggling a lot and having a lot of balls in the air, right? But some days it feels like they're bowling balls. When you think you've got it all covered, they like to throw you a new loop, right?
[7:43] So plumbers — we're going to build a complete three-touch email sequence. We're going to tailor it specifically for plumbing contractors and plumbing business owners. And it's going to be focusing on lead generation, filling their calendars with new appointments, new customers, etc. So providing the service of lead generation. And as we've been doing, the goal is to get a reply, not a click. And just to recap to everybody — we may have some new faces here today. While the Small Batch System has traditionally focused on getting a link clicked to land on a landing page or an affiliate offer or an info page, a lead capture page, etc., we have been experimenting and being incredibly highly successful with not giving a link and rather asking for a conversation — reply to me for more information. Basically, do I have your permission to give you more? Are you interested? I do acknowledge this isn't for everyone. Some folks don't want to have that interaction, and that is absolutely fine. This is not a conversation that says, what worked before doesn't work anymore, you have to do it this way now. No. This training, this workshop is us saying, we tried something new, and it was incredibly successful, and we don't gatekeep, right? I want to share with you something that is working for me and Brian, for the FinTitan marketing team, for the Illusional telehealth marketing team, so that you can implement it if you so choose. The same way I could come to you and say, pay-per-click is working fantastic, Facebook ads are working fantastic — I just want to share with you things that are working and how we made them work so that you can use what you want and leave what you don't. It's totally fine.
[9:48] So the reason this is so powerful is it's really easy to open an email. It's really easy to click a link, to be looky-loo. But to hit reply and use your fingertips to physically touch your keys and formulate a response and give this action-based acknowledgement and request for more information — that is, to use Brian's words, nuclear hot lead. There's never going to be anybody hotter than somebody saying yes please now, okay? Because it means we want to start a conversation — a reply is the ultimate level of engagement short of actually completing a purchase, right? It's so much more than just a click because with a conversation, you can start building an actual rapport, a relationship, building trust, establishing yourself as the authority. This is highly effective in a higher price point offer and ongoing relationships such as lead generation with contractors, right? Where if you're just sharing an affiliate offer, you aren't building a relationship as an authority for that product specifically — it's not your product, you're offering affiliate, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that — but you don't necessarily need to have a conversation about an affiliate product. Really, the goal is just conversions, usually with a very impactful funnel, etc., etc. But for things like generating leads for, for example, FinTitan or Illusional, or generating business for yourself as a lead generation service provider where you are working for an ongoing lasting relationship with a customer, this is the approach that we highly recommend right now.
[11:57] So touch one — we're familiar, it's an opening, we're gonna establish relevance. We'd love to acknowledge that we understand the problem an industry or business owner is experiencing. This is our opportunity to establish ourselves as an authority, as a well-versed, informed, educated resource in that industry. So we always want to use industry speak, and AI can absolutely help us do it. We're gonna find that out in just a second when we jump to the workshop, right? We always wanna value-add, provide insight that earns trust. Here we say things like, “I'm working with plumbers, I've helped other plumbers, this is how I help plumbers,” etc., etc. And touch three, the nudge — and we do a pivot, a simple, low-friction task that invites a reply. And with that, what we have been doing — and it just works well — a pattern interrupt of “if you are not the right person, who should I be speaking with? Introduce me, CC me,” etc. It allows the — if you are talking to the wrong person — to get it off their desk and facilitates an introduction to the correct person. It's just a great way to sign off without “well, that's it, we're never gonna talk again. You missed your opportunity,” right? Like we're still open. We're still open to it without the air of that salesy finality. It allows you to come back later if it doesn't work out.
[13:29] Are you wanting to be showing slides? Yes, I am. And it was paused, wasn't it? All right, well, this is what they look like. I think they're really pretty. I'm sorry you didn't get to see them. Thanks, Brent. See, when I'm all alone, things like this happen. So yes, thank you. Let's see, all right. And complete free email sequence — we're going to work on it together, and we're gonna test our subject lines to make sure they pass the spam sniff test, and it's gonna build a repeatable framework that is adaptable to any niche, and that's why we're doing these workshops, all right? So let's get to work.
📌 Live AI Workshop — Building the Plumber Email Campaign
[14:09] Vanessa: So I've been using the Gemini for free. I want this to be accessible for everybody, so y'all see my slides are — my screen's changing — now we're looking at Gemini, right? Fantastic, all right. So let's jump in. You know, I'm embarrassed to say, I'm not 100% sure who asked me to do plumbing. Are you here? Let me just check real quick, because I would love interactions to really customize it. Alonzo. That's right. Alonzo, are you here today? I know a lot of folks took time off because of Easter and spring break. Tim has lost sound. Does everybody hear me? Oh, Amy says, “I'm glad you're doing trades.” Okay, fantastic. So Amy still hears me. So let me tell Tim, audio is good for others. Try logging out and back in. And that's the trick, guys. If you lose audio and it's not on my end — which it happens to, it happens to be sometimes — that's the real quick solution.
[15:31] All right, so we know the drill, right? I am writing a three-touch email campaign to plumbers with the goal of getting a response. I am offering the service of lead generation to help plumbers fill their calendar with new appointments and new customer contacts. I want each email to be business casual, no more than three to five sentences. Use plumber industry speak to make me sound knowledgeable.
[19:05] See? Teamwork. Y'all let me know when I'm an island unto myself, when things go haywire. It really keeps me from losing too much track. Okay, so you can see me, you can hear me again. All right, welcome back, Vanessa. Okay. All right, so simple prompt, prompt one, initial prompt, all right, and what did we get?
[19:35] “I know how it goes when the dispatch board looks a little thin or you're stuck chasing small drain snaking jobs just to keep the vans moving. I specialize in generating high-ticket leads like full re-pipes and water heater installs to help fill those gaps in your calendar. I'm looking for one solid shop in Atlanta to take on some extra volume this month. Are you interested in adding a few more installs to your schedule?” All right, I will say right off the bat, it gave me everything I asked for, but this is basically every contractor cold email outreach I've ever seen in my entire life, right? “I'm looking for one solid shop” — yeah, it's predictable and salesy. So we've got a start, but I'm not loving it yet. Okay. “Following up on my last note — I'm not talking about sending you shared leads.” Ah, okay, so it's smart enough to know that we're not talking about shared leads. We talked about that with HVAC, and it could be that my Gemini remembers — I'm not sure, I've made a whole new chat so it would be siloed off, but maybe. “I'm not talking about sending you shared leads that result in a race to the bottom on price. I focus on giving you exclusive residential service calls where the homeowner is ready to book. If you have the bandwidth to send another tech out into the field, I can help you keep them busy. Reply yes if you want details.” Okay. “Final check-in — I haven't heard back, so I'll assume you're currently booked solid or you have lead flow dialed in, which is a great problem to have.” Give them some positivity. “I'm going to reach out to a couple of other local outfits to see if they need help keeping their billable hours up, but if things change and you need more boots on the ground, just let me know.” All right, so it is what it is.
[21:29] I will populate it over here in our emails. Let's make a sub tab. Okay. Result one. That's pretty salesy. I'm not loving it. So let's tell. This is too predictable and salesy. Too wordy. I want to be friendly and helpful. Solving a problem, but not too pushy or gimmicky — those are all the words that I would not want to be described as, so I'm going to say “don't behave that way,” right? Any other feedback or ideas on how you would change this? I like the principles — right, the exclusive leads, helping in your area — but just the vibe is off. So let's see how this goes.
[22:41] All right, I'll come over here to prompt you and I'll give you my adjustment. Okay. “If you want to get a response from a plumber, you have to sound like a person, not a marketing agency.” True. “They have a high BS detector.” Yep. “For anyone promising exclusive leads.” It's a stripped back, punchy sequence that focuses on the actual pain point — keeping the vans moving without the headache of cold calling. All right. Sounds good. “I've been generating some quality plumbing leads in Atlanta and I'm looking for a reliable shop to send them to. I noticed your crew does great work on water heaters and re-pipes, and I'd rather hand those off to a pro than let them go to waste. Do you have bandwidth for a few extra service calls this week?” Okay, already better. Quick question. “Just checking back to see if you're looking to keep your techs busier. I'm currently seeing a spike in emergency slab leaks and sewer line inquiries in your area.” Interesting. That's a bold claim, right? A plumber might say, have you? Really? So I don't know about that. So maybe that would be our next adjustment. “Shoot me a quick reply.” And “I haven't heard back — I'll assume your dispatch board is already at capacity. No worries at all. I'll reach out to another local outfit.” Okay, let's see. So we've got some improvement. I'm going to copy it over here into our email, but we can make it a little better, okay?
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