Email Marketing for Tradespeople Who Hate Writing Emails
You're a plumber, not Shakespeare
Right, so you're brilliant at what you do. Boilers love you. Leaking taps fear you. Your van's organised like a military operation. But every time you sit down to write a marketing email, you'd rather be doing literally anything else. Root canal. Tax return. Cleaning the grouting in your bathroom with a toothbrush.
I get it. I've worked with enough tradespeople around Hitchin and Stevenage over the last few years to know that "writing emails" sits somewhere between "social media posting" and "updating your website" on the list of things you'll get round to. Eventually. Maybe.
But here's the thing. Your customers actually want to hear from you. Not every day. Not with some polished corporate nonsense. Just... occasionally. With something useful.
The problem isn't that email marketing doesn't work for trades. It's that you're probably thinking about it all wrong.
What you're doing (and why it feels awful)
Let me guess. You've signed up for Mailchimp or whatever. You've imported your customer list. Maybe you even got as far as picking a template. Then you sat there staring at a blank screen thinking "what the hell do I write?"
So you either:
- Write nothing. The account sits there, judging you
- Copy something you saw another business send and feel like a fraud
- Write three sentences, delete them, write four different sentences, delete those too, give up
- Finally send something that reads like a GCSE business studies assignment
None of those feel good. And none of them work particularly well either.
The reason it feels awful is you're trying to sound like a "business" instead of just talking to people the way you normally do. When someone rings you about a leaking radiator, you don't suddenly start speaking in marketing waffle. You ask questions. You explain things. You're helpful.
That's all an email needs to be.
The emails that actually work (and they're dead simple)
The emails that get opened and read and actually generate work aren't the clever ones. They're the ones that land in someone's inbox at exactly the moment they're useful.
A heating engineer I know in Letchworth sends exactly four emails a year. That's it. September: "Your boiler service is due before winter, here's why that matters and here's my October availability." November: "If your boiler's making weird noises, here's what they mean and when to worry." January: "Frozen pipes survival guide." March: "I've got April slots if you need any spring maintenance."
Four emails. Takes him maybe 20 minutes each to write. Generates about 40% of his work.
Another one. Electrician in Royston. Sends an email every time there's a rule change or something in the news about electrical safety. Takes whatever the news is, explains what it actually means for homeowners, mentions he can help if they're worried. Done.
These aren't masterpieces. They're just useful. And they work because they're not trying to sell, they're trying to help.
What to write (when you've got nothing to say)
You do have things to say. You just don't recognise them as "content" because they're so obvious to you.
Every question you get asked three times is an email. Every time you turn up to a job and think "bloody hell, if they'd just done X this wouldn't have happened"... that's an email. Every seasonal problem you see coming a mile off... email.
Start keeping a list on your phone. Just questions and situations. "Customer asked why their shower's losing pressure." "Third blocked drain this week." "Someone tried to DIY their consumer unit, Christ."
Each of those is 200 words explaining the thing. Why it happens. What the fix involves. When they should call someone. When they can probably handle it themselves.
You're not writing War and Peace. You're writing the answer you'd give if they asked you in person, just typed out.
The bit about AI that's actually relevant here
Look, I could bang on about AEO and how AI search is changing everything (I do that enough already). But there's a specific thing that matters for this.
When someone in Baldock types "why is my radiator cold at the bottom" into ChatGPT or Perplexity, the AI's pulling answers from businesses that have actually explained this stuff. If you've sent an email about it, put it on your website, mentioned it somewhere... you're in the mix. If you haven't, you're not.
The trades businesses that are showing up in AI search results in 2026 aren't the ones with the fanciest websites. They're the ones who've actually answered questions. In plain English. Multiple times.
Your emails do double duty. They keep you top of mind with existing customers AND they feed the AI systems that are increasingly how people find local services.
But that's a side benefit. Main benefit is someone reads your email about bleeding radiators, remembers you exist, books a service.
How often (less than you think)
You don't need to email every week. You definitely don't need to email every month. That's content creator frequency. You're not a content creator. You're a tradesperson who occasionally reminds people you exist.
Four to six times a year is plenty. Genuinely.
Seasonal makes sense. Before winter. Before summer. When everyone's gardens are flooding. When everyone's aircon is broken. Whatever's relevant to what you do.
Problem-focused works too. When you notice a pattern. When there's a common issue going around. When you've just had three calls about the same thing.
The goal isn't to "stay top of mind" through constant contact. The goal is to be the person they think of when they need what you do. That doesn't require weekly newsletters. It requires being occasionally useful.
The technical bit (but actually simple)
You need: - A way to collect emails (which you're probably already doing with job sheets or invoices) - Something to send them with (Mailchimp's fine, MailerLite's fine, whatever's cheap and doesn't make you want to throw your laptop) - A basic template that looks like it's from you, not from a marketing agency
That's it.
You don't need automations and sequences and segmentation and all that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. You need a list and a send button.
The fancy stuff can come later if you want it. Most trades businesses I work with never get there. They just send simple emails that work.
Actually sitting down to write one
This is the bit where you're stuck. Screen's blank. Cursor's blinking. You hate everything.
Try this. Record a voice note instead. Pretend someone just asked you the question you're answering. Talk for two minutes like you're explaining it to them. Get it transcribed (your phone does this now, or ChatGPT, or whatever). Clean it up a bit. That's your email.
You're not writing. You're talking, then tidying up what you said.
Or write it really badly first. Properly badly. Like you're texting a mate. All the grammar's wrong, it's rambling, whatever. Just get words down. Then go back and make it slightly less terrible. You don't need to make it perfect. Just readable.
The emails that work aren't perfect. They're just done.
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Right, if you've read this far and you're thinking "yeah OK but I still can't be arsed"... I get it. Some people would rather pull teeth than write marketing stuff. If you're in North Hertfordshire and you want someone to just sort this kind of thing out (along with making sure you show up when people search), we should talk. We work with trades businesses who are excellent at their actual job and would rather not spend their evenings writing emails.
Or if you just want to chat through whether email marketing's even worth it for what you do... book a call. No sales pitch, just a proper conversation about what actually works.