Most field service businesses don’t have a marketing manager. They have a Google profile they haven’t touched since the last slow season and a Facebook page they haven't posted to in years.
They don’t send newsletters. They don’t segment their client list by lifetime value or run campaigns tied to the local animal shelter. But Gold Eagle Services is not like most trade businesses – they have Liz.
Liz Ramirez, marketing manager at Gold Eagle Services, joined the team just 8 months ago and has already generated well over $400,000 in new jobs directly as a result of her marketing campaigns.
She has a degree in advertising and six years of trade marketing experience that spans home remodeling, flooring, fencing, and now HVAC.
Liz knows what she's doing. Here’s her playbook and the tools that make it possible.
Rule 1: Know What’s Actually Working
When Liz joined Gold Eagle, she struggled with the limited capabilities of Mailchimp.
“I was doing everything very manually,” she says. “Going through all the open clicks and attributing it to jobs in Workiz. It was a lot of extra effort and it wasn’t really right anyway.”
Mailchimp isn't connected to Gold Eagle's data, so it can only report on open rates, click rates, and not much else.
The problem wasn’t effort. The data simply wasn’t there and Liz couldn't know what kind of impact to revenue a campaign had. If a client received three emails over six months before booking a $5,000 job, there was no way to know which email tipped them over. Which campaign drove which revenue? Impossible to say.
Liz had to know what was working so she could do more of it.
Switching to Genius Marketing, the marketing suite built right into her Workiz account changed that. She now sees revenue directly tied to specific campaigns.
The biggest added value is really being able to pinpoint the revenue generated from it. That’s probably been the best part of having it all integrated.
Before Liz was able to improve Gold Eagle's marketing, she needed to see what was working. Now she can. She has the data that matters.
Rule 2: Know Who You’re Talking To
Mailchimp knows how to send messages to a list. Genius Marketing knows how to send a message to a client.
That distinction matters. When Liz segments campaigns, she’s not just blasting her entire list of historical clients and leads. She’s creating dedicated campaigns for clients who left five-star reviews, happy clients who might leave 5-star reviews, clients that are tagged 'AC Repair', or 'Air Scrubber Repair'.
Because she is able to target clients as individuals, she can send them the right message at the right time, exactly when they may need Gold Eagle's services again. Got an install 4 months ago? Liz knows not to send a maintenance special yet. But if your new AC is hitting its first birthday, a filter change campaign will be waiting in your inbox.
I think my campaigns work because I can now gauge what type of client it is and what they’re actually going to respond to.” Liz explains.
Gold Eagle services specializes in health-conscious clients who have undergone serious indoor air quality issues like mold in ductwork, allergens, and air quality that’s been making their families sick.
“Clients call us because we've built a name for taking their problems seriously,” Liz says. "But a generic blast doesn't hit the spot for them. When I message a segment of very specific people, they feel treated and understood like people and that's when they respond". For Gold Eagle’s health-conscious, high-trust clientele, feeling spoken with as an individual is everything.
Rule 3: Build Community, Not Campaigns
Gold Eagle runs donation drives for Austin Pets Alive, a no-kill shelter, as well as other Austin NGOs. During service calls, they collect towels, dog food, cat food, and medication. Clients who are due for a checkup can pass their donations to the tech at the same time.
It sounds simple. It works.
“Austin is a very animal-friendly city,” Liz says. “Those clients appreciate that we’re not some big corporate company that lives states away. We see what’s going on in the city and we care”.
They’ve also run coat drives, canned food drives, and raffles and promotions where clients get cheaper inspections if they donate to a drive. These campaigns are genuine community involvement that just happens to keep Gold Eagle visible and trusted in a way no discount offer could replicate.
“We’re built in Austin. We’re based out of Austin. We help other nonprofits and charities as much as we can,” Liz explains. "Clients feel like our HVAC company is part of their community because we are."
Rule 4: Keep Your Eyes Open
Liz doesn’t plan campaigns purely off a seasonal content calendar. She looks at what’s happening around her. "I’m 99% sure that if I’m thinking about this, someone else is thinking about it too.”
“Right now we’re having horrible weather in Texas. It’s been raining on and off for the last month. For sure there are other people who are feeling the humidity like I am. So that is an opportunity. Do you need a dehumidifier? How’s your air quality? How can you keep away the mold?.”
Good campaigns feel real-time, not scheduled. When something is happening that your clients are already thinking about, they want to see you in their inbox. When nothing is, going quiet is sometimes the right move.
A big part of Liz's golden touch is her way of empathising with customers and putting them first. Before sending any marketing campaign, she asks herself "does this intrigue me? Would I want this in my inbox?".
If I’m going through the trouble of opening an email and I’m not getting something out of it I don’t care to get it in my inbox. If it’s not something I would want to get, why would it benefit someone else?
Rule 5: Play the Long Game
One of Gold Eagle’s most important marketing rules is to appreciate every client.
A client who books a $79 inspection isn’t written off.. They go into a nurture flow with newsletters, follow-ups, and occasional campaigns tied to what’s happening in Austin or their HVAC system’s age. Over time, Gold Eagle becomes the name that comes to mind first. The client learns about Gold Eagle's specialty in indoor air quality, mold science, and health-focused HVAC work. When something comes up in their home, there’s no question who they’re calling.
Those jobs don’t stay at $79. They end at $6,000, $8,000, $10,000.
“We keep nurturing that client,” Liz explains, “and we enjoy a lifetime relationship with them.”
Liz’s email list isn’t just a sales channel. It’s how Gold Eagle maintains relationships between visits.
The Newsletter Nobody Else Is Sending
Ask Liz which campaigns have performed best, and the answer is immediate: newsletters.
Just two newsletters booked $140,000 in revenue, and she sends one every month.
Her formula isn’t complicated. She writes in the CEO’s voice, with real stories. The CEO’s own experience discovering mold in his home became a newsletter. Existing blog posts get recycled and reframed. If there is an offer in the newsletter, it's always at the end, like a reward for readers who stayed through the whole thing.
“Not everything has to be a special,” she says. “Just something very light to stay top of mind makes us be very successful.”
In an industry where almost nobody is sending newsletters, the bar is low and the opportunity is enormous.
What It Takes
Liz is the first to say you don’t need her deep marketing credentials to do this.
“You can shoot in the dark and something will land,” she says. “You just need to practice being sensitive in how you reach a client, how to talk to a client.”
What Genius Marketing gave her wasn’t a substitute for putting in the effort to care about what a client needs – it was the platform to channel this care into campaigns, measure it, and improve it. The revenue attribution that Mailchimp couldn’t provide is now built directly into her Workiz workflow. The segmentation depth that Mailchimp couldn’t offer means clients feel like the message was written for them because, with Genius Marketing, it was.
And that is Liz's open secret.
Want to run marketing campaigns that connect directly to revenue? Discover how Genius Marketing helps field service businesses turn email and SMS into a real growth channel.