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Why Most Landscape Companies Fail To Follow Up
00:00
Jack Jostes
Clients get anxious. They're like, what am I getting for this deposit? I paid what? What are you doing? Many, many clients, after they hire you, they may forget what they hired you for, what your company is. Most people go straight for the kill at the trade show. They're like, hey, want to buy something today? And everyone's like, no, bro, I don't want to buy anything today. I'm scared. Goodbye. Most landscape companies invest thousands of dollars into marketing to generate leads. And then they don't follow up. Not because they don't care, but because they're busy. Because it's spring. Because there's always something. But here's the thing. The company that follows up wins the sale every single time. Today I pulled the best clips from a live webinar I ran on email marketing for landscape companies.
Real Results From Simple Email Campaigns
00:49
Jack Jostes
You're gonna hear real numbers from real landscape business owners and one story in particular from a guy who admitted his first email campaign was, quote, half assed and it still generated over 3. In new business, the takeaway isn't complicated. Done beats perfect. And I'm going to show you how to get your email done. Hey, I'm Jack Jostes and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide podcast where we share sales, marketing and leadership inspiration to grow your snow and landscape company. In today's episode, I'll share why the fortune is in the follow up and how to follow up with proven email marketing strategies you can implement today. So let's get started. So let's get into the first part of why email? The main reason is that most landscape companies don't follow up.
Why Email Marketing Works For Landscapers
01:43
Jack Jostes
Many of you invest thousands, tens of thousands over your career, hundreds of thousands of dollars into marketing and advertising to generate leads. And I can tell you both from personal experience and also from having managed and worked with hundreds of clients, most landscape companies don't follow up. I also want to empathize with you. I know how busy you are and I, you know, it's springtime. I appreciate you being here on a Thursday during springtime, but because most landscape companies don't follow up, email can be this magical tool that helps you follow up with very little effort. That's the biggest, best reason I love email is we can send one email to hundreds, if not thousands of people with the click of a few buttons. And it's so inexpensive compared to any other marketing, print, social media, all the other things.
Small Message Changes That Increase Conversions
02:41
Jack Jostes
Email is so inexpensive for what you get a high roi. Now, a lot of people already know they should be doing email marketing. The problem isn't the idea, it's the message. Here's what happened when one of our clients in New Jersey changed their message in the results triangle. I'd really say that was partly an adjustment to the message. The market didn't change. It was the same list of people and the media that formatting, because most email is opened on a mobile device and the presentation of it is so important. Robert Felton is here, he's our director of client strategy. Before I play the video, maybe could you share a little bit of background? What were they doing before we worked with them on their message?
Case Study: 274% Sales Growth From Email
03:28
Robert Felton
Oh yeah, Rich green lawns. I love rich green lawns. So they're a lawn care company out of New Jersey. And the big issue honestly was they were just typing big old fashioned paragraphs in their email with really good correct grammar and structure which looked kind of nice, but when you looked at it on a phone it was just a big blob of text. And I was like, we need to make this read and look like a text message. So it was honestly, they have really good offers. We just restructured the formatting just a little bit and guess what, you could read it. And it increased, I think by like 30% conversion. It was impressive. So I mean it's been really fun working with them.
04:05
Robert Felton
So yeah, it was really reformatting and changing the message slightly so you could see what the message was versus it being buried in a big paragraph.
04:13
Speaker 3
We do our sales weekly, we track them. So the same week last year compared to last week when the email went out, the sales were up 274%. So we did, I think almost over 75,000 doll of new sales last week just in the new with the corporation seed services for the fall. When we wrote the emails before, it was just too industry based and not enough consumer based, I feel. And he just, for lack of better words, dumbed it down and just made.
04:42
Jack Jostes
It easy to read.
04:43
Speaker 3
So it was much appreciated.
The Four Types Of Emails That Drive Sales
04:46
Jack Jostes
Now that's what happens when you send the right message to the right market with the right media. Now let me show you four specific types of emails that work for landscape companies. And I want to spend a little extra time one of these in particular because I think it's the highest ROI email in the whole conversation and most people never send it one of them. And I say this is the highest ROI email from the whole webinar. Grab a pen and write it down. This is a weekly progress update email. Okay, so this is nothing fancy. This is simply taking care of your current clients. If you are a Design, build company. And you have projects that take weeks, months, some of them years. Clients get anxious. They're like, what am I getting for this deposit? I paid what? What are you doing?
The Highest ROI Email: Weekly Project Updates
05:40
Jack Jostes
And they get angry and they get anxious and fearful, but if they know what's going on, they're like, oh, cool, I understand what's going on. This is something we do for our own clients at Ramblin Jackson while we're building their website. And what we found is our clients love their little weekly email. And one of my clients in Fort Collins, Alpine Gardens, started doing this and they got the same fe. So we started telling our other clients, and the clients who have done this get amazing results from their client. And when your client feels good about it, they're going to be more likely to write a Google review for you, which is so important, or to refer you to a friend or to hire you again for their front yard or side yard or second property or whatever it is.
How To Build Long-Term Client Relationships With Email
07:16
Jack Jostes
So if you're communicating, hey, we're working on this and what we need from you is whatever they need to do with the permit or a material selection or something. If they're holding it up and now their timeline is weeks off, you might need to say, hey, you know, I understand. And as a reminder, we've been requesting this from you for about six weeks and you have your emails. Our original timeline was May 5 for completion. However, due to the recent tornado, we don't know when it's going to happen or whatever. Right. A tornado obviously would be extreme, but rain impacts things. So I just wrote, if I had a landscape company that it's Liberty Landscapes. So Liberty Landscapes plus Miller Family Project Update. That's my subject line.
SPEAR Emails: Simple Follow-Ups That Get Replies
08:11
Jack Jostes
If you can nurture them over time with a valuable email newsletter, you're going to be in their email. They can search for it, they can click on it. They're going to feel like they have a little more relationship with you over time. Another type of email that's very effective is a SPEAR email. A SPEAR email stands for short, personal, expecting a reply spear. And you got to use these sparingly because if you spear people every day, it will no longer feel personal. Right. So we're going to sprinkle them in strategically. And here's an example. Subject line. Laura, lighting installation. Laura, would you like to get on our calendar this month for lighting installation? Jack. It kind of, it's almost like a text message, you know, So I might send this to Laura.
Goodwill Emails That Build Trust And Authority
09:56
Jack Jostes
If I had sent Laura a proposal on lighting installation and then maybe she Ghosted me. I just got a cold call, a warm call. I requested some information about investing in gold like four years ago. And I've had this salesperson keeping in touch with me and I loved it. I loved it. So he sent me a SPEAR email and he called me. Here's another one. Spring Cleanup, 123 Main St. So I literally put the client's email or their address in the subject line. And if you have your database dialed in, you could set this to go up automatically, meaning that you could in the subject line have a placeholder for a insert address. And then in the email, insert, first name Larry. Would you like to get a spring cleanup scheduled? Amazing.
Real Story: $350K From A “Half-Assed” Email
11:33
Jack Jostes
Now here's the part I really want you to hear. Because sometimes the best evidence isn't a strategy or a framework. It's just hearing from someone who was in the same spot you're in. This is Jeff Adam.
11:49
11:49
Jeff Adam
My name is Jeff Adam. Been around for, I'm 64, 63. So that tells you how long I've been around. So we have not, we don't do, have not done outbound marketing. Our business is all repeat and referral. So we've been very blessed. It's been around for three decades. So the change that happened last year was brought one of my six kids who is 33, 34, and he was like, dad, you need to be doing some outbound marketing. So, you know, kind of begrudgingly, because of my age, I agreed to do it and we kind of, I mean it really was a very, I would describe it not as unprofessional, that's not the word, but just kind of a little bit half assed, quite frankly, that immediately had massive results. So it was not about making it perfect, it was about just doing it.
12:43
Jeff Adam
So the first one that went out in February of 2025 and we just took, I don't know, we probably had about 1200 in our existing customer base who are not customers that within, you know, within a matter of weeks resulted in a $350,000 annual account. Another actually more like another $300,000 of business of which about 100 was signed within four weeks of that email going out. And just in the past month. So in February 2026, we took 333 emails that came from contact forms, contact us kind of forms where we had done our normal follow up but nothing had happened and just kind of broke it down to three versions. Used AI to kind of generate some messages that we thought were important relative to the type of customers they were all businesses, these are all commercial, actually. And that resulted in immediate sales.
13:42
Jeff Adam
3 Within the first week that closed. And we still have all sorts of, you know, I've moved them from a B to an A1 and they're getting personally called by some of my sales folks.
13:54
Jack Jostes
Awesome, Jeff. Well, thanks for sharing. I like, and I love how you shared your hesitation about it. You know, we hear that a lot. People say, hey, I'm in a relationship business, I've got repeat business. And what I tell people is, look, email, digital, it's just part of the relationship. And in many ways I believe it enhances the relationship. Some of these people may have had a great experience with you, especially considering how long you said the company's been around. They may have forgotten. Oh, and they're probably like, oh, great, Jeff has contacted us. I, I've been meaning to contact Jeff. I got a new phone, I lost his phone number, whatever. So I love that story. And we've had similar results.
14:35
Jack Jostes
One of our clients does high end residential out in New Jersey and I don't know, he was working with this guy on this like weird AI bot thing for a while. He's like, oh, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do email. I'm like, let's just do it, let's try it. Let's see what happens. And first email campaign, he sold two huge projects north of 70 grand from leads that were just in the database. Right. So I think, you know, what happens for people is they get busy, they move, or maybe they don't move, but stuff happens and it gets in the way of them hiring you. And then an email comes and they're like, oh yeah, we've been meaning to hire the landscaper for a long time.
Why Done Beats Perfect In Marketing
15:18
Jack Jostes
So I also love that you said that you just did it and it wasn't perfect. That was one of my points. Today was like, getting it done is the most important thing. And many people way overanalyze this. They try to overperfect it and then they miss spring. So guys, what are you going to do, like next week is really the question. Are you going to get an email out or how long are you going to wait to like make it perfect? It's springtime, it's time to sell. Here's what I want you to take away from this. The fortune is in the follow up. Email is not dead and done. Beats perfect every single time. You don't need a complicated platform or a perfectly organized list.
What To Do This Week To Start Closing More Deals
16:04
Jack Jostes
You need to Start with what you have, Whether that's your QuickBooks, your website contact form, your personal sent folder in your email or something. Send something this week. Now, if you're a current Ramblin Jackson client and you're thinking, I didn't even know you guys did this email stuff, reach out to your landscape marketing guide or book a call directly with our director of client strategy, Robert Felton. He'll get you moving. And if you're a landscape business owner who isn't a client yet and you're wondering where to focus your marketing, we'd love to have a 15 minute conversation with you. It's called a marketing Brainstorm call. We'll look at what you're doing, what's working, what isn't working, and help you figure out where to put your energy. No pitch, no pressure.
16:53
Jack Jostes
Book yours at landscapersguide.com/brainstorm and see our show Notes to a link to where you can click on that and schedule directly on our website. I'm Jack Jostes and you've been listening to the Landscaper's Guide. Now go send an email and sell something. I'll look forward to talking with you next week.