The Setup
Dive Guys is a Minnesota outdoor services company run by Matt and Logan. For years they've made their living the hard way: actually getting in the water and pulling invasive aquatic weeds off lakefront properties across the Twin Cities, Brainerd, and Western Wisconsin. They know their customers by name. Their list of past clients is the kind of warm relationship most businesses dream about.
This spring, they decided to expand. A new service line: natural tick and mosquito protection, using a cedar oil–based formula — no synthetic pesticides, safe for kids, pets, and pollinators. It's an obvious adjacency for a company already trusted to take care of people's property. The problem wasn't the offering. The problem was telling everyone about it.
That's where we came in.
The Brief
When we sat down with Matt and Logan, the situation was straightforward:
- A new service line, ready to sell, just before the peak season window
- An existing customer list of hundreds of past clients across three regions
- Zero marketing infrastructure — no email platform, no SMS platform, no dedicated landing page
- A few weeks of runway before tick season really started biting
This is the work we love. A real business with a real customer base, a clear offer, a clear deadline, and no fluff. They didn't need a brand refresh or a six-month strategy deck. They needed three things, fast, working together: a place to send people, a way to reach the customers they already had, and a sequence that turned attention into bookings.
Specifically:
- A dedicated landing page for the new service — not buried inside the existing site, but a focused conversion surface
- A 3-email announcement sequence to their existing customer list
- A compliant SMS campaign to reinforce the email send and pick up customers who don't read their inbox
The Landing Page
A few things mattered for the landing page:
Single CTA, all the way down. This is a service business landing page, not a content marketing piece. Every section needs to push toward one action: get in touch. We built the page with one form, one phone number, and one call to action repeated where it makes sense — no competing offers, no "learn more" rabbit holes.
Match the existing brand. Dive Guys had a site already. We didn't reinvent the look — we matched the existing colors, fonts, and tone so the new page felt like a natural extension. Same Navbar, same Footer, same voice.
Lead with the differentiator. Most tick and mosquito treatments in Minnesota use synthetic pesticides. Dive Guys uses cedar oil. That's the headline. Safe for families, pets, and pollinators is the subhead. Everything downstream of that supports it.
Frictionless form. Five fields — first name, last name, phone, email, optional message — submitting directly to the client's inbox. No CRM, no integration, no place for a lead to fall through. Mobile-first because nearly every recipient of the announcement email or text is going to open the page on their phone.
The page is live at diveguysmn.com/ticks — a subpage of the existing site, indexed cleanly, and built to work as a destination for paid and organic traffic going forward, not just the announcement campaign.
The Email Sequence
The email campaign is three messages, sent over about two weeks. We chose a small-business-friendly email platform with a free or low-cost tier — Matt and Logan didn't need Klaviyo-class infrastructure for a list this size. They needed something that could import a spreadsheet, send a sequence, and report opens and clicks.
Email 1 — The Announcement. Personal note from Matt and Logan. They've been clearing your lakefront; now they're expanding into something new. Cedar oil, no pesticides, here's why it matters. Soft CTA — check out the page if you're interested. The point of this email isn't to convert; it's to inform and earn the open of email 2.
Email 2 — The Value Email. A few days later. Why tick and mosquito control matters in Minnesota specifically — Lyme disease numbers are climbing, mosquito season is hitting earlier. What the treatment actually covers. Reassurance on safety. The soft CTA hardens slightly.
Email 3 — The Offer. Final email in the sequence, sent another few days out. A small incentive for existing customers to book early — protect your yard before peak season. Stronger CTA. Last chance language without being pushy.
Tone across the sequence: warm, local, signed "Matt & Logan." Not "the team at Dive Guys." This is a small Minnesota business writing to people they actually know. The copy reflects that.
The SMS Campaign
SMS is where you reach the customers who don't open their email but will glance at a text. It's also where the legal stakes are higher.
We set up an SMS platform that supports TCPA compliance out of the box: documented opt-in, automatic STOP-keyword handling, opt-out tracking. Every message in the sequence ends with "Reply STOP to opt out" because that's the law, not a nicety. The opt-in, resubscribed, and unsubscribed pages live on the Dive Guys site for full transparency.
The sequence is four texts, spaced over the same launch window as the email campaign:
- Day 1 — Announcement. Short, friendly, links to the landing page.
- ~Day 5 — Value push. Cedar oil's natural-safety angle. Book early before peak season.
- ~Day 10 — Offer. Existing-customer discount on first treatment.
- Later — Seasonal reminder. A nudge as tick season truly hits.
Each message is under 160 characters where possible to avoid splitting into two billable segments. Every send is timed for a reasonable hour — no 7am texts.
The Coordinated Launch
The whole point of doing email and SMS together is that they reinforce each other. Email 1 and Text 1 go out the same day. Email 2 and Text 2 land a few days apart so the customer sees the message in both channels without feeling pestered. Email 3 and Text 3 close the loop.
For a customer list this size and this warm, that coordination is the difference between a 5% response rate and something much better. People scrolling on their phone catch the text. People at their laptop catch the email. The repetition isn't annoying because it's two different formats — and because every message earns its place by being short, useful, and on-brand.
And Then We Ran It For Their Main Service
The tick & mosquito launch went well enough that Matt and Logan asked us to do it again — this time for their main service line, aquatic weed removal.
The lift was lighter the second time around. Their existing site was already in good shape for aquatic weed leads, so we didn't rebuild anything on the web. The campaign pointed directly to their existing pages. All we had to do was run the playbook again: a fresh email sequence to their customer list and a coordinated SMS push, timed to hit before peak weed season.
The response was the strongest the business had ever seen. By Matt and Logan's own count, it was the best campaign they'd ever run — the kind of week where bookings stacked up faster than they could schedule them. The customer list proved just how warm those relationships really were when the right message met them at the right time.
Same playbook, two services, two successful launches. That's the case for doing this kind of work as a system rather than a one-off.
What This Project Showed
For Dive Guys, this was a service-line launch. For us, it was the kind of project that makes the case for what a small studio can do:
- End-to-end marketing infrastructure stood up from zero — landing page, email platform, SMS platform — all working together
- Compliance handled correctly from day one (TCPA opt-in, opt-out flows, STOP keyword)
- Brand voice preserved — the copy across landing page, emails, and texts all sounds like the same business
- No SaaS bloat — small list, small business, small monthly cost; we picked tools that match the scale of the operation, not the scale of an enterprise
This is the playbook for any service business launching a new vertical to an existing customer base. You don't need a marketing team. You need a focused landing page, a sequence that respects the relationships you've built, and the discipline to launch all the channels at once.
What's Next
Two campaigns done, two strong launches, a customer list that's now thoroughly reactivated. We're watching the data from both to shape what comes next — likely an evergreen lead-gen channel running into next spring for both service lines, plus refining the sequences for next season's send.
If your business is launching a new service line, or you just want to get more out of the customer list you already have — that's exactly the kind of work we do. Get in touch.