How often should a home service business email or text past customers?
A few times a year is enough to stay remembered without becoming a nuisance. The right number depends less on the calendar than on whether each message is worth the customer's time. Go quiet for a year and customers start to forget who did the work. Send something every week with nothing in it for them and they stop reading. The rhythm that works sits between those two, at a pace your business can keep.
What happens when a business goes quiet after the job?
A plumber who saves a homeowner from a burst pipe on a January night is a hero that night. By the next winter, the homeowner may remember the relief and the late hour and not the company's name. When the water heater starts leaking, she searches online, and the plumber who did great work a year ago never gets the chance to quote the job. The same thing happens on a smaller scale to pool service customers who hear nothing all winter and drift away before the next season starts.
Silence costs nothing in the moment, which is why it is so easy to fall into. The cost shows up later as work that went to somebody else, and nobody at your business ever sees the call you did not get.
What did staying in touch do for Robert's own business?
Robert saw this in real estate. For years his website sat at the top of Google for condos in Reston, Virginia. When Google changed its results, he spotted the change and did something about it. He worked to strengthen his online position, and he added another channel alongside it, a monthly newsletter to his past clients and to the neighborhoods he targeted. His repeat and referral business grew from about ten percent to fifty or sixty percent of what he sold.
He puts what he learned this way: you rent the path, and you own the list. Google, Facebook, and every other place that sends you customers belongs to someone else. You are not in control of it, and when they change the rules or the way they rank businesses, the calls can stop overnight and you are left with nothing to show for what you spent. A list of past customers who know you and hear from you is different, because it belongs to you and no one can change it or take it away. A home service business can start with a few messages a year and send more once it has more worth saying.
How often is too often to contact past customers?
Too often is any message the customer would rather not have received. A homeowner who gets a weekly note that only says your company is still here learns to delete your emails without opening them, and some will unsubscribe, which closes that door for good. The same homeowner may happily read a note several times a year if each one has something in it for them. The more useful each message is, the more often you can send one.
Texts deserve more care than email. A text lands on the phone in the customer's pocket and feels personal, so it suits a reminder or a short, timely note better than a regular newsletter. A business that texts past customers as often as it emails them will wear out its welcome faster.
Do service reminders and referral requests count toward that number?
They are different messages with different jobs, and customers treat them differently. A service reminder is about the customer's own house and arrives because something is due, so it rarely feels like one message too many. A thank you after a good job, with an easy way to refer a neighbor, belongs to the job itself.
The occasional note to past customers is what fills the long gaps between those moments. That is the one to keep to a pace you can hold, because a business that sends three notes in the spring and then goes silent until next year has gone quiet all over again.
What a fix looks like
A homeowner you helped last year gets a short note from you in the fall, and when a faucet starts dripping in March, your company is the name she already has. Every past customer sits on one list in your business's name, with the date of their last job, and the owner can see who has heard from the business this season. Notes go out a few times a year at a pace the owner chose, and anyone who asks to stop comes off the list right away.
The Home Service Guild Marketing Operations System builds that list from the customer records already in Housecall Pro and sends the notes to past customers as part of Word of Mouth.
Questions owners also ask
Should I stay in touch with customers who only hired me once?
Yes. A one-time customer still owns a house in your service area, and that house will need work again. They also have neighbors, and a customer who hears from you now and then is far more likely to have your name ready when one of them asks.
What should I do when a customer asks me to stop contacting them?
Take them off the list right away. Keeping someone on a list after they asked to leave does more harm to your name than losing one reader ever could.
Is it too late to contact customers I have not spoken to in years?
No. Start with a friendly note that reminds them who you are and what you did for them. Some will have moved and some will have forgotten, and the ones who remember you are people who already liked your work.
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