Turning Past Customers Into Repeat Work
Every contractor with a few years behind them is sitting on hundreds of people who already trust them. Almost none of them ever get contacted again. That's the cheapest revenue available to you.
Ask a contractor where their next job is coming from and they'll talk about Google, ads, or referrals. Almost nobody says "the four hundred people I've already worked for", which is odd, because that's the cheapest and highest-converting list they will ever have access to.
Why the list beats new leads
- They already trust you. The single hardest thing to establish, already done.
- It costs nothing to reach them. No click, no ad auction, no lead fee.
- They convert far better. A message to someone who's already paid you outperforms a cold click by a wide margin.
- They refer. A message that reminds them you exist gets forwarded to a neighbour more often than you'd think.
The only reason this doesn't happen is practical: doing it by hand means exporting a spreadsheet on a Sunday night and texting people one at a time until you give up.
What to send, by trade type
Seasonal trades
The easiest wins in the whole category, because the timing writes itself.
- HVAC — AC tune-ups in April, furnace checks in September. Two sends a year that can fill two shoulder seasons.
- Landscaping — spring clean-ups in February, irrigation start-ups in April, leaf removal in October, snow contracts in November.
- Pool service — openings in March, closings in September.
- Roofing — free inspections after any significant storm, sent the same week.
- Plumbing — pipe insulation and freeze prevention before the first cold snap.
Recurring trades
For cleaning, pest control and lawn maintenance, the goal is retention and reactivation. A win-back message to anyone who's lapsed in the last year is usually the highest-converting message you can send, because you're asking people who already liked the service to restart it.
One-off, high-ticket trades
For general contracting, fencing or solar, the customer isn't buying the same thing again — but they're buying the next thing. The bathroom customer is thinking about the kitchen. The fence customer needs it stained in three years. The solar customer is now a battery prospect.
Also worth messaging: every quote you sent and never closed. Circumstances change, and a light check-in six months later costs nothing.
How often
Once every month or two for most trades, plus your seasonal moments. Frequent enough to stay in mind, rare enough that a message from you still registers as news rather than noise.
The failure mode isn't over-sending, it's sending nothing for two years and then blasting a discount. The second one reads as desperation; a steady rhythm reads as a business that's still around.
Text and email together
Send both. Email carries the detail and the photos; the text is what actually gets read, usually within minutes. For local home services the combination consistently beats either alone.
Keep the text short and specific. "Hi Sarah, Dave from Donovan Plumbing — we're doing water heater checks this month, $79 including the flush. Want me to put you down?" beats anything with the word "valued customer" in it.
The part everyone gets wrong
A campaign that produces twenty replies you never action is worse than not sending one. You've spent your goodwill and got nothing.
Every reply needs to land somewhere you'll see it and enter the same follow-up process as a new lead. The campaign creates the demand; the system behind it converts it. Sending without that in place is the most common way this fails.
What it's worth
Take four hundred past customers, send a seasonal offer, get a 5% response — twenty enquiries. Close half at an average job value of $400 and that's $4,000 from one message, at zero acquisition cost.
Do that six times a year and it's a meaningful share of your revenue coming from work you've already done once. That's the argument for one-click campaigns, and it's why they're included rather than sold separately.