The shoulder weeks in the year plan are the weeks this campaign is built for. Before any of March's money goes to strangers, the people who have already paid you once get the first offer of the season.
Pull the list and segment it
Export every customer with a service or an install record. ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro and FieldEdge all do this in a few clicks, and the export carries the fields the segments are built from: install date, last service date, equipment type, membership status.
Four groups do the work this spring.
- Installed by you in the last three years. Still under parts warranty, easiest to book, and the ones whose maintenance record you want on file.
- Systems 8 to 12 years old. This is where repair calls start and where the first replacement conversation happens.
- Systems past 12 years. The replacement list, and the summer audience.
- Anyone you have not been out to in 18 months. Some of them called somebody else last August. Some have not thought about the system since you left.
The offer is a tune-up at a price
Put a number on it. Say $99 for a cooling tune-up, or whatever the number is in your metro, and say what the visit covers. A free inspection teaches your phone to ring for free things, and a homeowner reads it as the opening of a sales visit, which is usually what it is.
Three things go in the message: the price, a booking link that shows real slots, and the name of the technician who will come. Use the name. The customer met that technician last spring.
Two messages, a few days apart
The first is an email with the price, what the visit covers and the link. The second is a text three or four days later, to the people who did not book from the email: one line, one link, your company name in the first four words.
The text carries a condition. A marketing text sent with an automated system needs prior express written consent from that customer, on file, before it goes out, and the sending number has to be registered with the US carriers. Check both before the wave, because the list you exported includes people who have given you neither.
Timing by metro
The message goes out before the first hot week, and every metro has its own date for that. Once the heat arrives the calendar fills with no-cool calls, and every tune-up booked into that week is a slot an emergency would have taken.
Phoenix runs this in February, which is when maintenance agreements sell there anyway. Columbus sends it in the second half of March. Tampa gets humidity calls before it gets heat, so the message goes out late in February and uses the word humidity.
Send it in waves sized to the calendar
A 3,000-person list mailed on one Tuesday against 60 open tune-up slots produces a week of apologies and a month of customers who were told to call back later. Divide it into five waves of 600, one a week, each wave sized to what the trucks can absorb.
Start with the customers you installed for, because they book fastest. Move the remaining wave dates whenever the calendar moves.
What to count
Booked tune-ups per wave. Memberships sold on those visits. Then, in August, how many of the past-12-years segment replaced with you.
That segment is also the audience you upload for the summer replacement ads. Hash it the way Meta asks, and refresh it after each wave so the people who just booked a tune-up drop out.
The list does not grow on its own. Every ticket written this year either adds an email address and a consent line or it does not, and next February's list is the sum of those tickets.