The customers you already have
Everybody who has ever paid you is sitting in a spreadsheet, an inbox or a card index. It is the cheapest list you will ever own, and almost nobody uses it.
- A past customer already knows you, has paid you once, and needs no persuading that you exist. They are the cheapest revenue available.
- Most businesses have a usable list — invoices, an inbox, a diary — and have never contacted it.
- Existing customers are on the soft opt-in footing for email: you may market similar goods and services to people who bought from you, with an opt-out every time.
- The message that works is specific and useful, not a general newsletter. Reference the job, the year, and the thing that is now due.
- Expect this to outperform any cold campaign by a wide margin, at a fraction of the cost.
A heating engineer in Weybridge has been trading eleven years. He was worried about the winter, and wanted to talk about advertising.
We asked how many boilers he had installed. About four hundred, he thought. And how many of those customers had he contacted since?
None. Not one, in eleven years. Four hundred households in Surrey with a boiler he fitted, every one of them needing an annual service, and every one of them presumably being serviced by somebody else.
The cheapest customer you will ever get is one who has already paid you.
Why past customers are the best list you own
A cold prospect has to be found, made aware you exist, persuaded you are competent, and convinced to take a risk on you. Every one of those steps costs money and loses people.
A past customer has done all of it. They know your name. They have your work in their house. They have already handed you money once, which is the hardest thing anybody ever does.
And the reason nobody uses this list is not laziness. It is that repeat contact feels like pestering, in a way that advertising to strangers does not — even though the opposite is true. The stranger did not ask to hear from you. The customer bought from you and would probably be glad of the reminder.
Where the list is
You already have it, in a worse form than you would like:
- Your invoices. The best source, because it is a list of people who definitely paid. Three years of invoices is a campaign.
- Your email. Search for "quote" or "invoice" and work backwards.
- Your accounting software. Most will export a customer list in two clicks.
- Your diary or job book. Even a paper one. An afternoon of typing is cheap for what it produces.
You need four things per person: name, one contact detail, what you did, and roughly when. That is enough.
What to actually send
The failure mode is a newsletter. Nobody wants your company news. What works is a message so specific it could only have been sent to that person.
For the heating engineer: Mr Hallam — I fitted your Worcester boiler in March 2021. They want servicing annually to keep the guarantee valid, and I have not been back, which is my fault rather than yours. I am in Weybridge on the 14th and 15th if you would like me to look at it. £96, same as everyone else pays.
Sixty words. It names the job, the date, the reason, a real constraint, a specific opportunity and a price. It also does something unusual and disarming: it takes the blame for the gap.
Compare that with Winter is coming! Book your boiler service today! — which could have been sent by anybody, to anybody.
The reasons that work
- Something is due. A service, an inspection, a guarantee about to lapse. The strongest reason there is, because it is genuinely useful.
- You did one room. The bathroom in 2023. The kitchen is right there.
- Something has changed for the better. A new service, a shorter lead time, an area you now cover.
- Seasonal, but real. Gutters before autumn, boilers before October. Not "spring is here".
- A gap in your diary. Honest, specific and effective: two days free in March, so a better price for anyone who takes one.
What to expect
Reply rates from a warm list run far ahead of anything cold — the difference is not marginal, it is a different order of thing. And the people who reply arrive already trusting you, which shortens everything that follows.
Some will have moved. Some will have used someone else and will say so, which is useful information. A few will ask to be left alone, and that must be honoured immediately and permanently.
We run Database Reactivation at £495 plus 10% of recovered revenue, and the second part is deliberate: if it produces nothing, it costs you almost nothing. It is the only thing we sell priced that way, because it is the only thing where the list already exists and the outcome is genuinely predictable.
The heating engineer sent 380 letters. He is booked into February.
Questions we get asked
What is database reactivation?
Contacting people who have bought from you before, with a specific and relevant reason, to generate repeat work. It is the cheapest source of revenue most businesses have, because the list already exists and the relationship is already established.
Can I email past customers without consent?
In most cases yes, under what is commonly called the soft opt-in. Where you obtained the contact details in the course of a sale, you may market similar products and services, provided you gave them an opportunity to object at the time and give them a simple way to opt out in every message. It does not extend to people who merely enquired and never bought.
What should a reactivation message say?
Something specific enough that it could only have been sent to them. Reference what you did, roughly when, and what is now relevant — a service due, a guarantee expiring, a room you did not do. A general newsletter about company news performs far worse than a short, specific note.
How often should I contact past customers?
For most trade businesses, two to four times a year is plenty, tied to something real — a season, a service interval, a guarantee anniversary. Monthly contact with nothing to say trains people to ignore you and produces unsubscribes.
What if my customer list is a mess?
It usually is, and it is still worth doing. Start with your invoices from the last three years — that is a list of people who definitely paid you. An afternoon in a spreadsheet with a name, a contact detail, what you did and when is enough to run a first campaign.