Most exterior contractors have more potential revenue sitting in their past customer list than in any new lead source they could add.
Homeowners who’ve hired you once know your work. They’ve already trusted you. If they need a follow-up service, know someone in the neighborhood looking for a roofer, or are planning their next project, you’re the most obvious choice — but only if they remember you.
Email and SMS marketing for contractors is how you stay in front of past customers, unconverted leads, and your full contact database between jobs — systematically, affordably, and without taking up hours of your team’s time each month.
Email vs. SMS: What Each Does Well
Email and SMS serve different purposes in a contractor’s marketing stack. Using them well means understanding what each channel is suited for.
Email Marketing
Email is best for longer-form content: seasonal service reminders, project spotlights, educational articles about home maintenance, and campaign announcements. It’s lower urgency than SMS and works well for homeowners who want to engage with your brand over time rather than receiving frequent messages.
Email also performs well for nurturing unconverted leads — homeowners who requested a quote but didn’t book — by keeping your business visible through helpful, non-pushy content until they’re ready to move forward.
SMS Marketing
SMS is higher urgency and higher engagement. Open rates for text messages are consistently in the 90–98% range, compared to 20–30% for email. SMS is best for time-sensitive messages: appointment reminders, post-job review requests, seasonal promotions with deadlines, and urgent outreach after major weather events.
The higher engagement rate also comes with higher expectations for relevance. Homeowners will tolerate occasional SMS from a business they’ve used, but irrelevant or too-frequent messages result in opt-outs. SMS should be used judiciously and always with a clear purpose.
Building Your Contact List the Right Way
The quality of your email and SMS marketing is determined by the quality of your list. A list built with permission, kept current, and organized by customer type will dramatically outperform a large list of cold or stale contacts.
Sources for a Contractor’s Contact List
Past customers: Every homeowner you’ve completed a job for is a candidate for your list, provided they’ve given permission. Import past customer data from your job management software and segment by job type and date of service.
Unconverted leads: Homeowners who requested quotes but didn’t book are worth staying in front of. A light-touch email sequence that delivers value — seasonal tips, project examples, or a relevant article — keeps your name attached to their project need until they’re ready to commit.
Website opt-ins: A simple email capture on your website — “Get seasonal maintenance tips for homeowners in [city]” — builds a warm audience of locally-interested homeowners who are at least curious about the services you offer.
Segmentation
A segmented list is significantly more valuable than a single undivided list. At minimum, segment by: service type (roofing vs. gutter vs. siding vs. pressure washing), customer status (past customer vs. unconverted lead), and geography (if you serve multiple markets).
Segmentation lets you send a storm damage inspection offer to past roofing customers without also sending it to past pressure washing customers — keeping every message relevant to the recipient.
What to Send: Content That Performs for Contractors
Contractors often struggle with “what do I even send?” once the marketing infrastructure is set up. The answer depends on the audience and the season, but there are several content types that reliably perform well.
Seasonal Service Reminders
Exterior contracting work is heavily seasonal. Tying outreach to the season and service — gutter cleaning before fall, roof inspection after winter, pressure washing in spring — gives your messages immediate relevance and a clear call to action.
Project Spotlights
A short email or photo-driven SMS showcasing a recent project — a before-and-after, the scope of the work, the neighborhood — generates engagement and reminds past customers what you do. It’s a non-pushy way to stay visible and trigger referral conversations.
Post-Storm Outreach
For roofing and siding contractors, a well-timed outreach after a major hailstorm or wind event is one of the highest-converting messages you can send. Homeowners are already thinking about their roofs; a message from a contractor they’ve worked with before is exactly what they need at that moment.
Referral Incentives
Past customers who were happy with your work are your most credible source of new leads. An occasional referral offer — a modest incentive for anyone who refers a job — sent to your past customer list produces consistent, low-cost lead volume for contracting businesses with a strong customer base.
Annual Maintenance Reminders
For services with natural annual cycles — roof inspections, gutter cleanings, pressure washing — setting up automated annual reminders on the anniversary of a past job keeps your business in front of customers at exactly the right moment, with no ongoing effort from your team.
Frequency and Timing
For most exterior contractors, the right cadence is: one or two emails per month to past customers, SMS reserved for high-relevance, time-sensitive messages (3–4 per year at most), and automated sequences for specific triggers (post-job, seasonal, annual anniversary).
More frequent communication is appropriate when there’s a clear reason: an active storm season, a limited-time offer, a new service launch. Less is more when there’s nothing meaningful to say — sending a generic “just checking in” message trains your list to ignore you.
Measuring What’s Working
The metrics that matter for contractor email and SMS marketing are: open rate, click rate, and most importantly, jobs booked from the campaign. Open rates tell you whether the subject line and sender name are working. Click rates tell you whether the message and offer are compelling. Jobs booked is the only number that ultimately matters.
Get Email and SMS Marketing Running for Your Business
Apex Exterior Marketing builds and manages email and SMS marketing programs for exterior contractors — from list setup and segmentation to campaign writing, automation, and monthly reporting.
If your past customers haven’t heard from you in the last 90 days, you’re leaving jobs on the table. Reach out to see how a structured outreach program would work for your business.