Reactivating Old Leads and Past Customers, Respectfully

Every service business that has been around for a few years is sitting on a list it rarely uses: estimates that never closed, customers who booked once and never came back, maintenance clients whose last visit was two seasons ago. That list represents people who already know your name. Reconnecting with them can be one of the most efficient ways to fill a schedule.

It can also go badly. A sudden blast of texts to everyone who ever called you can annoy people, trigger complaints and run into federal rules on email and texting. Done respectfully, reactivation feels like good service. Done carelessly, it feels like spam.

This guide walks through how to segment and clean your list, what the FTC and FCC rules and CTIA guidelines say, and how to write reactivation messages people are glad to receive. It is general information, not legal advice.

Know who is on your list

Start by sorting contacts into groups, because each group warrants a different message:

• Unconverted leads: people who asked for a quote but didn't book.
• One-time customers: people who hired you once for a project.
• Lapsed recurring customers: people who used to get regular service, such as seasonal tune-ups, and stopped.
• Active customers: people who are current and don't need reactivation at all.

For each contact, note when you last had a two-way interaction, what it was about, and what permission you have to contact them by email, text and phone. If you can't tell what permission someone gave, treat that as a gap to fix, not a green light.

Clean before you send

Old data is a common source of reactivation problems. Before any campaign:

• Remove everyone who has opted out of any channel, and keep those suppressions permanently.
• Merge duplicates so no one gets the same message twice.
• Don't add purchased or borrowed contacts. CTIA's Messaging Principles and Best Practices say message senders "should not use opt-in lists that have been rented, sold, or shared to send messages" and "should create and vet their own opt-in lists."
• Account for changed phone numbers. Numbers get reassigned, and the person who gave you consent years ago may no longer own that number. CTIA recommends that senders "process telephone deactivation files regularly (e.g., daily)." The FCC rule at 47 CFR 64.1200(m) also provides a limited safe harbor for calls to reassigned numbers when the caller first checked the FCC-designated database of permanently disconnected numbers.

Email: the CAN-SPAM basics

The FTC's CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business covers commercial email, meaning messages whose primary purpose is "the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service." Reactivation emails are usually promotional, so they generally fall into that group. Key requirements from the guide include:

• No false or misleading header information and no deceptive subject lines.
• Identify the message as an ad.
• "Your message must include your valid physical postal address."
• Include "a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting marketing email from you in the future."
• Any opt-out mechanism "must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message," and you "must honor a recipient's opt-out request within 10 business days."
• Monitor what others are doing on your behalf, such as an agency sending email for you.

The guide also notes that "The law makes no exception for business-to-business email," and that each separate violating email can bring penalties of up to $53,088. Penalty amounts are adjusted over time, so check the current guide.

Texts and calls: consent comes first

Texting old contacts is where the most caution is needed. Under 47 CFR 64.1200(a)(2), calls that include advertising or constitute telemarketing using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice generally require the "prior express written consent" of the called party. The regulation defines that as "an agreement, in writing, bearing the signature of the person called" that clearly authorizes such messages to a specific number.

CTIA's guidelines point the same way for promotional texts: "Before a Non-Consumer sends promotional messages, the Consumer should agree in writing to receive promotional texts." CTIA also says an opt-in "should apply only to the campaign(s) and specific Message Sender for which it was intended or obtained." In practice, a customer who agreed to appointment reminders hasn't necessarily agreed to marketing offers.

Two more FCC provisions matter for reactivation:

• The national Do Not Call registry. Paragraph (c)(2) restricts telephone solicitations to residential subscribers on the registry. The rule's definition of telephone solicitation excludes calls to people with whom you have an "established business relationship," defined around a purchase or transaction within the prior 18 months or an inquiry within the prior three months. Older contacts may fall outside that window.
• Revocation. People may revoke consent to "calls or text messages" by any reasonable method, including replying "stop," "quit," "end," "revoke," "opt out," "cancel," or "unsubscribe." Requests must be honored within ten business days at most.

If your consent records for a group are thin, email (with CAN-SPAM compliance) or a personal, manually placed call may be a better starting point than automated texting. Ask counsel about your specific situation.

Write messages that respect the relationship

Reactivation works best when the message is relevant to what the person actually bought or asked about. Some approaches that respect the relationship:

• The seasonal reminder: "It's been about a year since we serviced your furnace. Want to get on the fall schedule?"
• The project check-in: "We replaced your water heater two years ago. Is everything still running well?"
• The honest reopen for unconverted quotes: "You asked us about a fence last spring. If it's still on your list, we have openings in May."
• A useful update: a new service, longer hours or a newly covered neighborhood that matters to that segment.

Keep messages short, identify your business in the first line, make opting out easy, and send one message per campaign rather than a rapid series. If someone replies, a person should answer quickly.

For example, imagine a lawn care company emailing past customers in late winter. One short email to customers from the last two seasons, mentioning their previous service and offering early spring scheduling, with a working unsubscribe link and the company's address, is likely to be welcome. Five texts in a week to everyone who ever requested a quote is not.

Pace it and measure it

Send to small batches first so you can fix problems before they reach your whole list. Track replies, bookings, unsubscribes and complaints by segment. A rising opt-out or complaint rate is a signal to change the message, the audience or the frequency.

Finally, feed what you learn back into your everyday process. If reactivated customers say they forgot you existed, the problem may be the lack of regular, permission-based contact after each job. The guide "The Customer Lifecycle for Local Service Businesses" shows where that ongoing contact fits.

Key takeaways

• Segment old contacts by relationship and recency, and record what permission you have for each channel.
• Clean your list first: honor past opt-outs, remove duplicates, skip purchased lists and account for reassigned numbers.
• Reactivation emails are typically commercial under CAN-SPAM: include your postal address and a working opt-out, and honor opt-outs within 10 business days.
• Promotional texts call for prior express written consent; consent for reminders doesn't automatically cover marketing.
• Write relevant, single messages tied to the customer's history, and monitor opt-outs and complaints by batch.

Sources

• Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business
• Federal Communications Commission (eCFR), 47 CFR 64.1200 Delivery restrictions
• CTIA, Messaging Principles and Best Practices (May 2023)