7 Ways to Leverage Your Roofing Company’s Customer Database

Are you looking for more work? You can get new business from past customers. In fact, it can be significantly easier to connect with and covert old customers who had a positive experience with your company than to find new ones. If you’ve kept a record of past customers, which you should, you have a customer database that you can use. Here are seven ways to leverage your roofing company’s customer database to get more work, or otherwise benefit your business.

1. Direct Mail Advertising

Direct mail campaigns are useful for plenty of kinds of marketing campaigns, but they work better when you can fine-tune them. If you want to work from a specific neighborhood or from your past clients, you can limit the size of your campaign, and therefore how much you spend and still get great results.

Maximize the power of your campaign by crafting a personalized message to former customers. Remind them that they’ve chosen you before and list the services that you offer that they could most use. For example, customers who recently got a brand-new roof may need gutter cleanings to keep the new roof in good condition. Those who got repairs from you years ago may now need a whole new roof.

2. Email Marketing

When you work with a customer, be sure to pick up their email address at some point. You can confirm their replacement date over email or send them important updates. But the address will be most useful when you’ve done the work. Through email marketing, you can keep in touch with customers so that they think of you when they next need roof work.

For many roofers, it may be years before old customers are ready to get more work done. Although, if you offer seasonal services like gutter cleaning, you can get more regular business. Still, the nature of your email marketing should not be promotional, or short-term, as you might expect from a retail store. People can drop back in all the time to get new socks, but constant emails from a roofing company may be more annoying than useful.

Aim for monthly or quarterly emails that provide real value to your past customers. That’s the best way to make sure that the emails are welcome so that they will stay subscribed to your list for the long-term.

3. Ask for Reviews

If you only recently started your business, very few of your old customers will need you anytime soon. They can, however, help you connect easier with new customers through reviews. Having solid, five-star reviews will help new customers choose you and trust you faster.

How do you reach out for reviews? Calling or emailing past customers to gauge for comfortable they would be with leaving a review is best. You don’t want to encourage someone to leave a review if it will be less than five-stars, so be sure to ask how they feel about your service before you ask. If they’re less than satisfied, be sure to follow-up and ask why. Constructive criticism is valuable.

Make the most of positive reviews by showcasing them on your website or promoting them through Google My Business. It may also be wise to include a clip of a review on the bottom of quotes to help motivate customers to choose you.

4. Get Updates for Case Studies

Do you have any before and after photos of roofs you’ve replaced on your website? It can be beneficial to show how roofs you’ve installed have stood the test of time too. New customers will find it compelling to see roofs five or even ten years after you’ve installed them.

You can also use these images as case studies published on your website. Include information about the specific challenges of the job, the kinds of materials used, and how you and your team went above and beyond for the customer. New customers can then read through this case study and get an idea of how the roof repair or replacement process works, while also learning about your company and what a good job you do. All you need to start is pictures of a former customer’s roof.

5. Ask for Referrals

Older customers can also help you pave the way to new customers by referring you to their family members, friends, and neighbors. In the roofing world, it is particularly beneficial if customers refer you to their neighbors, as roofs will all tend to give out at about the same time in a neighbourhood. Therefore, you should be asking even your most recent customers to refer you to their neighbors.

You can make it easier for your customers to refer you by giving them a business card or holding a raffle for referrals. It’s often easier to arrange for referrals through social media, where all people have to do is click to share your business.

6. Stop by In-Person

Stopping by in person is a great way to reconnect with your former customer and see how their roof is doing. Offer a free roof inspection right there, and you’ll find that many customers will agree to it. Even if you don’t find a problem with the roof right there, the customers will appreciate your effort and remember you the next time that they have a roof problem.

7. Call Them for a Check-Up

It may be too time-consuming to head over to every customer’s home, especially if many of them won’t be home or will have moved. Instead, it may be a better use of your time to have your receptionist call each of them up and ask if they’d like a quick check-up inspection of their roof.

If you offer more than repairs and replacements, it is wise to keep some seasonal timing in mind when you make these calls. For example, if you offer snow removal, call at the beginning of winter, so customers will remember you if their roof gets covered in too much snow.

Need help leveraging your roofing company’s customer database? A virtual receptionist can help you get in touch with old customers and our custom roofer answering services connect you with new ones, all without taking too much time out of your normal schedule.