Service reminders by e-mail and text: what you may send

Whether a reminder works is not decided by the text. It is decided by where the address came from, whether the customer ever objected, and whether the route to that objection is in the message. Those are three fields on a customer record, not a matter of instinct.

This article goes through the four occasions that genuinely have a rhythm in a workshop, then the ground rules for e-mail, text, post and phone, then how the message is built, and finally the fields without which no reminder is possible. It is not legal advice: what applies in your case comes from your trade association or a lawyer.

The advantage of your trade over almost any other: the repeat purchase is in the diary, not in the customer's mood. A vehicle is tested to a deadline, serviced to a schedule, and for some of your customers changed over twice a year. Keep those dates and you need to invent no incentive to buy — you only need to say something in good time.

The test is the strongest occasion, because it has a date

On every other point the customer can sit it out. On the roadworthiness test they cannot: driving on an expired certificate is an offence, and once the date has passed it is no longer your diary that decides but theirs. That is not a sales argument but information. Which is precisely why the customer reads it.

You do not have to read the expiry off a windscreen: it is held against the registration and can be looked up with the registration authority. Note it at every intake and after two years you have a file that fills itself. Bear in mind that the keeper may be reminded by other means as well — your message has to sit before that, not after, or you are only confirming something they already know.

For electronic advertising — e-mail, text, messenger — the starting point is strict everywhere: without prior consent it is unwanted. And the definition of advertising is broad. So do not count on a service message falling outside those rules because it sells nothing; nobody has ever built successfully on that reading.

Four conditions you usually have to meet with an existing customer

The exemption that exists in most countries for your own customers is built from the same blocks each time. Assume they all have to be true at once:

• You obtained the address in connection with a job for this customer — so from the job sheet, not from a bought list and not from a business card at a trade fair.
• You are using it for your own, similar services.
• The customer has not objected.
• The customer is clearly told both when the address is taken and in every single message that they can opt out, at no cost to them beyond the sending itself.

The fourth point is where it goes wrong in practice. The opt-out has to be in every message, not only the first. And it has to happen at the counter, at the moment you take the address. One sentence on the job sheet above the signature box handles that.

What "similar" means

Read it narrowly. A service reminder to someone who had a service with you is unproblematic. A tyre offer to the same customer is still within what they bought from you. A used-car offer, an insurance introduction or the newsletter about the anniversary barbecue are not — for those you need consent. Load a reminder with offers and you step out of the exemption you are sending under.

Consent, where there is no job of your own behind it

For every contact that does not come from a job of your own you need consent: in advance, express, for the specific channel and for a named purpose. On top of that you have to be able to demonstrate it. A tick box nobody recorded is not evidence in an argument. For e-mail addresses the confirmation mail is the usual route, because it produces the evidence along the way.

Text and phone are not the same as e-mail

A text counts as an electronic message and falls under the same thinking. Whether the existing-customer exemption extends to a mobile number as well is judged very differently from place to place. If you want no argument, simply ask for consent for texts and tick it off on the customer record.

Calling is stricter again: approaching private individuals by phone for commercial purposes is almost everywhere subject to heavier requirements than mailing, and the penalties are of an order no business budgets for. A call back about a job in progress is not covered by that — it is performing the agreement, not advertising. Which rules apply to you exactly is a question for your trade association, not for a blog article.

The privacy side

Alongside the advertising rules sit the privacy rules, and they are a story of their own. Regardless of everything else, the customer has the right to object to direct marketing without giving a reason, and you have to tell them so. An objection has to take effect immediately and be recorded permanently — otherwise the same reminder lands with them again two years later. Then it is a repeat, and a repeat weighs more heavily than the first time.

Most shops choose the channel by convenience. Two other questions are more useful: which channel can you serve properly for this customer at all? And what does it cost when the message lands nowhere?

Two details that cost money when sending

With texts, almost every provider charges per segment, not per message. Up to 160 characters a message is one segment. Ordinary letters and most accented characters fit that standard encoding; an emoji does not — one single symbol switches the encoding and cuts the segment length back to 70 characters. A text costed at 155 characters then costs three times as much.

With letters, address quality is the cost. Every return is postage paid plus the working time to correct it. Clean up the addresses of customers who have not been in for two years once a year and you save more than any price negotiation with the printer.

A service reminder has one job: the customer has to be able to make an appointment within two minutes, or know when they will. Anything that lengthens that route has to go.

• Subject line: vehicle and occasion, not the name of your business. A registration in the subject line gets read.
• First sentence: what is due and by when. For the test, the actual expiry date.
• The route to the appointment: one concrete proposal with two alternatives beats a phone number. The customer replies to the mail, calls back or books online — three routes are two too many; pick one and name it first.
• The price, if you can name one seriously: a test at a fixed price yes, a service with open findings no. Where the scope is only settled at the vehicle, a sentence about how you handle extra work belongs there instead of a figure that becomes a complaint later.
• The opt-out: clear, and in every message. A link that genuinely works, or a sentence inviting a reply.
• The sender: name, address, contact. Anyone hiding their sender has a problem quite apart from any question of consent.

Lead time and frequency

For the test, six to four weeks works: early enough for a preferred date the workshop's capacity planning can still absorb, late enough that the customer does not forget the message. For the appointment reminder itself, the day before is the right moment. Two messages about the same occasion are, from the recipient's side, the boundary between service and pursuit — the third costs you the address.

What does not belong in it

No offer underneath the test reminder, because that carries the message out of the exemption you are sending under. No request for a review in the same text, because it dilutes the occasion and follows rules of its own. And no threats about consequences you cannot substantiate: an expired test is an offence with the consequences that go with it, not the end of the world. Overstate it and you lose the occasion that otherwise works by itself.

Every reminder hangs on fields somebody filled in. If one is missing, the customer drops out of the list unnoticed, because a message that does not get sent produces no error. This is the list it cannot do without:

• registration, chassis number, date of first registration
• expiry date of the roadworthiness test
• last service with mileage and date
• stored tyre set with its storage location
• contact channel: e-mail, mobile number, postal address
• consent status per channel, with date and origin, plus a field for the objection

That last field is the one that counts in an argument. You have to be able to show that consent existed; a folder of paper forms does that in theory too, but nobody finds it within the time a complaint gives you. The status belongs where the customer is.

Who maintains it, and when

Customer and vehicle data rots the moment maintaining it becomes a separate task. It stays current when it hangs off something that happens anyway: at intake the registration and the test expiry, at invoicing the mileage and the scope of the service. If your workshop software and your invoicing program use the same customer record, the basis for reminders arises as a by-product of billing.

Keeping is not the same as approaching

That you have to keep invoices and receipts for years gives you no right to use the same addresses for advertising indefinitely. Those are two different purposes with two different periods. Which retention duties apply to the books is something your accountant knows; for approaching people, a customer who has not been in for years and never objected stops being an existing customer at some point regardless.

Measuring what arrives

Three numbers are enough: reminders sent, appointments arising from them, opt-outs. The opt-out rate is the most honest signal in the whole of a workshop's marketing. If it climbs, something is wrong with the occasion, the frequency or the tone — and you know that long before the first complaint.