Marketing Support
Email Marketing for roofing contractors
A list is the one marketing asset you actually own, and it is quietly losing value in both directions — whether you send or whether you do not.
A list you could explain to somebody
Every address traceable to how it was obtained — the job it came from, the form it was typed into, the event where it was handed over. Not for tidiness: because that record is what turns a pile of addresses into something you can account for.
Sends that describe themselves honestly, starting with the subject line. What is inside is what the line said, which is both a rule and the reason anybody opens the next one.
And a way out that costs one click. Not a preference centre, not a password, not a survey — the shortest path to leaving that the rule contemplates, because the alternative damages far more than one address.
Spending an asset in whichever direction you move
A customer list behaves unlike the rest of a marketing budget. It is not rented, it does not reset each month, and nobody can take it away. What it does do is decay: addresses lapse, people move house, and the memory of who you are fades in exactly the households you most want to remember you.
The awkward part is that both available responses cost something. Send more often and you spend permission — each message is a small withdrawal from a customer’s willingness to keep hearing from you, and the withdrawal is permanent when they leave. Send rarely and the decay simply runs unopposed, until an eventual message arrives at people who no longer recognise the sender and treat it accordingly.
Roofing sharpens this because the purchase cycle is measured in decades. A homeowner who bought a roof from you will not buy another for a very long time, so the list is not really a sales channel at all — it is a recognition instrument, kept warm for referrals, for storm seasons, and for the repair and maintenance work that happens between replacements. Sending it a monthly offer misreads what it is for and empties it faster.
Which is why the discipline is about stewardship rather than frequency, and why we do not quote you a cadence. The figures attached to this subject — how many people open, how fast a list degrades, what a dollar spent returns — are vendor benchmarks that we could not trace to anything we would put in front of you, so they are not on this page.
Leaving is capped, and the subject line is not free text
Two mechanics of permission carry actual rules, and both are narrow enough to state exactly. On the way out, the Federal Trade Commission’s rule at 16 CFR 316.5 provides that “Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient’s electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page” in order to unsubscribe. A single page is the ceiling, not a target.
On the way in, states add their own conditions. One worked example is California Business and Professions Code section 17529.5, under which “It is unlawful for any person or entity to advertise in a commercial e-mail advertisement either sent from California or sent to a California electronic mail address under any of the following circumstances” — a list that includes a “subject line that a person knows would be likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message.”
Note the phrase “any person acting on behalf of a sender” in the first: it reaches a desk sending for you as squarely as it reaches you. That is why the unsubscribe is built as one click here rather than treated as a setting. The state provision is one drafting of many, quoted as a worked example of a class; other states differ, and which reach your sends depends on where your recipients are. That determination belongs with you and your counsel, and this desk makes none of it.
This describes a federal rule and one state’s statute in general terms. It is not legal advice, it makes no determination about your list, your consent basis or any message you send, it characterises no practice as compliant, and other federal and state rules may reach the same send. Those questions belong with your own counsel; the department page below sets out where this work stops.
The channel you keep rather than rent
This desk sits inside Marketing Support, and is the only function in it whose asset belongs to you outright. The department boundary, including the rule on reviews and endorsements, is set out on that page.
What owners ask before the first send
How often should we send?
Less than you fear and more than you currently do, and we will not attach a number to that because the figures circulating on this subject are vendor benchmarks repeated as findings. The honest framing is a trade: each send spends a little of the permission you hold, and each long silence costs you a little of the recognition. Where you sit between those depends on what you have to say.
We have a list from years of jobs. Can we just email it?
That is exactly the question to slow down on. What matters is how each address was obtained and what the person understood at the time, and a list assembled over years usually has several different answers mixed together. We will help you sort it into what you can account for — and whether a given group may be contacted is a determination for you and your adviser, not for us.
Is a past customer the same as a subscriber?
Not necessarily, and treating them as identical is the most common way a good list gets damaged. Somebody who had a roof replaced has a relationship with you; whether that relationship carries an expectation of marketing email is a different question, and the answer affects both what you send and how you word it.
What actually goes in these?
For a roofing company, less selling than owners expect. Seasonal maintenance reminders, what a storm means for a roof of a certain age, notice that you are booking for autumn. The purpose is being the name that comes to mind, and content that only ever asks for work is content people leave.
Why does the unsubscribe get so much attention?
Because it is the one part with a rule attached, quoted below, and because making it difficult is self-defeating anyway. Somebody determined to stop hearing from you will succeed one way or another — the only question is whether they do it by clicking a link or by marking you as spam, and the second one damages every future send.
Do you send as you or as us?
As you, from your domain, from your platform account. That is partly a deliverability matter and mostly an honesty one — the person receiving it agreed to hear from your company. Nothing about the message is framed as coming from a third party.
The permission rules quoted above
- 16 CFR 316.5 — Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
- California Business and Professions Code section 17529.5 — Unlawful commercial e-mail advertisements — California Legislative Counsel
Ask where your customer addresses came from
If the answer is that they accumulated, the list needs sorting before it needs sending — and that is a good week’s work, once.