Somewhere in your records is a list of people who already chose you, already paid you, and would plausibly buy again — and nobody has spoken to them since their last invoice cleared. Reaching back out to that list is some of the highest-yield work available to a service business. It is also the place where texting law draws its sharpest line, so this page starts with the line.
The consent gate comes before the list
A text replying to someone who just called your business is transactional: they initiated, the message is responsive, and the law treats it accordingly. A text to someone who bought a water heater from you in 2023, offering a maintenance special, is marketing — and marketing texts require prior express written consent under the TCPA. Not implied consent, not "they're a past customer," not a checkbox someone might have clicked. Written consent, collected and kept.
Most of the FCC's revised consent-revocation rules took effect in April 2025; one remaining piece — a single STOP revoking consent for everything the business sends — has been delayed, currently to January 2027. The posture does not wait on that deadline: STOP works instantly and permanently across everything you send, with no exceptions and no "one last message confirming your opt-out" games; nothing sends outside 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the recipient's time zone; and every message names the business. If your past customers never gave written consent to marketing texts, the reactivation campaign does not begin with a blast. It begins with collecting consent — at invoice, at booking, on the service ticket — or it runs by email and mail instead. There is no workaround here, and a vendor who suggests one is volunteering you for the lawsuit. None of this is legal advice — confirm the rules with your own counsel.
What "lapsed" means depends on the trade
The interesting design work is defining the interval, and it belongs to the trade, not the software. For an HVAC shop, lapsed means a system serviced last April with nothing on the record since — an annual tune-up now overdue, on equipment whose install date and tonnage you already have on file. For a dental practice, it is the six-month recall patient last seen fourteen months ago. Pest control runs quarterly, so lapsed shows up fast. A plumbing shop can go longer-range: the customer whose water heater you installed nine years ago is approaching the end of the tank's typical life, and a heads-up now beats a burst tank on a Sunday.
Each of those is a different clock, but the query underneath is the same sentence: customers whose last service date is older than the interval this trade considers normal.
The query is boring, and that is the point
No new technology is required to build the list. Your CRM or point-of-sale already holds the last invoice date, what was done, and what equipment sits in the house. The real work is judgment and hygiene: deciding the interval, excluding customers whose last job ended badly, and cleaning the phone numbers — which decay faster than owners expect. Numbers get reassigned, and a marketing text to a stranger who inherited your customer's old number is both useless and a compliance problem. A lookup pass that drops landlines and flags reassigned numbers is cheap insurance before anything sends.
The message that works reads like a record, not an ad
"Our records show your system was last serviced in April 2025 — most manufacturers recommend annual service, and we're scheduling pre-summer tune-ups now." That message works because every clause is specific and true, and because it is genuinely useful: the customer probably did not know it had been that long. Compare it to "We miss you! 10% off this month," which reads like every other text they delete. You earned the right to know their service history by doing the work. The message should sound like it comes from someone who keeps records, because it does.
Seasonality belongs in the timing. In Lubbock, the AC message lands in April and May, before the first hundred-degree week fills your board with emergencies; the heating message lands in October. A tune-up offer in the middle of July is not wrong, it is just wasted — you are already busy, and so is the customer's air conditioner.
Measuring it without kidding yourself
No ROI promises here; the arithmetic is yours to run, and it is short. Count messages sent, replies, booked jobs from those replies, and revenue on those jobs, against the cost of sending — which is small. Track opt-outs with equal honesty: a high STOP rate is the list telling you the message, the timing, or the consent posture is wrong, and it damages your deliverability with the carriers besides. One campaign's numbers will tell you more about your list than any industry benchmark.
What this will not do
It will not recover customers you disappointed — the record shows how the last job ended, and reaching out past a dispute reopens it on their terms. It cannot create demand that is not there; it surfaces demand that already exists and has merely gone unprompted. It is not a substitute for new-customer acquisition, because every list shrinks as people move and equipment changes hands. And it does not relax the consent requirement, ever. The list being "your customers" makes the message more welcome. It does not make it legal.
Where to start
Before any message is written, run two counts: how many customers have a last-service date older than your trade's interval, and how many of those gave written consent to be texted. The first number is the size of the opportunity. The second decides how you are allowed to pursue it — and if it is near zero, step one is a consent line on every new invoice, which costs nothing and starts compounding immediately.