Why reminders beat advertising
A customer who has already paid you once is the cheapest customer you will ever win again. They know where you are, they trust you with their car, and they have a service due at a predictable time. The only thing standing between you and their next booking is that they forgot — and the dealer did not.
Dealers send letters because they work. An independent workshop can do better: a text with the car's rego in it, sent a week before the service is due, from a number the customer can reply to.
Pick an interval you can defend
Six months or 10,000 km is the default for most modern cars and the one manufacturers print in the log book. Tyre rotations run shorter; some fleet and diesel intervals run longer. Set the interval per service on your menu, not one number for the whole shop, so each car is reminded for the right reason.
Lead time matters. Seven days ahead gives a customer time to book without feeling nagged. Thirty days ahead gets forgotten; the day before is too late for a busy shop.
What to write
Keep it to one SMS segment where you can. The rego is the most important word in the message — it tells the customer which car you mean and proves the text is really from their mechanic.
- Name the car by rego: 'Hi Sam, ABC123 is due for its 20,000 km service.'
- Say what to do: 'Reply BOOK or call 03 9748 0000.'
- Say who you are: your workshop name, in the sender name or the message.
- Always: 'Reply STOP to opt out.'
SMS or email?
Both. Texts get read within minutes; emails carry your logo and a link. Send SMS to customers with a valid Australian mobile who have not opted out, and email to everyone else. If you only have one, make it the text.
Stay on the right side of the rules
Australian spam law is not complicated for a workshop: only message people who have dealt with you, identify yourself, and give them a way to stop that works. A STOP reply must actually stop the messages — for that number, everywhere it appears in your records — and it must never be a text they have to pay to send.
Keep a cool-off. Nobody should be reminded twice in a month because two services fell due together.
Set it and check it once a month
Once reminders run nightly, your job is to glance at the Up Next list for cars with no contact number or an obviously wrong one, and to make sure every service you invoice comes from the menu so the next one gets scheduled. That is the whole maintenance.