I was thinking of calling the past customers, as well as a mailer. Maybe just a mailer. Anyone have any suggestions on contacting past customers???

When I was actively cleaning (retired now) I sent a reminder card at 6 months and 1 year post cleaning for residential. If we had commercial customers set up on a maintenance program we would mail them a reminder a week before our scheduled cleaning.

Staying in touch is critical because customers can forget who they used last. You can also leave something like a spotter with your contact info on it. Its a "business card" that they can really use.

Vacaway can private label bottles of its Encap-Green product as a spotter at a pretty reasonable price - around .80 each.

If you manage to obtain each new customer's e-mail address, you can stay in touch with them this way at zero cost. Or you could pay a company like Constant Contact to do the e-mail work for you.

I don't call them.

I send a quarterly email newsletter. It's involves less pressure than a phone call, but you have to pay for the newsletter service and write the letter. Sometimes it can be pretty tough to think of things to say in the letter. I try to provide useful information rather than sales messages. Its already implied that they call you for service.

In addition to the newsletter I always leave something at the customer's house: sticky pads with my logo, fridge magnets with logo, free spotter, etc.

These things work. Many customers tell me they remembered how to contact me again because of something I left at the house. Other customers have contacted me through a link in the newsletter to schedule additional cleaning. You won't see results the next day, however. You will notice instead that eight to twelve months later, your repeat business and referrals have gone way up.