An MOT is the most predictable job in the motor trade. You know the vehicle, you know the date and you know roughly what it is worth in follow on work. The only question is whether the customer hears from you or from the garage down the road three weeks before it expires.
How a reminder system actually works
It starts with the vehicle rather than the customer. The registration is looked up once, the MOT expiry is stored against the vehicle record and it updates when you test the car yourself.
A sequence then fires off that date. A typical one is a first message about a month out, a second about a week out and a final one when it has expired, each stopping automatically the moment a booking is made.
The message needs to be bookable. A text saying your MOT is due in three weeks asks the customer to remember to call you. A text with a link to your booking page asks them to tap it while they are holding the phone, and the difference in conversion is not small.
What separates a working system from a list
- Due dates held on the vehicle, not typed into a spreadsheet
- A sequence rather than a single message
- Reminders that stop the moment the customer books
- A booking link in the message itself
- Text as well as email, because a text gets read
- A record of what was sent when, for the customer who says nobody told them
- Service and cambelt intervals on the same mechanism
Texting people legally
A reminder that a vehicle you have worked on is due its MOT is generally a service message to an existing customer rather than marketing, but the line moves the moment you attach an offer to it.
Keep the consent record, keep the opt out working in every message and keep the marketing separate from the reminder. The ICO's guidance on the soft opt in is the thing to read, and it is written in plain English.
Do not buy a list of registrations and text the owners. It is the fastest route to a complaint and it is not what any of this is for.
What it is worth
Work the number out on your own figures rather than anyone's case study. Take your MOT volume, the share that currently rebooks with you and the average value of an MOT plus the work it finds.
A garage doing forty MOTs a month that lifts retention by even a few points is recovering several jobs a month for the cost of the texts, and the follow on work is where the margin is.
Youzse holds MOT expiry on the vehicle record, runs reminder sequences by email or text and links them to your booking page. Text messaging is charged separately from the subscription, which starts at £59 a month on the garage plans.
Where to go next
Youzse for garages
Vehicle records, MOT dates, job sheets and payment in one place.
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