The Highest ROI Marketing Channel Most Contractors Get Wrong
Episode 327 · 58 min · June 23, 2026

The Highest ROI Marketing Channel Most Contractors Get Wrong

Most contractors spend thousands of dollars every month generating leads, but what happens after those leads become customers?This week in the VIP Room, Chris Yano, Chad Peterman, and Aaron Gaynor sit down with Zac...

Guest Zac Garside
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About this episode

Zac Garside, founder and president of Send It Email Marketing, joins Chris Yano, Chad Peterman, and Aaron Gaynor to talk about why email marketing remains one of the highest return channels available to home service contractors and why most of them are not using it well. The core argument is simple: contractors spend heavily to acquire new customers and then largely ignore those customers once the job is done, leaving a valuable database untapped.

The group covers the mechanics of effective email marketing for trades businesses, including how to create offers that generate real demand, how to structure automation, and how to use email to drive service calls, maintenance appointments, and upsell opportunities without increasing paid advertising spend. They also discuss the difference between Google leads and email leads, why branding and consistent customer communication matter, and what separates contractors who retain customers from those who are constantly chasing new ones.

Garside draws on examples from some of the largest home services companies in the country to illustrate how retention-focused marketing can reduce dependence on paid lead sources over time. The conversation also touches on how AI is beginning to change content creation and customer communication workflows, and what smaller operators can learn from the fastest-growing companies in the industry.

Key takeaways

  • Your existing customer database is likely your highest ROI lead source and most contractors are not marketing to it consistently.
  • Email marketing can generate service calls, maintenance appointments, and upsell revenue without adding to your paid advertising budget.
  • Automating customer follow-up after a job is done reduces the manual effort required to stay top of mind with past customers.
  • Creating offers with genuine demand in mind, rather than sending generic newsletters, is what drives email opens and response.
  • Reducing dependence on paid leads takes time, but a consistent email strategy builds a compounding retention advantage over competitors who do not do it.
  • AI tools are making it faster and cheaper for smaller operators to produce the volume of content needed to run effective ongoing email campaigns.

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