THE SHORT ANSWER
Use an eight-touch sequence across fourteen days: call plus text on day one, call and email on day two, a text on day four, a call on day seven, an email on day ten and a closing message on day fourteen. Change channel at every step so no attempt looks like a repeat of the last one. Each touch carries something new, whether an appointment slot, a comparable job or a specific question. The sequence ends on a stated decision rather than fading out.
A sequence is not a script, it is a schedule with content attached. Its purpose is to remove the daily judgement call about whether to chase somebody, because that judgement is almost always resolved in favour of doing nothing. Once the schedule exists, the only decisions left are what each message says and when to stop.
What follows is a default shape for home-improvement enquiries in Western Europe, tuned for a homeowner who requested contact and then went quiet. It assumes exclusivity, so the sequence is written as a conversation rather than a race, and it assumes a signed job worth thousands rather than hundreds. Adjust the spacing to suit your trade, but keep the count and the channel rotation intact.
The numbers, at a glance
Total touches: eight, spread across fourteen calendar days
Channel rotation: no two consecutive touches use the same channel
Front loading: four of the eight touches land inside the first forty-eight hours
Time cost per enquiry: about twelve minutes of human attention in total if the templates already exist
The fourteen-day schedule
Day 1, minute 0 to 5, phone. The primary attempt. Diary open, aiming to book a survey on the call.
Day 1, plus one minute, text. Only if the call went unanswered. Name the business, name the job, offer two specific slots.
Day 1, evening, phone. Different hour, different chance of catching them. Between 18:30 and 20:00 works best for residential work.
Day 2, morning, email. Short, with one comparable job, an indicative price band and a booking link if you have one.
Day 4, text. One question, easy to answer with a thumb: are you still looking at this, yes or no.
Day 7, phone. The forgotten attempt. Most enquiries that convert late convert from around here.
Day 10, email. Something useful rather than something needy: what typically drives the price up or down on this kind of job.
Day 14, text or email. The closing message. You are shutting the file, here is what you would have quoted for, reply if that changes.
Why the channel changes every time
Repetition on one channel is what makes persistence feel like harassment. Four voicemails from the same number is a pattern the recipient recognises and resents. A call, then a text, then an email, then a call reads as a business making a reasonable effort, even though the frequency is identical.
There is a practical reason too. People filter differently by channel and their filters change through the week. Somebody who ignores unknown numbers during working hours will read a text at lunchtime. Somebody who never opens marketing email will answer a phone on a Saturday morning. Rotating channels is cheap coverage against habits you cannot see.
What each touch has to carry
Every message needs one new element, otherwise the sequence is just volume. The new element can be small: a second appointment option, a nearby street where you did similar work, a number, a question. What it cannot be is another round of just following up on my previous message, which tells the recipient the sender has nothing to add and is chasing on schedule.
Length discipline helps more than clever copy. Texts under two lines, emails under one screen, voicemails under twenty seconds with the phone number said twice and slowly. The homeowner is not evaluating your prose, they are deciding whether replying is going to cost them ten minutes or one.
Adapting the shape to your trade
Emergency work such as roof leaks or heating failures: compress everything into seventy-two hours and drop the day 10 educational email entirely.
Solar and heat pumps: keep the full fourteen days and add one reminder at week six, because subsidy timing and payback comparisons stretch the decision.
Kitchens and bathrooms: replace the day 10 email with visual proof, since these buyers make decisions on finished-room evidence more than on price bands.
Gardens and landscaping: weather-shift the sequence, because a wet fortnight in March suppresses replies that return the moment the sun does.
Painting, plastering and flooring: shorten to five touches over seven days, as the job values do not justify twelve minutes of attention each.
Building the sequence once so it runs itself
Write the eight templates in one sitting and store them where the phone can reach them.
Put the schedule into whatever holds your tasks, so each touch arrives as a dated job.
Record which touch produced the conversation, for every enquiry, in one column.
Delete or rewrite any touch that has produced nothing across fifty enquiries.
Review the whole sequence quarterly rather than tinkering with wording every week.
How Flock Leads prices this
A sequence this thorough only pays back when enquiry volume is predictable enough to build a routine around, which is what a fixed package provides.
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
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Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Should the sequence be automated?
Automate the reminders and the templates, keep the sending human where the channel is personal. Automated texts that clearly come from a system perform worse than the same words sent by a person, and calls obviously cannot be automated at all without destroying the point of them.
What time of day works best for calls?
For residential home improvement, early morning before 08:30 and evening between 18:30 and 20:00 outperform the middle of the working day by a wide margin. Saturday morning is the strongest single slot in several markets and the least contested by other trades.
Is eight touches too many for a small job?
For work under roughly two thousand, yes. Cut to five touches over seven days and lean harder on text, because the twelve minutes of attention has to be proportionate to the margin. Reserve the full sequence for jobs where a single conversion pays for a month of enquiries.
What if they reply asking for a price by email?
Answer with a band and a reason to speak, not with silence and not with a full quotation. A precise number sent without a conversation removes your only opportunity to understand the scope, and it invites a straight comparison against two documents you have never seen.
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