Retention & Reminders for Chimney Sweeps
For your trade, the list isn’t part of the business. It is the business.
Low value, high frequency, total dependence on retention
A standard sweep is £110. A multi-flue property, £190. A CCTV survey, £240. A bird or blockage clearance, £295. A HETAS log burner installation, £2,650.
That first number defines your trade. At £110 a job, you cannot afford to buy customers. Paid advertising is difficult to justify, and winning a new customer costs far more than keeping an existing one.
But you have something most trades don’t: near-perfect predictability. A swept chimney needs sweeping again roughly a year later. Insurers commonly want evidence of it. Anyone with a working stove knows they’re supposed to. The demand is reliable, recurring and entirely known in advance.
Which means the whole economics of a sweeping business come down to one thing: what proportion of last year’s customers come back this year.
A sweep with 600 customers at 50% rebooking earns £33,000. The same sweep at 85% earns £56,100 — from the same round, the same van, the same hours. That gap isn’t marketing. It’s whether anyone sent a reminder in August.
There’s also a serious seasonal problem. Everyone wants their chimney swept in September and October, you physically cannot do them all, and by November you’re turning away work you’d have happily done in June.
What this service actually does
Every property on record with its flue, appliance and sweep date. Plus the practical notes — parking, access, whether the stove’s been changed.
Reminders staged across the year, not concentrated in autumn. This is the single biggest operational gain available to you. Reminders from spring with an early-booking incentive flatten the peak and fill the summer.
Certificates issued immediately. Customers need them for insurance, and a same-day certificate is a genuine differentiator in a trade where a lot of paperwork is still handwritten.
Alerts on customers who’ve skipped a year, because at your volumes a 10% drift is a large number of households.
Recording stove age and condition, because a HETAS installation at £2,650 is worth twenty-four sweeps and it comes out of the sweeping relationship.
What we’d actually build
The customer register with property, flue, appliance and access detail. For a sweep this is the single most valuable asset in the business and most operate from a diary and memory.
Then staged reminders from spring, with early-booking incentives to move volume out of autumn. Realistically this is worth more to you than any other marketing activity.
Then automatic certificate delivery, same-day.
Then lapse alerting on customers who’ve missed a year.
Then the installation pipeline — stove age and condition recorded, so when someone’s ready to replace, you’re the one they ask.
What it costs against what it returns
At £110 a sweep this is the page where the ratio matters most, so here it is plainly.
Noticed is £49 a month — £588 a year. That’s just over five sweeps.
Five sweeps, out of a round of several hundred, to cover the entire year.
Now the other side. Two hundred and seventy lapsed customers at £110 is £29,700 a year — fifty times the cost. Same round, same van, same hours. The only difference is whether anyone sent a reminder in August.
And a single HETAS log burner installation at £2,650 covers four and a half years on its own. You’re already in the room with the stove twice a year, having the conversation about whether it’s on its last legs. That installation should be yours and it usually isn’t, because nobody’s tracking which stoves are ageing.
Then the operational win, which doesn’t show up as revenue but lands as sanity: moving 40% of your sweeps out of the September–October crush means you stop turning away work in autumn and stop earning nothing in June.
For a trade where the customer list is the business, £588 to protect and grow that list is the cheapest thing you will buy all year.
What good looks like
Rebooking above 85%. This is the number your business runs on.
40% or more of the year’s sweeps done before September.
Certificates issued same-day, every time.
A handful of HETAS installations a year coming from the sweeping round.
The mistakes we see most
No customer list. Working from a diary means last year’s customers are effectively strangers.
All reminders in autumn. Guarantees an impossible peak and an empty summer.
Handwritten certificates. Slow, and it undersells you.
Not tracking lapsed customers. At 600 customers, a 15% drift is 90 households — around £10,000.
Ignoring installations. You’re in the room with the stove twice a year and someone else sells them the new one.
What’s your round worth?
Customers 600 · sweep value £110 · rebooking 55%
330 rebooking. The other 270 are worth £29,700 a year — and it’s the same round, not new customers.
This is what Gaffer was built for
Every property on record with flue, appliance and next sweep date. Reminders staged across the year automatically. Certificates generate and send same-day. Lapsed customers flagged. Stove condition tracked, which is your installation pipeline.
Questions sweeps ask
Is this worth it at £110 a job?
More than for any high-value trade. Your entire business is retention, and at £29,700 of drift the maths is not close.
My customers always come back.
Some do. The ones who moved, forgot, or had someone knock on the door in September didn’t — and you’d only know if you were tracking it.
Will people book in summer?
A good proportion will, especially with a small early-booking discount. It’s cheaper for you than an impossible October.
Should I do installations?
If you’re HETAS registered, it’s the highest-value work available to you and it comes free with the round you already have.
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