What a battery campaign to your past solar customers costs, and when it pays back
Past solar customers are the cheapest battery leads you will find. What a text and email campaign to them costs, line by line, and the job that pays it back.
You spend real money to find a homeowner ready for solar. Then you install the system, hand over the monitoring app, and never talk to that customer again. Meanwhile some of them are getting quotes for batteries from someone else.
Your past customers already trust you, already have panels on the roof, and already know your crew. A simple campaign offering them a battery add-on is one of the cheapest things a solar installer can run. Here is what it costs and when it pays back.
What you need
There is no big media spend here. The list is yours. The costs are tools and time.
| Item | What it is | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Customer list cleanup | Pulling names, phones, emails and install dates from your CRM or spreadsheets | A few hours of office time |
| Texting tool | Business texting from your main number, with opt-out handling | $25 to $100 a month |
| Email tool | A basic email platform for a short sequence | $0 to $50 a month for a small list |
| One landing page | A page on your site about adding a battery to an existing system | A few hours if you write it, a few hundred dollars if you hire it out |
| Sales time | Calls and site visits for the people who reply | Your existing team |
Say a hypothetical installer spends $150 a month on tools and $500 one time on the page. Over three months, the out-of-pocket cost is about $950 plus office and sales time.
What the campaign looks like
Keep it to three touches over about three weeks. More than that and it starts to feel like a sales push, which is the opposite of how your customers know you.
Touch 1: a text from someone they remember.
"Hi Karen, this is Luis from Summit Solar. We installed your panels in 2023. A lot of our customers have been asking about adding a battery for outages and the newer utility rates. Want me to send you a quick rundown of what it would look like on your system?"
Touch 2: an email a week later with a plain explanation: what a battery does with their existing panels, rough price ranges, whether incentives still apply in your area, and a link to the landing page.
Touch 3: a final short text to anyone who opened but did not reply:
"Hi Karen, just checking if you had questions about the battery rundown. Happy to take a look at your system data and tell you honestly if it makes sense for you."
The word "honestly" matters. Solar customers are tired of hype. Telling some of them it does not make sense yet builds the trust that brings referrals later.
When it pays back
Run a hypothetical. An installer has 400 past customers. The campaign reaches most of them. Say 30 reply with interest, 12 get a site visit, and 4 buy a battery.
If the installer's gross profit on a battery add-on is somewhere in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, those 4 jobs bring in roughly $8,000 to $20,000 in gross profit against about $950 in hard cost. The first sale covers the campaign. Everything after is margin.
Your numbers will be different. A newer company with 80 installs will get fewer replies. An older one with 1,500 will get more. The point is that the breakeven is usually one job, which is hard to say about any paid ad campaign in solar. Plug your own close rate and job value into the calculator to see your version.
What makes it work
- Use the installer's name, not the company's. A text from "Luis" gets read. A text from "Summit Solar Team" gets skimmed.
- Answer replies the same day. A past customer who says "sure, send it" and hears nothing for three days assumes you do not care. The missed calls and speed to lead guide covers response time in detail.
- Bring their production data to the visit. You can see how their system performs. Showing them that before talking about a battery makes the conversation about their house, not your product.
- Be clear on price. Give a range in the email. The pricing and proposals guide covers how to present add-on pricing without surprises.
The side benefits
Even customers who say no give you something. Reaching out reminds them you exist, which helps when a neighbor asks who did their panels. Some will mention a problem with their monitoring or an inverter warning, which gives you a service call and a chance to fix something before it becomes a bad review.
And every battery customer is a good time to ask for a review. Solar installers with more reviews tend to win more first conversations. The median installer in our benchmark report has 18 reviews. A few new ones from long-time customers carry weight.
Where it goes wrong
- Sending without permission records. Make sure your texting follows consent rules. Only text customers who gave you their number for business contact, and honor every opt-out.
- Pushing too hard. Three touches, then stop.
- Overpromising savings. Do not quote bill savings you cannot back up with their data.
If you want this campaign built and sent for you, any service is available as a free 14-day trial, no card. Text or call (801) 751-4071.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, solar installers among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor