Every garage owner knows the rhythm. Monday is busy, Tuesday too, Wednesday slows down, Thursday afternoon is quiet, and Friday picks back up. And then there are the weeks when it is just quiet. No breakdowns, no MOTs expiring, no services booked. The workshop is half empty and the mechanics are staring at the ceiling.
It does not have to be that way. At any given moment, most garages have hundreds of customers whose MOT expires within three months. Those customers often do not know it themselves, or they put it off until the last moment. If you send those customers a reminder at the right time, they come to you instead of to the competitor. And you fill exactly those quiet weeks that would otherwise be lost.
Why MOT reminders work
The MOT is a legal requirement. Every car older than three years must be tested annually. That means for every customer who has ever had an MOT at your garage, you know exactly when the next test is due.
That data is gold. Because if you send that customer a message two months before the expiry date, two things are true:
The customer has not started thinking about it yet. Most people only think about the MOT when they receive the reminder letter from the vehicle authority. That letter arrives four to six weeks before expiry. If you make contact two months in advance, you are the first to bring it to their attention. The chance the customer books with you is much larger than when they start searching themselves.
You can schedule the appointment at a quiet time. In the reminder, you include a link to your booking system, where you only show time slots that suit you. Those are precisely those quiet Thursdays and the slow weeks. The customer books at a time that works for them, the workshop is occupied, everyone is happy.
Garages that send MOT reminders see on average 25 percent more returning MOT customers than garages that do not. That is a quarter more revenue from an existing customer base, purely through an automated message.
The right timing: not too early, not too late
The timing of your reminder is crucial. Too early and the customer thinks "that is not for another three months, I will deal with it later." Too late and the customer has already booked somewhere else.
From our data of thousands of MOT bookings via NoveuFlow, the optimal moment is eight weeks before the expiry date. At that point, the customer is aware enough that the MOT is coming, but has not yet taken action. A reminder at that moment has a response rate of 35 percent on average. That is more than one in three customers making an appointment directly.
A second reminder four weeks before the expiry date catches the customers who did not respond the first time. That second reminder has a response rate of 20 percent. In total, you reach more than half of your customer base.
Sending three reminders does not work better. From the same data, a third reminder barely generates extra bookings and in some cases even causes irritation. Keep it to two.
The channel matters
Email works, but SMS works better. An MOT reminder via SMS has an open rate of 97 percent. The customer reads the message, clicks the link, and books the appointment. Within a minute it is sorted.
WhatsApp works even better for customers you have previously reached via WhatsApp. The difference with SMS is subtle but measurable: WhatsApp messages are read in full more often and the click rate on the booking link is 15 percent higher than with SMS.
Our advice: send the first reminder by email (eight weeks before expiry) and the second via SMS or WhatsApp (four weeks before expiry). The email serves as the first signal, the SMS or WhatsApp as the direct call to action.
From reminder to a full workshop
Let us work through a concrete example. Say you have 600 customers in your database who need an annual MOT.
- 600 customers, spread over 12 months, is 50 customers per month
- With two automated reminders you reach 55 percent: 28 bookings per month
- Without reminders, an average of 40 percent books spontaneously at the same garage: 20 bookings per month
- Difference: 8 extra MOT bookings per month
Eight extra MOTs per month. At an average MOT price of 45 euros, that is 360 euros extra revenue per month, or 4,320 euros per year. And that is just the MOT test itself. In practice, an MOT generates an average of 1.2 follow-up appointments for repairs or maintenance. Include those and you quickly reach double.
How to set it up with NoveuFlow
In NoveuFlow, you activate MOT reminders in three steps.
Step 1: Go to Communication and choose MOT Reminders. Set the first reminder to 8 weeks before expiry and the second to 4 weeks.
Step 2: Choose your channel. For each reminder, you select whether you want to use email, SMS, or WhatsApp. You can choose a different channel for each reminder.
Step 3: Customise the message. NoveuFlow offers standard templates in Dutch and English, but you can fully customise the text to match your tone. The message automatically includes a booking link to your online scheduling system.
That is it. From that moment, the reminders go out automatically. You do not need to think about it again.
Want to fill your quiet weeks with MOT bookings? Book a free demo and see how NoveuFlow handles this for your garage.