Crane Renovation Group is the parent company of Able Roofing and Mr. Roof, operating nine locations across Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The company primarily serves homeowners across roofing, siding, windows, and gutters.

Crane transformed direct mail from a broad traditional marketing channel into a personalized, event-driven growth engine—using LettrLabs to automatically reach homeowners after storms, around completed jobs, and at other high-intent moments.

At a Glance

Results from Crane’s automated direct mail program:

Crane’s most efficient campaign of the year delivered its lowest cost per booked job at $231.

The Challenge: Making Direct Mail as Timely as Digital

After investing heavily in digital marketing, Crane wanted to diversify its acquisition strategy with traditional channels. The company already worked with a traditional mail provider for broad prospecting campaigns, but there was a limitation: traditional print workflows weren’t built to react quickly to what was happening in individual markets.

Crane wanted direct mail that could behave more like digital marketing—triggered quickly, targeted precisely, and personalized to what a homeowner was experiencing at that moment.

“We wanted a solution that was faster turnaround and more personalized to meet that customer at the specific moment of where they’re at.”

That led Crane to LettrLabs.

The Solution: Event-Driven, Personalized Direct Mail

Rather than replacing Crane’s existing prospecting mail, LettrLabs gave the team a new capability: automated and on-demand mail tied to specific homeowner signals.

Crane initially experimented with broader storm and job-site campaigns before gradually refining its strategy around smaller, more targeted audiences.

Today, three strategies form the core of the program:

• Wind-event automation. When qualifying wind events occur, Crane can automatically reach homeowners in affected areas with messaging specifically relevant to wind damage.

• Hail-event automation. Crane similarly targets properties affected by hail, allowing its team to put relevant messaging into homeowners’ hands shortly after a weather event.

• Job-site radius mail. Through LettrLabs’ ServiceTitan integration, Crane can automatically trigger mail around completed jobs. The team can also manually create highly targeted radius campaigns based on feedback from representatives in the field.

Rather than sending the same generic creative across all three, Crane has increasingly customized the message to the specific reason a homeowner is receiving it.

“We’ve broken out that messaging into more personalized buckets. Now we have something speaking directly to wind, directly to hail, and then the job installs.”

The majority of Crane’s sends use LettrLabs’ handwritten format, giving the campaigns a personalized, local feel.

The Evolution: From Broad Campaigns to Smaller, Smarter Sends

Bringing Physical Mail Into the Customer Journey

For Crane, one of the most important differences between LettrLabs and traditional direct mail is the ability to incorporate physical mail into an increasingly personalized customer journey.

Digital marketers routinely change messaging based on customer behavior, timing, and intent. Crane is now applying the same philosophy to mail.

“When people think about that, they think digital, but with LettrLabs, we can do that more on the actual traditional side.”

That gives Crane another way to reach homeowners without relying exclusively on digital advertising—and with something tangible arriving directly in their homes.

“It’s not just a digital ad that goes out the window. It’s something that actually drives value as a relevant offer to that specific customer at that specific time.”

What’s Next: Expanding the Lifecycle

After initially adopting LettrLabs as a trial, Crane has renewed and is expanding its use of automated direct mail beyond storm and job-site acquisition. The team is currently developing three additional strategies.

Looking ahead, Crane is expanding its lifecycle marketing strategy by using customer and demographic data to create more relevant touchpoints throughout the homeowner journey. By tailoring outreach based on where customers are in that lifecycle and the characteristics most relevant to their needs, Crane can continue making direct mail more timely, personalized, and effective.

Instead of simply saying we’re working in your neighborhood, Crane can deliver a much more relevant message: we know when homes like yours were built, and this is when roofing components commonly begin to fail.

It’s the same principle that drove the success of Crane’s storm and radius campaigns: use data to make direct mail more relevant to the homeowner receiving it.