OfficeStaff.ai

Can I text or email my past customers in Australia?

Who publishes this: OfficeStaff.ai helps local businesses get found on Google, trusted through reviews and booked through their website and past customers.

Published 26 September 2026Updated 30 October 20265 minute read

By Greg Hamlyn. Part of our guide to Reputation.

The short answer

Usually yes, if they gave you their details as part of doing business with you, the message relates to what they bought, you say who you are, and every message has a working unsubscribe.

That is inferred consent under the Spam Act 2003, and it is narrower than most people assume. One purchase a long time ago, or a message about something unrelated, does not qualify.

This is general information, not legal advice.

The three rules, in plain English

The Spam Act covers commercial emails, SMS and instant messages sent to or from Australia. Three things have to be true.

You have consent. Either express, where they ticked a box or told you they wanted to hear from you, or inferred, where they gave you their details directly in the course of doing business and would reasonably expect to hear from you about that business.

You identify yourself. Your name or business name and correct contact details, and those details have to stay accurate for at least 30 days after you send.

There is a way out. A working unsubscribe on every message, honoured within five working days, and it has to keep working for at least 30 days after the message goes out.

Past customers are the shortest path to a booking. Want to see how new ones find you right now? Get your Free 3R check.

Where inferred consent runs out

This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that matters.

The regulator's own guidance is that an ongoing relationship can create inferred consent, but only where the marketing is directly relevant to that relationship. It specifically does not stretch to cover a single purchase, and it does not stretch to unrelated products.

So a mechanic texting a customer who services their car there every year about a service reminder is on solid ground. The same mechanic emailing a one time customer from four years ago about an unrelated offer is not.

The practical test is simple. Would this person, reading this message, think "fair enough, I deal with them" or "how did these people get my number"? If you are not sure, you already know.

The bigger point, which is not legal at all

Most small businesses are not in trouble for messaging their past customers. They are in trouble for never doing it.

This is the thing that used to frustrate me most watching service businesses. They would spend real money chasing new customers, month after month, while sitting on a list of hundreds of people who already knew them, already trusted them, and would have come back if anyone had asked.

The rule of thumb in business is that winning a new customer costs somewhere around five times what it costs to keep an existing one. Whether it is exactly five does not matter. The gap is enormous and almost nobody acts on it.

People do not leave. They forget.

The customer who has not been back is usually not angry and has not gone elsewhere. They meant to ring. Life got busy. The thing they were going to book seemed like it could wait, and then it dropped off the list entirely.

Think about an air conditioning business. A split system needs a clean and a service every year or so, for as long as the customer owns it. The customer is not ignoring it on purpose. They just did not think about it this month. That is a job sitting there every year, and the only thing standing between the business and that job is somebody remembering to get in touch.

The same is true for a pest controller whose yearly treatment is due, an electrician who did your switchboard, or a plumber who put in your hot water system.

The salesman who sent 13,000 cards a month

Joe Girard sold 13,001 cars out of a Chevrolet dealership in Michigan between 1963 and 1978. He holds the Guinness record for the most cars sold by a salesman in a year, with 1,425 in 1973.

What he is known for in sales circles is the mail. Every month he sent cards to his entire customer list. Birthdays, Christmas, whatever the month offered. No offer, no pitch. Just a card.

He was selling something people buy every few years at best. It still worked, because when those people or their families or their neighbours finally needed a car, there was only one name in their head.

Almost no small business does a version of this, and the ones that do rarely have to buy leads.

The uncomfortable version

This is not a nice thought, but it is true.

A business that does fairly average work but stays in touch will often beat a business that does excellent work and disappears. The customer remembers the one who rang. They will even describe them warmly.

That is not an argument for being average. It is an argument that being good at the job is only half of it, and the other half is that people have to keep hearing from you. Do both and you are very hard to compete with.

What to actually do

Get your customer list out of wherever it is hiding and into one place. For most businesses it is bigger than they expect.

Take out anyone who has told you to stop, and in some industries take out the contacts where a message would land badly. For a service business, that means taking out anyone with a complaint still open before anything goes out, every single time.

Send something useful rather than a discount. A reminder that something is due beats ten percent off.

Put your business name and a working unsubscribe on every message, and honour it fast.

Start with email. It costs almost nothing and it is where people are most forgiving. Keep text for the things that are genuinely time sensitive.

Where this fits

Finding you and trusting you both lead to the same place, which is somebody actually booking. Your past customers are the shortest path there, because the finding and the trusting have already happened.

What all of it costs is the next question. What should a small business pay for local marketing in Australia?

Portrait of Greg Hamlyn

About the author

Greg Hamlyn

Greg Hamlyn started out on the tools. He and his late wife Wendy then built their first business from $200,000 a year to well over $1 million in the first year, with no extra mechanics. He has been working with business owners since 2003. He co-founded OfficeStaff with Nick Lock to help Australian service businesses get more reviews, answer every customer and show up on Google. He will tell you if you are not a fit. Based on the Gold Coast.

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What should a small business pay for local marketing in Australia?

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Frequently asked questions

Do you need written permission to email past customers in Australia?
Not always. If they gave you their details while doing business with you and the message relates to that business, that can be inferred consent under the Spam Act. Express permission is safer.
Does every marketing email and text need an unsubscribe?
Yes. It has to keep working for at least 30 days after sending and be honoured within five working days.
Can you text someone who bought from you once, years ago?
Probably not on inferred consent. The regulator's guidance is that a single purchase does not create an ongoing relationship.
Is email or text better for past customers?
Start with email. It costs almost nothing and people are more forgiving of it. Keep texts for things that are genuinely time sensitive.

Sources

Avoid sending spam, ACMA for the consent, identification and unsubscribe rules including the five working day and 30 day requirements. Joe Girard, Wikipedia for the sales figures and the Guinness record. The greeting card practice is widely reported in sales literature rather than in a primary source, and the article says so. The five times figure is given as a rule of thumb, not a cited statistic.

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