Rich Begalla owns Window Depot in the Youngstown, Ohio, and Penn-Ohio market. He’s watched his crews get mistaken for competitors more times than he can count.
“We just installed 20 grand in their house, and they wrote a check to Home Depot.”
That kind of mix-up sounds small until you multiply it across hundreds of jobs a year. Every confused homeowner is a missed chance to be remembered: being remembered is what turns a one-time customer into a referral.
Staying top of mind isn’t a nice-to-have for a business this size. It’s what decides whether a happy customer calls Window Depot again for their next project, or refers a neighbor without a second thought, instead of quietly hiring whoever they saw last on a truck or a yard sign.
When Window Depot was doing around 300 jobs a year, Rich ran his own relationship marketing program in-house.
Postcards went out with gift cards tucked inside. Every new customer got a one-sheet explaining the $100 referral reward. After installation, a thank-you card went out with another gift card attached. Salespeople were required to make a follow-up visit to every completed job.
But the DIY system couldn’t scale as Window Depot’s business continued to expand. In 2025, the company closed 983 jobs, up 24% from the year before and nearly triple what Rich was running when the in-house program started.
That kind of growth is good news for any window company, but it puts real strain on a relationship marketing program still being run by hand:
“Once we got to a certain scale, though, how sustainable is that? How easily is that managed?”
The math stopped working right around the time COVID hit. Salespeople didn’t have the bandwidth to run appointments and do follow-up visits, so the mandatory visits got dropped. Rich tried a Constant Contact newsletter for a while, “basic Canva, basic copy,” as he puts it, but it didn’t keep Window Depot top of mind the way those visits did.
That’s when Rich knew he needed to pivot.
Rich had heard about gFour for two years before he signed up: at seminars, on podcasts, from the gFour team at industry events and meet-ups. He knew the program made sense. He just hadn’t made the investment.
When his in-house relationship-marketing system got to be too much to manage, and the landscape forced a change, he turned to gFour to do it for him.
Window Depot had been offering a gift card with every estimate. Rich cut that gift card and put the same budget into the gFour program instead: no new spend, just a better use for money he was already setting aside.
“The setup process is pretty easy and seamless. Once it’s done, it’s basically set it and forget it, other than approving an email once a week.”
Everything that used to depend on a salesperson’s schedule now runs on its own. Appreciation gifts, review requests, and referral touchpoints go out automatically.
The clearest sign it’s working isn’t a dashboard metric: it’s his inbox. “I got three emails today from customers saying we’re so happy,” he told gFour on a call. One was about a storm door that needed a repair. The other two were just happy. “It’s a proactive communication rather than a frustration.”
By Year 3 in the program, Window Depot saw significant wins across the board:
This tracks with what gFour sees across its broader base of contractors: referral and repeat appointments consistently close far above cold-lead averages.
Rich is candid about the two years he spent thinking about gFour before he signed up. He questioned whether the spend was a good investment. In the end, he echoed what many gFour clients tell us after seeing the program work:
“I wish I would have done the program sooner, because we’ve lost opportunity. And that’s why I decided it’s just a must, and we’re going to stay consistent with it — and that consistency is going to cultivate over time.”
Window Depot’s story isn’t just about the numbers. It’s about what happens once a company outgrows what its own team can manually keep up with and the value of keeping up with your existing database.
“There is no way to quantify the legacy value of your customer. They’re going to be your strongest advocates.”
That’s the part a spreadsheet won’t show you. A past customer isn’t worth one job: they’re worth every job they send your way for as long as they remember your name. Internal, manual systems can’t keep up with the strategic touchpoints required for staying top-of-mind once a company grows past a certain size. His advice to any contractor still on the fence: don’t think of it as a cost. Set aside 2–3% of the marketing budget for relationship marketing and treat it like any other line item.
The customers who already trust you are the ones most likely to send you the next job. Today’s investment could lead to next month’s referral, next season’s repeat job, and years of repeat revenue,
Curious what this could look like for your business? Book a call, and we’ll run your numbers.
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