Home / Real Estate Agents / Home anniversary emails and call reminders for past clients (Follow Up Boss)
Real Estate Agents problem 5: Past clients forget their agent
Home anniversary emails and call reminders for past clients (Follow Up Boss)
Every morning the workflow finds Follow Up Boss past clients whose closing anniversary is today and sends one short personal email from you, with your office address and a working unsubscribe link (plus the one-click unsubscribe header that mail apps such as Gmail use). Clients with recorded text consent also get a text. Three days before, you get a Follow Up Boss call task so you can call or drop by first. One email per client per year; unsubscribes are tagged in Follow Up Boss and respected next year.
The problem
Repeat and referral business comes from clients who remember you. The figures below are from NAR's member survey and a vendor's count of forum comments.
- NAR's 2025 Member Profile: the typical Realtor got 20% of their business from repeat clients and 21% from referrals by past clients and customers. Source: NAR, Income Steady, Even as Market Slows: 2025 Member Trends (Aug 6, 2025, on the 2025 Member Profile) (Industry association survey)
- In Sifta's count of 7,439 agent comments, remembering client details came up 131 times, the theme closest to staying in touch with past clients. Vendor analysis. Source: Sifta: What real estate agents complain about (7,439 r/realtors and r/RealEstate comments, July 2026) (Vendor analysis of public forum comments)
- Follow Up Boss drips and Automations can do date-based emails too; this recipe adds the call task first, the one-click unsubscribe and the consent check for texts. Source: Follow Up Boss help: Automations 2.0 overview (replacing Action Plans) (Vendor documentation)
Background reading: Can real estate agents text leads? A TCPA and Do Not Call checklist by lead source
Who it's for
US agents with a book of past clients in Follow Up Boss who mean to stay in touch but rarely do.
Tools and monthly cost
| Tool | Official price |
|---|---|
| Follow Up Boss (the CRM; API and webhooks included) | Grow: $69 / user / month, or $58 billed yearly. Pro: $499 / month for 10 users pricing page |
| Resend (sends the emails) | Free: 3,000 emails / month, 100 / day. Pro: $20 / month for 50,000 pricing page |
| Twilio US SMS, sent or received | $0.0083 per 160-character segment, plus carrier fees of about $0.0035-$0.005 per segment pricing page |
| n8n | Community Edition: free if you self-host (you pay for the server). n8n Cloud: from EUR 20 / month (Starter) or EUR 50 (Pro) pricing page |
Example month: Illustrative arithmetic. Assume 120 past clients: about 10 anniversary emails and 10 call tasks a month, inside Resend's free tier, plus a few texts for a few cents using the Twilio number from the lead recipe. About $0-$1 a month plus your n8n server.
Setup
- Make sure past clients are in Follow Up Boss with stage 'Past Client' (E5_STAGE) and a closing date in a custom field (FUB_CLOSING_FIELD, default customClosingDate).
- In Follow Up Boss, create an API key in the admin settings and register your integration to get an X-System name and X-System-Key (Follow Up Boss requires both headers on every API call). Set FUB_API_KEY, FUB_X_SYSTEM and FUB_X_SYSTEM_KEY. FUB_REQUEST_INTERVAL_MS paces calls; 429 replies are retried after Retry-After.
- Set E5_UNSUB_SECRET (a long random string), and point E5_UNSUB_URL at the 'mss-e5-unsub' webhook's public address. The link opens a confirm page (so email scanners can't unsubscribe people by accident); mail apps use the one-click header.
- Set AGENT_NAME, AGENT_FIRST, AGENT_LICENSE, AGENT_PHONE, AGENT_MOBILE, AGENT_EMAIL, AGENT_TZ, BROKERAGE_NAME, BROKERAGE_LICENSE, OFFICE_ADDRESS and EMAIL_FROM from .env.example. Every message is signed with your name, license number, brokerage, phone and office address; ask your broker what your state requires. E5_TASK_DAYS_BEFORE (default 3) sets the call task timing; E5_VALUE_CHECK_URL is an optional link to your own home-value request form.
- Run it against a copy of your database or a few test people first. The workflow also has a manual 'run now' webhook used by our tests. Delete it, or put it behind n8n's header authentication, before you go live.
Download
Download real-estate-past-client-anniversary.zip
Contains the n8n workflow, the mock data, the test runner with its last results, and the mock server we tested against. All keys in .env.example are fake.
Test result
Every workflow was imported into n8n 2.45.4 and run end to end on our test machine. Follow Up Boss, dotloop, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Twilio and the email sender (Resend, including its inbound webhook) were replaced by a local mock server built from their official API docs: it checks the same request shapes and required fields, enforces Follow Up Boss's rate limit (HTTP 429 with Retry-After), expires dotloop's access token so the refresh path runs, and records every call. Webhook signatures (Follow Up Boss FUB-Signature, Twilio X-Twilio-Signature, Resend/Svix) are really computed and checked. These recipes use no AI model; every decision is a written rule. Leads, clients, agents, brokerages and addresses are invented. Nothing was sent to a real phone, person or account.
6/6 scenarios passed (run 2026-10-28)
| PASS | A1 | Nov 9: 5-year email to Pat (with text: consent on file), Uma email only (no consent); Quinn opted out, Lou not a past client, Ty closed this year; Rae's call task 3 days early; 112 people paged |
| PASS | A2 | Run again the same day: nothing repeated |
| PASS | A3 | Unsubscribe: GET only shows a confirm button (safe against link scanners); POST tags Email Opt-Out with mergeTags; forged token changes nothing |
| PASS | A4 | Nov 12: Rae's 6-year email |
| PASS | A5 | Leap day: Sol (closed Feb 29, 2024) gets a task on Feb 25 and the email on Feb 28, 2027; nothing on Mar 1 |
| PASS | A6 | Next year: Pat (unsubscribed) gets no email; Uma still does; Ty now reaches year 1 |
Actual output from the test run
Scenario A1: the anniversary email (unsubscribe token shortened; invented client). Names and numbers are invented.
Subject: Happy 5th home anniversary, Pat! Hi Pat, 5 years ago today you got the keys - happy home anniversary! I hope the place has been good to you. If you're ever curious what your home might sell for today, or need a contractor, lender or inspector recommendation, just reply. Or use this short form: https://example.com/home-value-jordan Warmly, --- You're getting this once a year because we worked together on your home. Unsubscribe: http://127.0.0.1:5678/webhook/mss-e5-unsub?p=8001&t=<signed-token> Jordan Lee (license #000000-MOCK) Example Realty Group (license #000001-MOCK) (512) 555-0100 100 Example Ave, Suite 2, Austin, TX 78701
Verified with mocks
- Anniversary day: a 5-year email to a past client (plus a text because consent is on file), email only for a client without consent; an unsubscribed client, a non-client and a client who closed this year are skipped; a call task 3 days early. All 112 test people are read page by page.
- Running again the same day repeats nothing.
- Unsubscribe: the link only shows a confirm button; the confirm (or a mail app's one-click POST) tags 'Email Opt-Out' in Follow Up Boss without removing other tags; a forged token changes nothing. Next year that client gets no email.
- Leap day: a client who closed on Feb 29, 2024 gets the task on Feb 25 and the email on Feb 28, 2027, nothing on Mar 1. A client who closed this year gets their first email next year.
- Verified with mocks; fictional people only.
Documented from official API docs only
Built to the vendor's documentation but not run against a live account. Check these on yours.
- Follow Up Boss people (paging, custom fields, mergeTags), tasks and notes (from Follow Up Boss's API docs; not run against a live account).
- RFC 8058 List-Unsubscribe-Post header and Resend's custom headers (from the RFC and Resend's docs).
Limitations
- The message is the same short template for everyone. It's a reason for you to call, not a substitute for it.
- If an email contains an offer (like a home-value check), the FTC may treat it as commercial email; ask your broker whether you need an ad label.
- Built for Follow Up Boss only. kvCORE/BoldTrail, Lofty, Sierra and other CRMs are not built, and we make no claim that this works with them.
- Not legal advice and not a compliance guarantee. We designed around the TCPA (texts only with recorded written consent, 8 am-9 pm in the lead's time zone, STOP honored at once), CAN-SPAM and state advertising rules (every message names you and your brokerage), but whether your use is lawful depends on your consent wording, your lead sources, your state and your broker's policies. Have your broker or a lawyer review the wording before you turn it on.