By The Coffee Shops™. 

Industry leaders share how contractors can adapt to economic pressures while building stronger customer relationships. 

During the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) mid-year meetings in Chicago, industry leaders gathered for a Read Listen Watch® (RLW) webinar to discuss a topic many contractors are facing in 2026: economic uncertainty and its effect on roofing businesses. 

Moderator Heidi J. Ellsworth was joined by Wendy Marvin of Matrix Roofing and Home, Dean Curtis of Wagner Roofing Company and Fred Castonguay of Reworked.ai for a conversation about labor challenges, rising material costs, changing customer behavior and the increasing role of technology. 

While conditions vary by region, the panel agreed that many contractors are working harder to achieve the same results. Wendy pointed out that labor availability, pricing pressures and slowdowns in new construction have affected the market. Customers are taking longer to commit to major investments, making service and maintenance work increasingly important. 

As homeowners and building owners delay projects, the panel emphasized the value of education and long-term relationships. “Because we’ve always focused on building relationships and trust and earning business in the community by helping, I think that has really helped our company,” Wendy shared. Rather than focusing solely on roof replacements, contractors are exploring repair options, maintenance programs and phased approaches that help customers manage costs while protecting their properties. 

Technology was another key theme. Contractors today face a growing number of software and artificial intelligence offerings, which can feel overwhelming. Still, Fred encouraged contractors to stay engaged and informed rather than ignore emerging tools. Instead, he urged contractors to evaluate if a technology product fits their needs. “You could have the best product in the world, and it does so much and it’s priced perfectly. It just doesn’t match up with what I’m doing right now,” he said. 

The discussion repeatedly returned to relationships as the industry’s greatest strength. Whether helping homeowners understand maintenance requirements, navigating insurance concerns or evaluating technology investments, trust remains critical. Dean emphasized the lasting value of people-focused business practices, saying, “It is about the people and about how we adapt as people and bring on these technologies and continue to be able to service our customers no matter what is going on.” 

The panel closed with a reminder that despite economic headwinds, the core need for roofing services remains unchanged. As Fred put it, “The roofs are still aging.” 

Listen to or Watch the webinar to learn more about navigating economic uncertainty and technology adoption in the roofing industry. 

By Reworked.ai. 

What makes Reworked.ai’s approach to customer acquisition different. 

When it comes to finding new customers, roofing contractors have a seemingly endless number of companies and strategies to choose from — and most of them are selling the same thing: Names on a list. To learn what makes Reworked.ai’s platform stand out in a crowded industry, we interviewed Fred Castonguay, one of the company’s co-founders. 

Reworked.ai is a marketing intelligence platform for roofers that finds the homes that need a roof now — and turns them into qualified opportunities before the homeowner ever starts shopping. The thinking behind it starts from a simple observation: Nearly every home in America will need a roof eventually. The hard part is finding the small fraction that need one this year.  

Fred shared what inspired the company, saying, “Our entire goal is to use advanced computer tools such as computer vision and machine learning to allow contractors to take control and have efficiency in their customer acquisition process.” 

But what really separates the platform from the crowd is its focus on demand rather than intent. Fred explained:  

We are not a lead provider. A lead provider is harvesting intent, whether it’s through a form or a banner or using pixels to see who’s on a website. What we do is go to the source and look at the demand signals. So in the case of roofing, that’s the roof. 

How are they able to do this? Reworked.ai has a partnership with EagleView that gives them access to aerial imagery revealing which homes are “showing serious signs of wear and tear, like water pooling, missing shingles, tiles out of place, serious streaking and more.”  

Once those roofs are identified, the platform helps contractors reach the homeowners behind them. Fred described the original outreach engine: “We have a mail integration program that our customers can use to reach out to specific homeowners by name and give them information about the work their roof needs and how their company can help.” That outreach engine now goes well beyond the mailbox. Direct Mail Sequences pair a personalized letter with an aerial postcard of the homeowner’s own roof. Home Ads — the newest addition — put the contractor’s brand on that same household’s TV, phone and laptop, targeting the house itself rather than a lookalike audience, so the letter arrives from a company the homeowner already recognizes. Mail Alerts close the loop on speed: Every mailer carries a unique QR code, and the moment a homeowner scans it, the contractor gets a text with the details — so the follow-up call happens while the piece is still in their hand.  

The same demand-first logic extends to weather. With Storm Alerts, the moment hail or wind hits a neighborhood a contractor covers, they’re notified instantly — and ads can begin serving inside the affected homes within 24 hours, days before the first crews start canvassing.  

By pairing demand signals from the roof itself with outreach that reaches homeowners by name — in the mailbox and on every screen in the house.  Reworked.ai goes beyond harvesting intent and instead finds the demand for roofing contractors. 

By Emma Peterson. 

Live from the NRCA Midyear Meetings, roofing and technology leaders discuss the roofing trends, challenges and opportunities. 

Today’s economic market has been defined by instability, shortages and hesitant buying habits. To learn how to navigate a roofing industry that has been reshaped by these shifting customer behaviors and factors, Heidi J. Ellsworth will host Fred Castonguay, Wendy Marvin and Dean Jagusch for a Read Listen Watch® webinar live from the National Roofing Contractors Association’s midyear meetings (July 15, 2026) all about how they are using relationships, trust and engagement to keep their businesses competitive through the chaos.  

Meet the panel 

Fred is the cofounder of Reworked.ai, an AI-powered software that helps contractors “stop wasting money on poor-quality leads and start targeting opportunities that convert.” He is well-known for his strong leadership skills and solid track record of delivering high value returns.  

As for Wendy, she is the founder and CEO of Matrix Roof and Home in Vancouver, Washington. She founded the company in 2007 with the goal of making a roofing company people could trust and has grown the business into a highly respected home services brand. 

Dean, the final panelist, is the owner and CEO of Wagner Roofing Company in Washington D.C. His team specializes in “institutional, commercial and residential projects with an emphasis on historic restoration” and boasts a legacy of quality work that dates back to 1914. 

What this webinar dives into 

This webinar will be a great resource for contractors trying to position their businesses for long-term resilience and growth. Wendy and Dean offer front-line expertise in the unpredictability of working in the roofing industry today. They will not only highlight the operational and workforce pressures that are hitting contractors the hardest right now but also share insight into rethinking leads in relation to the growing hesitation in homeowners and building owners. And this RLW is about more than just identifying the issues. Fred will share how AI can help contractors like Wendy and Dean cut through the noise and navigate market shifts.  

Overall, if you are a contractor or roofing professional looking for an honest, real-world conversation at how to leverage technology and innovative strategies to generate better leads and grow beyond our current economic uncertainty.  

Want to join the conversation? Register to attend the RLW on July 15, 2026 at 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET)! 

By Reworked.ai.

Reworked.ai's bet: stop racing for leads, start scoring demand. A new generation of property data is making it possible.

Most roofing marketing is a race. The contractor who answers a homeowner's Google search fastest wins the job. Everyone else paid for the same lead and lost. Fred Castonguay, co-founder of Reworked.ai, thinks that race is the wrong race.

"Every contractor wants speed to lead — to get to a prospect first. But what if there was a different way? What if you could find demand before it shows up on a search engine?"

— Fred Castonguay, co-founder · Reworked.ai

That question is the foundation of Reworked.ai, a platform that fuses aerial roof imagery, property records and homeowner data into a single intelligence layer for contractors. The bet is direct: if you can see which homes will need a new roof in the next twelve months — and who lives in them — you don't have to compete for the homeowners who are already shopping.

"The thing I appreciate about a roof is that it wears its emotions on its sleeve. It's not going to lie. If a plane can see it from 6,000 feet, then a roofer at 6 feet is going to see a lot."

— Fred Castonguay

Four products, one engine

Reworked.ai turns that intelligence into four contractor-facing tools:

• Zip Analyzer — Pinpoint the neighborhoods worth your spend, ranked by roof age, ownership rates and homeowner profile.
• Roof Opportunities — Score every home in a chosen area on roof condition + owner fit. The top of the list is who to mail first.
• Mailer Easy Button — Launch a personalized direct mail campaign in minutes, with the homeowner's name, their roof image and your branding. No agency, no design cycle.
• HALO — When a job lands, HALO automatically fires a follow-up mailer to the surrounding neighbors. One job becomes a campaign.

"You can't be targeted if you're spraying and praying," Fred said. "We're talking about a four-to-six-times return at the low end. At the high end, much more."

A concrete example

A New Jersey roofer recently ran a single $987 Reworked.ai mailer to 300 scored homes. Four turned into closed jobs — about $130,000 in revenue. Roughly 130× the ad spend. The job-conversion rate (1.3%) was an order of magnitude above the industry baseline for targeted direct mail, and the team did it without buying a single lead.

It's the kind of math that's hard to ignore: not because direct mail is new, but because the targeting is.

When the weather decides

Reworked.ai's Storm Opportunities product layers historical storm impact zones over the same property-condition data. The result lets contractors focus retail and insurance restoration work on homes that were already aging before the storm hit — not just chasing the storm itself.

"We've looked at the homes that, before the storm, were not in great shape. We've looked at the homeowners. Why would you do it the hard way if the technology is there for you?"

— Fred Castonguay

Why now

Aerial imagery used to cost dollars per property. Owner-occupancy and income data used to live in walled databases. In the last 24 months, both have collapsed in price and improved in resolution — and Reworked.ai is one of a small group of companies betting that the right way to use them is on the front end of the funnel, not the back.

"It's just taking advantage of the data that's out there and democratizing it. Every contractor should have access to this — not just the ones with a six-figure marketing budget."

— Fred Castonguay

See your first ZIP score for free.

By The Coffee Shops™.  

Lead lists were built for replacement. Rejuvenators need something different. 

Most lead lists in roofing were built for one thing: replacement. The roof is shot, the homeowner is shopping, the contractor closes. Rejuvenation works nothing like that. 

A rejuvenator needs an asphalt shingle roof somewhere in the middle of its life. Old enough to benefit, young enough to still be worth saving. Miss on either side of that window and the appointment is dead before the truck pulls up. 

That's the targeting problem rejuvenation contractors live with every day. It's also the problem Reworked.ai co-founders Fred Castonguay and Shyam Prabhakar dug into on a recent episode of Roofing Road Trips® with Karen Edwards. 

Fred put the trap in one sentence. "You're talking to the right person; you're not talking to the person whose roof is only three years old or whose roof is not salvageable." That's the entire rejuvenation pitfall. The three-year-old roof is too new. The unsalvageable roof needs to come off. Most marketing hits one of those two houses, never the one in between. 

Generic marketing makes it worse. "For the average home services company to try and participate in a pay-per-click market today, it is wasteful," Fred said. "Your message is getting drowned out by the massive spending campaigns of the national accounts." A replacement contractor can absorb that waste. A rejuvenation contractor, working a narrower slice of homes and a homeowner who didn't even know rejuvenation was a thing, cannot. 

Reworked.ai, powered by Eagleview's aircraft-captured aerial imagery, was built around that mismatch. Its scoring engine, Betty, looks at every home in a market and surfaces the midlife asphalt shingle roofs that are real candidates for rejuvenation. Each one comes with verified homeowner contact and demographic data, so contractors can reach those specific houses through mail, email, text or door-knocking. Not the block, the house. 

That last piece matters more than it sounds. Most homeowners aren't shopping for a new roof. They're even less likely to be shopping for a service they've never heard of. The first conversation isn't, "Do you need a roof." It's closer to, "Did you know there's a way to extend the one you have?" A pitch like that takes education and patience. Send it to the wrong house and you burn more than the postage. You burn the relationship. 

Shyam pointed to where the product is going, saying, "It's no longer about just spotting a bad roof and a good homeowner. We now give you the homeowner's direct cell, email and additional capabilities so you can actually turn a great opportunity into a hyper-targeted, instantly actionable campaign." For rejuvenation, that direct line into the homeowner is the difference between a one-shot mailer and a real campaign. 

There's another advantage too: trust. A rejuvenation pitch lands harder when the contractor shows up with an estimated roof size, an honest read on remaining useful life, and a financing range, instead of a cold pitch from the curb. Homeowners who weren't in the market are surprisingly open to a contractor who tells them something they didn't know they needed to hear, as long as it checks out. 

"We're listening to our customers on what capabilities they need," Shyam said. "We're taking all of this and building the best product that we can offer." 

For rejuvenation contractors, the math has always been the same: find the right roof, reach the homeowner, tell them something useful before anyone else does. And the tools to do that, at the address level, finally exist. 

Read the first article in this series or Listen to the podcast to learn more about how Reworked.ai is helping rejuvenation contractors find the homes that fit.

By Emma Peterson. 

Catch up on the biggest industry stories from May 2026. 

This last May, The Coffee Shops™ crew has been working hard to keep up with all the news and developments of the industry, whether it’s new events, evolving technology, shifting regulations or something else! To help readers like you keep up with everything, we like to put together a list of the top articles each month so you can see what the industry has been talking about.  

This month, we saw multiple articles about artificial intelligence (AI) on our top ten list. In eighth spot was “Cutting through the noise around AI,” which highlights Patrick Garcia of SRS Distribution and Fred Castonguay of Reworked.ai’s insights into how business can use AI effectively. The other article, in the fifth spot on our list, explores the common fear of AI taking human jobs with Denver Riggleman, the co-founder and CEO of Hootl. 

This month’s top list also saw articles from Coffee Shops’ President Heidi J. Ellsworth and our friends at Cotney Consulting Group. In her article, Heidi shares how Thomas Roofing delivers both quality craftsmanship and community support. As for the Cotney Consulting Group article, it dives into the difference between business and profitability, emphasizing how successful contractors are the ones who operate with better habits.  

And in the top spot for the month is one of my articles about “how the Farnsworth Group fosters business growth by helping contractors and other professionals better understand the market around them.” 

May 2026 top article list 

10 - Thomas Roofing and Supply builds a legacy through family, quality and community by Heidi J. Ellsworth 

9 - The operational habits that separate profitable contractors from busy ones by Cotney Consulting Group 

8 - Cutting through the noise around AI by Emma Peterson 

7 - Kick off the summer with the SRS XTV Soccer Tour! by Emma Peterson 

6 - Investing in people, not just positions by Emma Peterson 

5 - Is AI coming for our jobs? by Emma Peterson 

4 - When your company grows beyond you by Emma Peterson 

3 - Beyond the roof: Taking care of families in need by Emma Peterson 

2 - Training as the foundation of a stronger roofing industry by Emma Peterson 

1 - Seeing the big picture by Emma Peterson 

By Reworked.ai.

Most contractors fight over the same 1% of homeowners already searching for a roofer. Reworked.ai was built for everyone else.

At the 2026 International Roofing Expo, Karen Edwards of RoofersCoffeeShop® sat down with Fred Castonguay, co-founder of Reworked.ai, to talk about a problem most contractors don’t realize they have: they’re marketing to the wrong homeowners.

The problem with “spray and pray” marketing

Roofing contractors spend between 5 and 10% of their revenue on marketing and outreach — a significant line item in any P&L. Most of that spend chases the same small pool of homeowners who are actively searching online: the 1% who already know they need a roof and are collecting bids. That market is expensive, competitive and shrinking in margin.

“Roofers spend between five to 10% of their revenue on marketing and customer outreach. That’s a big number,” Fred said. “If you’re able to be smarter about it — 20% to 30% less — all of that falls to your bottom line.”

Reworked.ai was built to go after the 99% — homeowners whose roofs need replacement before those homeowners know it themselves. The company’s scoring system, Betty, identifies these properties by combining Eagleview aerial imagery with proprietary homeowner propensity data, surfacing what Fred calls “the best zip codes, the best homeowners and the worst roofs.”

How Betty works

The technology at the core of Reworked.ai is computer vision trained on millions of roof data points. Powered by Eagleview — whose aircraft-mounted, high-resolution cameras capture detailed aerial imagery across the country — Betty can detect roof condition indicators including discoloration, pooling water and material degradation without a single contractor setting foot on a ladder.

“It can see the roof better than you and me. It doesn’t wake up tired; it doesn’t have a bad day. It’s going to be on point, every single time.”

— Fred Castonguay, co-founder, Reworked.ai

But roof condition alone isn’t enough. Betty layers in homeowner demographics — financial profile, length of ownership, likelihood to act — so contractors aren’t just targeting homes that need work. They’re targeting homeowners who are both ready and able to move forward. The result is a ranked list of opportunities at $1.79 per opportunity, priced transparently and consistently regardless of market size.

“We can help roofing contractors make better decisions based on the condition of the roof and the profile of the owner of the home,” Fred explained. Rather than responding to demand, contractors can shape it — arriving at the door before the competition, before the homeowner has even started searching.

Built on real propensity data

Reworked.ai’s roots are in data science applied to real estate investing — scoring properties on seller propensity before expanding that same intelligence to the roofing market. The collaboration with Eagleview adds a physical layer to that model: actual roof condition as observed from above, matched to owner behavior signals on the ground.

The combination means contractors can prioritize their outreach around homeowners most likely to say yes — not the loudest homeowners online, but the right ones in the right neighborhoods at the right time.

What contractors are saying

“As a founder of the company, it makes me happy that we can bring a product to the marketplace that helps people,” Fred shared. “We’re not trying to take advantage of people. We’re trying to help them make their business more efficient.”

Feedback from contractors across the country has validated that approach — with users reporting more productive conversations, higher-quality outreach and a meaningful reduction in wasted marketing spend.

Watch Fred’s full conversation with Karen Edwards at IRE 2026.

Reworked.ai launches Direct Mail Sequence: aerially-targeted, two touch roof-specific mail at $2.71 a home, with response rates of 3–5+%.

Reworked.ai today launched Direct Mail Sequence, a fully integrated direct mail product that sends personalized physical mail only to homeowners whose roofs have been independently flagged as needing attention. Where conventional roofing direct mail is sprayed across ZIP codes at sub-1% response rates, Direct Mail Sequence ships exclusively to homes scored by aerial imagery and references each homeowner's specific property in the copy. Reworked.ai customers are seeing 3–5+% response rates and close rates 3.2x higher than digital ads.

The problem

Roofing direct mail is broken in three ways. Lists come from generic data brokers that have never seen the roof. Creative is templated and impersonal, such as "Your neighbors replaced their roof, have you?" so it gets thrown away. And contractors run mail through standalone vendors disconnected from any signal of intent. The result: contractors spend $0.65–$1.20 per piece, get a ~1% response and quietly move the budget back to PPC, where homeowners are already being chased by five to ten competitors.

The solution

Direct Mail Sequence couples Betty, Reworked's roof-scoring engine, powered by Eagleview's high resolution aerial imagery of U.S. residential properties, with a campaign engine that ships two sequenced touches: a customized professional letter on Day 1, followed by a customized branded postcard seven days later. Both pieces include the homeowner's name, address, imagery of their roof as well as the details of the roofing company. Contractors pick a region, select an amount of opportunities, launch the campaign and the system handles printing, postage, sequencing and delivery.

"Direct mail in roofing has been broken for thirty years because nobody bothered to know what the roof looked like before they printed the letter. We have high resolution aerial imagery of homes in America. There's no excuse for sending generic mail using Every Door Direct Mail when we can send specific mail to the right roof." — Fred Castonguay, Co-founder, Reworked.ai

"The hard part isn't printing a letter, it's knowing which letter to print, for which homeowner, on which day. Betty scores millions of roofs, matches each address to property-specific creative and runs the sequence automatically. That kind of personalization at scale didn't exist in this industry until now." Shyam Prabhakar, Co-founder, Reworked.ai

How it works

A contractor logs into Reworked.ai, picks a region and Betty surfaces the qualified opportunities. They select a pack, toggle on Launch Campaign (Direct Mail) at $2.71 per home, upload their logo, company details and confirm. Letters ship within 1–2 business days; postcards follow seven days later. Both pieces are personalized for each homeowner. No design work, no list cleaning, no separate vendor account.

At $4.50 all-in per home (opportunity + mailer), a 500-home campaign costs about $2,250. At a 4% response rate, that's 20 inbound conversations at $113 each with a one on one conversation.

Early results

A regional Southeast roofing contractor mailed 1,000 Reworked-targeted letters and booked 24 qualified inspections in three weeks. Their last 10,000-piece generic postcard campaign? About 30 calls — most unqualified, few converted.

The math: 1/10th the mail and 8x the response rate.

Availability

Direct Mail Sequence is available today to all Reworked.ai customers in the United States, inside the Find Opportunities flow at Reworked.ai. No subscriptions and use as much or as little as you need, you control your business sales funnel.

About Reworked.ai

Reworked.ai is a predictive intelligence platform that helps a multitude of verticals discover, prioritize and convert high-intent homeowners. Through AI-driven analytics and customer data modeling, Reworked.ai transforms how businesses identify demand and drive revenue.

By Emma Peterson. 

Separating the myths from fact when it comes to artificial intelligence and how it actually boosts businesses.  

Recently, wherever you turn, there seems to be a new artificial intelligence (AI) solution or software getting pushed on you. It’s a lot to take in, and it can be hard to figure out what is actually a useful addition to your toolbox. To learn more about how to productively incorporate AI programs in your operations, Megan Ellsworth sat down with Patrick Garcia of SRS Distribution and Fred Castonguay of Reworked.ai for an episode of Coffee Conversations®. 

Being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of AI tools that are on the market is not an uncommon experience. Fred calls this AI fatigue, saying, “Owners and general managers are bombarded with AI this and AI that. It causes a lot of fatigue. But, through all that noise, there are actually practical applications of AI that can help drive value in your business.” 

For Patrick, finding those applications is all about understanding the capabilities of AI. He shared, “There is a lot of hype, but it’s key to understand what AI can and cannot do. Someone once told me early on to think of it as a glorified autofill. And that’s not to say that it isn’t a powerful productivity tool, but it is still a tool, and you need to find how it works in your operations.” Fred emphasized, “AI is a tool, one which works on specific pain points. They don’t fix broken foundational processes. So, before a roofing company starts looking at programs, I would encourage a significant amount of introspection on the company structure. Because when people try to use one tool, in this case AI, to fix an entire broken process, it just amplifies the issue, makes it worse and wastes time/money.” 

For context, an example of a broken process would be not getting leads, and an example of a pain point would be managing your speed to lead. Where not getting leads is a much bigger issue that takes reorganization and possible personnel retraining, speed to lead is something that AI could help with.  

Listen to the podcast or Watch the recording to learn more about incorporating AI-powered tools into your business.  

By Jesse Sanchez. 

Exploring how smarter data and targeting help contractors improve outreach efficiency and results. 

Reworked.ai is pitching a simpler way for roofing companies to find work in a crowded market: stop casting the widest net and start focusing on the homeowners most likely to act. In an Exit Rich podcast conversation hosted by Lance Bachmann, Reworked.ai founder Fred Castonguary described how the company combines predictive modeling with roof condition insights to help contractors tighten outreach, reduce wasteful spending and speed up sales conversations. 

The value is in getting contractors closer to the right doors without asking teams to knock on every one. “You don’t have to mail a 100,000 people. You mail 10,000,” Fred said, framing the platform as a tool for narrowing effort while preserving results. Lance agreed, calling it “probably one of the best data collections I’ve ever seen to put you in front of potential people that want to buy roofs.” 

Rather than relying on instinct, the conversation centered on using data to predict which homeowners are more likely to replace or repair a roof. As Lance explained, the platform helps identify “people that are more likely higher probability of buying a new roof or getting their roof rejuvenated” by combining demographic signals with roof condition insights. 

For roofing contractors, the bigger shift is not the technology itself, but what it changes in daily marketing and canvassing decisions. “We remove waste,” Fred said. “It’s just about efficiency, right? We all want to use AI, but by using it with us, you’re going to get to your customers faster and you’re going to spend less money.” 

Fred also emphasized that contractors can tailor what they receive based on how they plan to use it. “You’re able to get your list, and you’re able to pick and choose what information you want with that list,” he said. When imagery is part of the equation, he said, it becomes a powerful sales asset: “The picture is gold.” 

Integration was another practical theme. “We have integrations with all different CRM (customer relationship management software), right?,” Fred said, adding that “every account comes with an API key” for teams that want to connect data to existing workflows. That flexibility allows roofing companies to move insights directly into their sales and marketing systems without adding friction or rebuilding processes from scratch. 

Learn more about Reworked.ai and how its data-driven approach helps roofing contractors target smarter!