5 Successful Steps to Email Marketing for Auto Dealers

It's easy to succumb to the idea of sending all your marketing emails to all your customers. You’ve already spent the time and money to develop the email, and it doesn’t cost you anything to send it out to a few more customers, so why not?

If your dealership does this, you are falling into a trap.

We’ll give you a few pointers as to how your dealership can avoid doing this and instead, begin to chart a path towards better email marketing.

1. Take Steps to be Proactive

The secret of success of most of the car dealers who are doing well today is simple. They recognize and understand the large impact that can be made on their bottom line by taking small actions, and they proactively go about taking these small steps that boost their revenue. An easy place to start is with your email campaign plans.

By proactively tweaking your email strategy to target specific people who have the highest chance of converting, you can reduce the volume of emails received by the rest of your customers, while simultaneously increasing the value of those mails.

2. Say No to the Generic Stuff

Firing off an email with a "special offer just for you” won’t work nowadays, since customers are flooded with hundreds of mails that all claim the same thing. You need to do something different to capture their attention.

Come up with an email marketing plan that adds value to your prospective customers. As we mentioned earlier, being proactive will help you both in the short run and long run.

The fact of the matter is that many dealership owners are not realizing just how badly email spamming is costing their business. More than half the people who have been emailed have been provided information that they really are not interested in, and well over one-third have had duplicate communications sent to them.

3. Segment your Campaigns

Segmented email campaigns usually outperform non-segmented campaigns. Studies have shown that segmented campaigns get significantly more open rates than the ones that are not.

More interestingly, segmented emails get twice the number of clicks than those that are not segmented, and have around 10% lower unsubscribe rates as well.

These days, many CRMs come equipped with the required tools to make segmented email campaigns as easy as possible.

4. Automation is Your Friend

Automate your email marketing campaigns so as to streamline processes and reduce overall manual effort. Emails can be triggered by specific customer behavior patterns as well.

Emails can also be developed to feature specific makes and models or customer information that allows dealers to offer their customers the human touch.

5. Your Service Department Can Help Retain Customers

Your auto dealership’s service section is an excellent place to ensure that your customers are retained better. A car’s service history can reveal a lot about customers close to purchasing a new vehicle. This information allows you to proactively email offers that are relevant based on the customers’ preferences. This will definitely put you on top of your potential clients’ minds when they decide to take the step and buy.

Every time a prospect receives communication from you that has no relevance to them, the idea of your dealership in their minds takes a bad hit. This is really an unnecessary price for you to pay. The sooner you change it, the better your chances of taking your dealership to greater heights.

For more information on email marketing efforts that work for your auto dealership, Contact Us.