Posted by Shawn Ryder

The Role of Email within a Digital Marketing Strategy

September 19, 2020Automotive Industry, Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

Email Marketing can play a vital role in your overall marketing strategy.

At its core, Email Marketing allows you to target different segments of your audience on a 1-to-1 basis, with carefully tailored and personalized messaging.

Until more ephemeral media, such as Social newsfeed where content is only visible for short periods,

Emails exist in recipients’ inboxes until they take an action on it; hopefully, by reading it, click the link(s) within the email, and proceeding to your chosen website or webpage.

Key differentiators/advantages of Email as a marketing channel are:

Emails directly communicate with audiences on a 1-2-1 basis
Emails are permanent until acted upon, and so they can be used to amplify and prolong social media & website content
Email campaigns can target various audiences, effectively & efficiently, with personalised messaging
Analytical data on Email performance can be used across all marketing efforts

When developing an Email Marketing Strategy, it is important to spend a good amount of time giving careful thought and consideration to 3 crucial areas:

Your Audience(s) – who are they, and what do they want to know?
Your Goals – what do you want from your audience(s)? what would benefit your business
Your Email Content – what content tells your audience what they want to know, and sets them on a journey towards completing one (or more) of your goals

The keys to success in Email Marketing are similar to those of most other online marketing mediums. It is vital to understand 1) who you are trying to reach and their needs, 2) how you want them to interact with your business, and 3) what content will both meet their needs whilst encouraging your desired interactions.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Automotive Email Tracking

September 3, 2020Automotive Industry, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

What type of results do you get from email marketing tracking?

Perhaps you want to measure the number of clicks made on a particular email advertisement, or you want to track the number of emails that are opened in your inbox? You can choose the appropriate email marketing metrics based on the results you are looking for. This article covers basic ways to use email marketing tracking to maximize results. Let’s look at each:

Sending emails with attachments.

You can find many different types of email marketing tracking, but it really depends on the amount of space you have available in your email client to record all of your email messages. Whether you want to automatically create email reminders or create a time based email campaign, attaching a recording device such as a recorder will help you to record what happens with your messages.

Tracking the bounce rate.

The more people who leave your site without ever having viewed your website or purchased anything, the lower your chance of generating repeat traffic. You can track the bounce rate to see how many of these people are simply “missed” messages from your email campaign.

Tracking the click rate.

You can find different types of email-tracking systems. Some are designed to track how many times a person clicks on an advertisement. Others are built to measure the number of times the recipient actually opens a message in an email.

Tracking the sales conversion.

In order to truly maximize your profits, you need to see how effective your emails are in converting customers into buyers. To do this, you need to look at the sales conversion rate from every email sent to the recipient’s list.

Sending multiple email messages to the same address.

There are some email marketers who think that if you send them two emails with one subject line, one of them will open, the second will never open, so they will not send anymore emails.

However, it does pay to find email tracking systems that have a system in place to automatically send out new messages in the event that only a single one email is opened. That way, you won’t have to manually check to see whether there was an open email or not.

Follow-up messages.

This is something that some companies send with email marketing campaigns. If someone clicks on an ad, you may want to follow-up with them with follow-up messages, such as asking if they want more information about what you have to say.

Email marketing tracking systems often have the option to set a limit on the number of follow-up messages, you will need to send to a particular list each month. By using this feature, you can get a better sense of the effectiveness of the messages that you send.

Email marketing tracking systems also offer features that can be useful to companies. For example, some allow you to see what is the response rate on an email campaign, or look at how many people you need to contact in order to actually convert those who have joined your list.

The ability to send automatic responses. When you are sending emails to people, you need to make sure that you are sending clear, concise messages to ensure that they receive all the information that you have to.

There are some email marketing tracking systems that can help you automate this process, and also let you easily customize the messages that you send to the recipients. You can also include a form with the message in order to capture their email address.

It can take a little bit of time to set up, but when you use one of these tracking systems, you will be amazed by the results. You will learn a lot more about the effectiveness of your emails and be able to create better emails for your next campaign. It is also very easy to get started with email marketing tracking.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Email Open Rates

August 21, 2020Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

There are two different types of ‘open rates’ one for electronic mail, and one for manual mail. The information in this article is intended to help you decide which type of mail you should send out based on the rates you get from your company’s provider.

Email is the fastest way to communicate with your customers and business partners. However, there is a steep cost involved in sending emails. Therefore, it is important to be aware of how much your mail service provider charges you for sending emails to your list of subscribers.

If you are sending email to your list of subscribers, then you should expect to pay more than to just a customer or business partner. This is because emails that are sent out by you will reach a larger audience and therefore more people will see the message.

Electronic mail is not necessarily faster than regular mail. For instance, if you send an email to someone’s address that has just been set up with a new email address, you will still have to wait a few minutes before they can receive the message.

You want to make sure that your email will reach a large audience of people. This means that you will have to send out your email more often than with a regular, non-electronic mailing list. If you do not send out your email messages as frequently as you would like, you might not be getting many responses.

If you are sending out more than one email, then you will have to pay more per email. For example, if you send out a large list of emails, then you will have to charge them each time.

It is easy for your recipient to unsubscribe if you only send a handful of emails each month. When you send more emails, you will also increase the chances of your emails getting read.

If you use the above information, then you can know the different email open rates that are available to you based on your list. You should be able to choose a plan that best fits your needs. When you have the information you need, you will be better equipped to choose the plan that will work the best for your business and help to build your list.

Keep in mind that email open rates vary greatly from company to company. Each individual business will determine how expensive their plans are going to be. Therefore, you should only base your choice on the type of products or services you want to market.

Do not let the email service provider dictate how much your messages should cost. They will not charge the same amount for every email you send out. Instead, look for a company that offers a variety of options.

A great way to get a better idea of how much your messages are going to cost is to ask questions to find out how much you would be charged if you were to use a standard company mailing list. . You should find out what kind of services are available at your disposal and what is included in the price that comes with these services.

Another great thing is to ask how you are going to be billed. Some companies will bill by the recipient’s number, while others will bill in a monthly or yearly format.

When you have all of this information in front of you, then you will be able to understand what you should expect from an email marketing company. You can use it as the basis for choosing an email service.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Benefits of Automotive Email Marketing

August 11, 2020Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

Automotive Email Marketing

Automotive email marketing for dealership businesses is an effective strategy to drive sales. Car dealerships reap benefits from email marketing strategies because it is relatively inexpensive to send out multiple emails to a targeted customer base. Email marketing campaigns are also an effective way for your dealership to reach potential car buyers in your designated target area (DMA’s). A campaign that includes driving down car prices will not work in a low price economy. By sending an email to your target market, you can establish a good relationship and rapport with these car buyers, increasing sales revenue.

An email list of potential customers for your car dealer is beneficial because it allows your dealership to make more referrals. You can also use this list to build trust and rapport with current customers by sending promotional messages, or updates on specials. This is an excellent way for you to stay ahead of the competition in your local area.

Most importantly, a large email list is beneficial because the list is made up of people who are interested in buying a vehicle from your auto manufacturer. In a competitive market place, having people who are interested in your products and services can be very beneficial. In addition, many people who sign up for email lists will become repeat customers.

A dealership using an auto manufacturer as an email list will help your business be more competitive because you will have more people interested in your products and services. These people are not necessarily new customers but people who have purchased vehicles from your auto manufacturer before. This allows you to gain access to the information needed to better serve them.

The list of potential customers who sign up for auto dealer lists is important because you will want to contact each of these people to create relationships with them. With the right follow-up communication, you can increase their likelihood of purchasing from you and, therefore, increasing your sales revenue. Automotive email marketing is beneficial for both you as the dealership and the vehicle manufacturers because it helps your dealership grow their customer base.

When you set up an auto dealer list, you must remember to maintain good relationships with the people on your list. Do not forget to ask them about their experiences and opinions with your dealership. This ensures that your list will remain strong and is maintained properly.

To get the most benefits from an auto dealer list, you should send out a newsletter to your list. This newsletter will be used to keep customers informed of upcoming specials and sales. If you have multiple email lists, this newsletter will be sent to all of the lists. For example, if you own three separate email lists, you can send a newsletter to all three email addresses.

Once you begin sending newsletters, encourage your subscribers to tell others about your dealership by posting them on your websites and forums. This is an excellent way for your dealership to establish trust and rapport with your subscribers.

When you use the benefits of auto dealer lists, you will also benefit by creating a long-term relationship with your customers. This is beneficial because it allows you to provide them with ongoing services like the newsletters you send out, as well as any discounts or specials that may be available to them.

As you continue to build relationships with your customers, they are more likely to become repeat customers. It may take a while for these relationships to reach full capacity, but, if you maintain good relationships, you will eventually develop a loyal following of customers who will keep coming back to your dealership in the future.

Automotive email marketing can have many advantages for you and for the auto manufacturer. By using the list, you can build your business and, drive new clients to your dealership and build relationships that will ultimately help you build long-term relationships that you can then use to sell more vehicles to your customers.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

The Benefits Of Automotive E-mail Marketing

July 22, 2020Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

Sending an email is first and foremost the cheapest if not a cheaper way of communicating. With the element of having the essence of a more personal tone and touch the email marketing tool is able to deliver this sentiment quite well.

Using email as a communicating factor for marketing creates the circumstances for the user to deliver the message to the target audience directly instead of having the viewer search for it on the internet.

Doing it right can ensure that automotive email marketing as a tool is an asset to building a respectable number of customers and to keeping then loyal.

There are several types of automotive email marketing styles some of which include direct email, retention email, and advertising by tagging on other people’s email.

All of these, when applied to the correct target audience can generate the desired interest in any product or service.

Direct mail involves sending a promotional message in the form of an email to the target audience. These emails may be about special offers being featured or the launching of new products.

This more personal approach gives the impression of making the customer feel privileged.
Retention email is designed to only encourage the recipient to take action in the form of buying or signing up for something.

In this instance too the recipient is made to feel privileged to be on the list of selected clients.

Advertising on other people’s email is also another way of using the email marketing feature as a tool. Here the user tags their products or services onto the advertisement of more established players for a fee.

This will ensure the user is able to reach the target audience of the established entity.

As in anything one always looks for the benefits before making the decision to use any marketing tool. Besides this, the marketing tool must be compatible with the product itself.

As the internet is a very important tool to reach large amounts of viewers, choosing to use automotive email marketing could prove to be viable indeed.

The most important benefit evident is the fact that every corner of the world can be reached through automotive email marketing. There are no limitations to using email marketing to reach the target audience.

The relatively low cost involved in using email marketing makes it a very popular tool for creating a direct contact factor. This is better than having to expose the product or service to a wide viewing audience who may not even bother to open the site. Less time and effort is necessary for this style of marketing.

Creating an interactive platform is also another benefit of email marketing. Using campaigns that are innovative and audience-focused will ensure the recipient’s attention.

Adding the factor of being more personalized further ensures a certain level of loyalty between both parties.
There are no time constraints when using email marketing as the recipient can view the mails at their convenience and comfort. This then also allows for the circumstance where fairly immediate responses can be seen. In comparison, other tools may take longer and thus creating an unacceptable timeline of delays and disappointments.

The simplicity factor should be overlooked when it comes to choosing the most appropriate tool to use. Sitting in the comforts of home this exercise can be carried out with a minimal amount of fuss and accompanying resources.
Using email marketing also provides for the Opt-in and unsubscribed options. This allows the user to target only those who are genuinely interested in what is being offered.

Large and small businesses all around the world are using email marketing as a tool to increase sales and bring in a high revenue percentage. Comparatively easier to use and definitely more effective in reaching the target audience email marketing is fast making an impact in the business world.

However, as is all things good there should careful thought and implementation methods to ensure email marketing tool is used effectively.

Below are some of the relevant facts that should be considered when deciding to use the email marketing tool:

• Having sound knowledge and a very clear plan on which the desired target audience is very important to the success of using email marketing.

This tool only works when it is specifically directed to the recipients who would have some level of interest in the product or service being offered.
• Another area to consider is understanding the statistics, metrics, and analytics involved in automotive email marketing. There is documented proof on the reasons most people ignore these emails and some of which are because the content is repetitive and boring and also because the email is too frequent.
• Understanding that the process of attracting the customer to the actual purchasing stage consists of only a small window, the pitch and signing up steps must also be very short and simple.

Most target viewers’ attention spans are rather short, thus the key to keeping the attention is to ensure speed and simplicity. Using other tools like RSS URLs to RSS directories is also helpful.

• Making use of other media tools to enhance the overall process or experience is also something that should be explored to ensure the effectiveness of email marketing.

Social media networks like Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, and others should be underestimated in its capabilities to be an added source of connecting to potential customers.

With the huge number of options available in the market, today choosing to use email marketing is one way of ensuring the best strategies to making money online are followed. There are many reasons why email marketing is a better option to choose when a comparison is made against other tools currently available.

Here are some of the ways to ensure the optimum amount of money is made by using the email marketing tool:

• Understanding the market environment the individual is about to address to garner sales is very important to the success rate derived using the email marketing method.

The wisest way is to select and send to only a niche group that would most likely be interested in the service or product being offered. Choosing to email randomly is not only unwise but a total waste of time and effort. Take the time to draw up a targeted Opt-in email list.

• The next step would be the challenge of getting and holding the attention of the recipient of the email in order to encourage the desired effect of garnering a successful sale.

The content of the email must be exciting and attractive in order to be able to achieve this. Avoid lengthy and boring written material as no one really wants to take the time to read anything that is too long.

• Some experts advocate the repeat formula, but this is a rather contradictory area. For those who do, the idea is to keep reminding the recipient of the missed opportunity should he or she decide not to purchase the product or service being advertised.

• Having an effective auto-responder in place is also something to consider. This is a great tool for emailing, organizing, and generally keeping track of the email list accurately and easily.

This is most helpful when the target audience base is rather large and the individual needs some kind of feedback regarding the recipients who are more receptive.

As the already elevated stakes in the fierce search engine wars are being advanced by the day, more and more webmasters are seeking non-SEO ways to yield traffic to their web sites. Email offers numerous extremely effective ways of yielding traffic to any web site.

Directly when you mention the word e-mail, the first thought that comes to the minds of most individuals is illegal SPAM or unsolicited e-mail messages which are such a pain and are now illegal in most parts of the globe.

But, there are a lot of perfectly legal and acceptable ways to yield traffic for a site utilizing e-mail.

E-mail signature files are likely the most underutilized net marketing tool. The fact is that most webmasters undervalue the true power of that petite, subtle ad message that may be set to go out with each e- mail message that you send.

A lot of them forget that there are gobs of success stories that illustrate simply how effective e-mail signatures may be. Likely the most famous is how Hotmail, the popular free e-mail service, grew from zip to millions of users inside a really short time, utilizing e-mail signatures as their only marketing instrument. Every e-mail sent out had an easy e-mail signature at the bottom inviting folks to open up their free e-mail address.

Confessedly, composing effective e-mail signatures isn’t easy. Still, there’s plenty of gratis data on the subject available online.

Anyone with a net presence must perpetually build an opt-in e-mail list. This is supposed to be returned from visitors to your web site.

This opt-in e-mail list may then be utilized to help you build a relationship with your list of leads – as that’s what they truly are. Regular e-mails of interesting data ought to likewise include all sorts of alluring promotions to get people to re-visit your site over and over.

There’s no other more effective way of holding high targeted traffic to any web site.

There are measures of targeted safelists that anyone may join that let you send out your e-mail ads and promotions to members. By linking up with a few, you may easily find yourself in a spot where you’re sending out your ad message to a million individuals. You may join these lists at Yahoo groups or Google groups amid a host of additional popular safe list sources.

Constantly remember to set up a separate e-mail account for your safelists as you’ll likewise tend to get vast volumes of e-mail messages from the other members.

The chief challenge with safe list advertising is that you have to come up with the kind of headlines (that appears in the e-mail subject area) that will get your e-mail opened up and finally read. A dim headline will mean that barely anyone will wind up reading your e-mail and consequently the reaction to your e-mail ads and promotions will be zilch. On the other hand, potent headlines will win you a vast reaction.

The additional thing you’ll need to be heedful about is to ensure that you join relevant safelists and groups that are destined to be the most responsive to your e-mail messages and forwardings.

Rather than distributing advertisements through e-mail groups and safelists, you may distribute valuable promotional articles instead. All you have to do is join groups that allow article posts.

Posting articles to these e-zine lists is extremely effective as some of them have 1000s of members whom you’ll reach when your articles are published in them.

Articles tend to have a much bigger audience than ads or promotions distributed thru the same groups or safelists.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Automotive Email Success

June 6, 2020Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

Automotive Email Marketing

Email marketing for automotive dealers isn’t a new concept.

In fact, compared to other online marketing channels like social media, mobile device applications, and even search engines (Automotive SEO), email marketing might seem a bit outdated.

A lot has been happening over the past few years with email marketing, and the discipline is still always in motion. Altered behaviors and expectations by consumers call for new email marketing methods. Approaches like personalization and segmentation are transforming company newsletters from anonymous bulk emails into customized emails.

Today, most consumers read their emails on their mobile devices, and checking for emails has become the most common activity carried out by smartphone users. The competition for attention in consumers’ email inboxes is forcing more companies to attach increasing importance to well-designed emails that are personalized and have relevant content, ensuring that the emails will be opened and read.

Statistics show that email marketing has a broad reach, as well as being one of the best marketing tactics for return on investment. Just about everyone has an email address these days, and the majority of users prefer to receive advertising messages that way.

Plus, with smartphones, emails are always right in the pocket of consumers and can be retrieved at any time. According to recent estimates, the importance of email marketing will continue to grow over the next few years. It’s clear that any online marketing strategy your company employs should include email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing requires more than just sending out the occasional newsletter. Today, marketers also need to set up and maintain subscriber lists, create and design relevant emails, and send these out systematically.

For your email marketing strategy to be effective and successful, it is imperative that you utilize the technical options available continuously to optimize the process through the use of modern analytical tools.

Despite the widespread use of the digital juggernaut that is email, many dealers have yet to implement an effective email marketing strategy for their dealership because they don’t know how to do it or haven’t yet recognized how powerful it can be.

Email continues to serve as the core communication platform of the Internet and will only continue to grow. Currently, more than 3.7 billion people have access to email, and more than 3 billion non-spam emails are sent and received every hour of every day.

If your dealership isn’t already taking advantage of this powerful and massive marketing channel, you’re missing out on an effective way to reach your target audience.

What’s Email Marketing and Why Your Dealership Needs It

Email marketing is a kind of Internet marketing that allows the user to send customized messages in the form of an email to their readers to inform, advertising, or to solicit certain actions from their readers.

There are certain essential components of email marketing that include:

- Message Automation
- HTML Responsive Layout
- Advance List Maintenance
- CAN-SPAM Compliance Built-In
- An Easy Integration
- A Dedicated IP Address
- Help for Deliverability

Message Automation

The message automation is the feature of email marketing that allows you to send different emails in response to a particular action. If a consumer just signed up for a discount, they will receive an automatic welcome message that will serve as a confirmation of the subscription. Message automation can also be set up to send proof of orders when someone makes a purchase on your website.

HTML Responsive Layout

The HTML Responsive layout will allow you to send customized emails in plain text or HTML format. It also allows you to make use of HTML and CSS to create responsive templates that can adapt to all devices in the world.

This makes email marketing campaigns capable of being read on mobile devices. The good part is that you don’t have to learn how to code HTML because this feature is automatically loaded with the software.

Advanced List Maintenance

This feature allows dealers to add and remove email subscribers from your list quickly. You can use this feature to automate subscription and opt-outs. It helps you keep your email lists updated.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

This is a feature that is designed to check compliance with the unsolicited pornography and marketing, CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This act has given the United States Federal Trade Commission the right to enforce all necessary standards to protect email owners from unsolicited content like pornography.

Easy Integration Feature

This feature allows for the integration of other services into your email marketing campaign. You can incorporate your dealership website with your email campaigns through this feature, and you can also include several mobile apps, loyalty programs, and social media apps to your email marketing campaign.

You can connect Google Analytics accounts to your email campaign through the Easy Integration feature so you can track the clicks on your email, as well as incorporate product recommendation features into the email, through the use of this feature.

Dedicated IP Address

A dedicated IP address is incredibly essential for the integrity of your email. This IP address should be one that is solely dedicated to your dealership, and it should be the only one used to send emails to potential customers. Your email recipients will have peace of mind when they receive your emails with this dedicated IP address.

Deliverability

Deliverability is a feature that is included in an email marketing software that ensures that your emails are delivered to the right place. If your emails aren’t delivered, then your marketing strategy just won’t work. This features constantly deploy the tools that you need to track down deliverability issues with your emails.

Why Your Dealership Should Implement Email Marketing

Email provides you with the opportunity to send a message to your audience for any purpose on any day of the year that costs you next to nothing. This makes email an incredibly powerful way to communicate with your target audience.

When you are able to create a solid email marketing campaign and send the right messages to the right people at the right time, you are sure to build an audience of highly engaged fans that can’t wait for your next message to hit their inboxes. Additionally, they are ready to buy whenever you have a product or service to promote. There are several compelling reasons why you need to start implementing email marketing for your dealership.

Generates Massive ROI

A recent study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association found that some businesses will earn an average of $43.00 for every dollar invested in email marketing.

In fact, marketers have consistently ranked email marketing as the single most effective strategy for generating awareness, acquiring leads, generating sales, and improving customer retention, compared to the other marketing strategies most commonly employed.

Generates Long-Term Results

In 2000, the company MarketBeat first started collecting opt-ins for their newsletters. Two decades later a good number of subscribers that signed up during the first year continue to read their content, engage with their advertisers, and buy products and services from their business. Your email list is a long-term asset that will continue to generate revenue and social capital for your dealership well into the future.

Most Customers Want Email from Companies

MarketingSherpa conducted a study that showed that 72 percent of U.S. consumers say that email is their favorite way to communicate with the companies that they do business with. They also discovered that 61 percent of consumers like to receive weekly promotional emails from their favorite brands, while 28 percent of consumers would like to receive promotional emails more frequently.

Additionally, 70 percent of consumers say they will always open email from their favorite companies, and 95 percent of people who opted in to receive an email from brands say that the marketing emails they receive are incredibly useful.

Outperforms Social Media Marketing

A recent study found that dealers are more than 40 times likely to create a new customer from email marketing than they are through social media. When it comes to email marketing, many marketers feel that it delivers a better return on investment than social media marketing.

Email is Universal

Almost 87 percent of the U.S. population has access to the Internet in their home, and 95 percent of consumers use email. With email marketing, you don’t have to worry whether or not your target audience has an email address or not, unlike social media.

It’s a Resilient Technology

An email has existed in its current format since the early 1980s, a full 15 years before most homes had a personal computer and Internet access, and 25 years before the first iPhone was released. Despite the world’s massive amount of technological progress and the proliferation of smartphones, personal computers, and tablets, the technical specifications for email have only been updated a handful of times.

While other communication technologies have come and gone, email continues to withstand the test of time. When your dealership invests in email marketing, you know that a bigger and better thing won’t replace it in the next couple of years.

Email Marketing Is Federated

When you build an audience on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, you are at the mercy of companies whose best interests aren’t aligned with yours.

You can put a lot of time, energy, and money into building an audience on one of these platforms only to have that platform change the rules in a way that kills the profitability of your campaign. That will never be the case with email because no one company has control of the technical specifications for email or control over the technology infrastructure that allows email to be delivered to the world’s six billion inboxes.

Email marketing will continue to be one of the most effective and most resilient marketing strategies for dealerships. It is hard to match the potential ROI offered by email marketing, and you can rest assured that your efforts will continue to generate revenue well into the future.

Getting Started with Email Marketing

When it comes to starting an email marketing campaign, there are specific steps that you should follow if you want to be successful.

You need to establish clear goals and objectives, build your automotive marketing email lists, choose the type of email campaign that you want to send, create and design your first email campaign, and measure your mail campaign results.

Establishing Your Goals and Objectives

Like with any marketing strategy, you need to develop clear goals and understand your objectives before you dive in headfirst. Before you sign up for an email marketing tool, you have to clearly set out what it is you want to achieve with the emails that you want to send to your target audience. You want to make sure that your email marketing campaign aligns with your broader business goals and objectives.

For instance, your dealership goals might be to attract new leads to sign up for your branded products and services, or perhaps to get more attendees to attend your company events, or maybe you are looking to get more donations for a specific cause. Whatever your overall business goals are, you have to make sure you take the time to think about how you are going to use your email marketing campaign to reach those goals.

Building Your Dealer Email Lists

After you’ve established your email marketing campaign goals and objectives, you can start to create your email lists so you can start sending out your email marketing campaigns. There are several ways that you can go about building your email lists. The first option is by importing emails from known contacts.

These are typically the details that you have on your existing customers that you can import into your email marketing tool. You can either manually enter these addresses into your email marketing software, or you can link your email marketing tool to your email account to automatically extract the information.

Another option that you may want to consider is to build an entirely new list of emails from scratch. If you don’t have any new contacts currently, you might want to head over to social media to try and entice people from your network to subscribe to your email list by providing them with special discounts or freebies.

You can also utilize your company’s website for this as well. You need to make sure that you write compelling content that will get your audience to take action, as well as offering an exclusive first order discount or a freebie for those people who submit their emails from your website or social media network.

Choose the Type of Campaign You Want to Send

You can maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign by following the ten most common and popular formats of emails. These formats have been tested for years and are practiced by top dealerships.

Each format is unique and has a distinctive purpose, which attracts the interest of different kinds of audiences. Whichever format you choose, each will generate its own kind of reaction.

Newsletters

Newsletters are used for company information, upcoming events, etc. The typical format consists of two columns: one narrow column with a table of contents, logos, sponsors, and feature articles, and another wider column with stories and original communication articles and materials.

If there is more than one article, then it’s better to use section breaks to make it look smart and eye-catching. You can even put a Read More or Learn More button at the end of each article for detailed information for readers who are interested to know more.

Events and Invitations

This type of email is time-sensitive, so you have to be aware of the perfect timing. There should be a buffer of at least a month after an event/invitation email is sent so that your subscribers can decide and make time to prepare.

Every event/invitation email must contain call-to-action buttons, such as a Save to Calendar button, Register for Event button, which will redirect them to another site consisting of forms and Post-Event Feedback Survey Form button for your company’s convenience.

You can also send your audience event details after the event date to all those subscribers who showed interest in the event email, both the attendees and the non-attendees. You may have to send dozens of emails before, during, and after the event, so keep your emails short and to the point.

Promotions

This format is used for promotional discounts and special sales of your products and services. You can highlight Limited Edition or Stock Limited products in these emails and get a quick response from your customers. You can also put a call-to-action button like Book Now or Order Now if you are an e-Commerce store.

Setting a deadline on the offer in the email gives the customers that extra push to use the offer right on the spot. Your email marketing campaign will be highly successful if you can make your customers buy products directly from the promotional email.

Press Releases

If you want to share any dealership information, like the latest dealer partnerships, new General Manager, Sales Manager, or new product launches to the local media, then you have to follow the press release format of the email. For this kind of email only, you should make a separate email list where there are just a few addresses for the local media outlets.

Press release emails are different than other formats because others will use it as a reference when they show this information on TV or in the newspaper. Magazines and news portals will write an article based on the information that is contained in your press release, so you need to make sure that it is full of valuable information and that it is share-worthy. There are four sections in a press release: the headline, the body, any statement or quote, and an “about” section.

Announcements

This is similar to a press release, but the audience you will send these emails to is entirely different. Mainly the customers and those who are interested in your company’s latest updates are the ones that should get announcement emails.

Announcements could be moving into a new location, product updates, or upcoming product launch information. Only facts and specific information are put in announcements emails, so there is no need for any call-to-action button.

Holiday Greetings

You can design and use special email templates during the holidays, such as one for Halloween, Christmas, or New Year’s. Nowadays you can use special HTML or GIF images to make your greeting cards more interesting.

Currently, many ESPs allow you to track customer’s birthdays so you can even send them a birthday wish email on their special day. This can help to boost your image and prove that you care about your customers.

Welcome Note

You can set an automated system to send a welcome email to new customers that have recently registered and subscribed to your email service. With a simple “Hello X! Welcome to Y” message you can create a friendly atmosphere with your new customers.

Thank You Email

When you reach a certain level and have hundreds of loyal customers that are buying your products and using your services for years, it’s important to show them appreciation. Every year or even twice a year, you should send out thank you emails to your loyal customers.

Most of the time, companies send thank you emails on the day when the company itself was founded. It shows you appreciate your customers and it allows them to feel a deeper connection with your brand.

Notification/Reminder Emails

These kinds of emails remind subscribers about any renewal notifications or service reminder notifications. These kinds of emails typically don’t require a call-to-action button to be placed in the body of the email.

Certifications and Confirmation Emails

You would typically only send this type of email for verification of certain agreement forms and certifications, which require step-by-step tasks. You must make these steps as easy as possible by including several call-to-action buttons. The “I have read the terms and conditions and agree” type of email falls under this category.

Creating Your First Email Marketing Campaign

The first step that you must take when you create your first email marketing campaign is to structure it for easy reading. With adult attention spans getting shorter and shorter, it is essential that you create emails that are easy for the average adult to get through. You want to create a precise copy for the sole purpose of driving your audience toward the final call-to-action.

Next, you are going to want to customize your email campaign. You can utilize a segmented list or even the third-party integration that comes with most email marketing programs to personalize your campaign.

To encourage more interaction with your campaign customization, you want to make sure that you add the individual name on the subject line to attract the reader’s attention, and then create copy that includes relevant information based on their interests.

You want to make sure that you are using all of the data the subscriber provides when the sign up to determine the kind of content you want to send them.

You also need to make sure that your email campaign makes it extremely easy to convert the reader to a new lead or customer. You need to ensure that your email campaign is easy to read since more than 40 percent of readers open their emails on a mobile device. This means it’s essential that your email campaign is compatible with mobile devices.

Building Your Mailing List

If you want to develop a successful email marketing campaign, you will need to develop a consistent strategy for building and growing your email list. One of the foundational elements of any list-building initiative should be collecting email sign-ups on your website.

People who are interested in your business are probably already visiting your site often. That’s why you should be using your website as one of the primary ways to gather email sign-ups.

Lead Magnets

In exchange for signing up for your email list, you need to offer your subscribers something of value. This can be a resource list, a discount coupon, or a free report. In the world of email marketing, this is known as a lead magnet.

Many website visitors are hesitant to enter their email addresses into an opt-in form on a website because of the perceived risk of receiving more unwanted spam emails. However, if you develop a compelling and valuable offer so that potential subscribers will desire your lead magnet enough to outweigh any possible fear of receiving more unwanted email.

Your subscribers know that their email address is valuable to you, and you need to offer them something of equal value in return.

A good lead magnet will help your website visitors learn a specific skill, accomplish a particular task, or solve a specific problem. The lead magnet on any given page of your website should be directly related to the content on that page.

While you may be required to create multiple lead magnets for different parts of your site over time, the additional work will be well worth it when you significantly improve your opt-in rates.

Here are a few common varieties of lead magnets that you can include to help build and grow your email list.

Free Report or Guide

These are the most common kinds of lead magnet that are used to gain new email subscribers. The report or guide that you offer should help your audience learn about something they are interested in or help them accomplish a specific goal.

For example, if you had a website about marketing, you might offer a free guide that helps your audience create their first Facebook ad campaign. The content of your free report should not otherwise be available on your website.

Resource List

A resource list is merely a list of products, services, tools, and worksheets that will help your subscribers get started more quickly with what you want to teach them. If you have a personal finance blog, you might provide new subscribers with a list of software budgeting tools and resources to help them keep track of their debt, ensure they have the right kinds of insurance, and determine whether they are saving enough for retirement.

Messaging and Copy

After you’ve determined the lead magnet that you are going to use, you will need to identify the kind of message you are going to use to get your potential subscribers to sign up for your mailing list.

The language that you use on your opt-in forms will have a significant impact on the number of email signups you receive. By creating a compelling and relevant offer, and using strong language with clear calls-to-action, your opt-in rates will be much higher.

While other list-building strategies might require an upfront cash investment, subscribers that opt-in through your website are effectively free. If you spend sufficient time writing compelling copy, creating a highly-desirable lead magnet, and implementing an opt-in form plugin, your mailing list will steadily grow over time.

Writing Emails That Will Inspire Your Audience to Take Action

Undoubtedly, you’ve written thousands of emails in your life. You probably regularly send and receive emails from your family, friends, coworkers, and even strangers on a regular basis. While writing an email to anyone person is a straightforward proposition, sending an email to a large group of people requires an entirely different set of skills.

You need to be able to craft a message that not only attracts the attention of a diverse audience, but also clearly communicates a single object and inspires the readers to take the desired action, and it all must be done without the use of audio, video, images, and other dynamic content. You also have to figure out how to deal with the technical peculiarities of email, avoid spam filters, and maintain compliance with anti-spam laws. Writing effective emails is both a science and an art.

Understanding Your Audience

You have to understand who your audience is if you want to write to them effectively. You need to know how old your typical subscribers are, what they do for a living, their gender if they are married, and a ton of other demographics. If you don’t know these things, then you should conduct a survey and ask people to share their information with you so that you have a better idea of who makes up your email list.

It is highly recommended that you create a fictional character that epitomizes your typical customer. This is known as an avatar. By creating an avatar, you will have a better idea of who you are marketing to, and it will allow you to get inside the minds of your subscribers.

When you write an email to your mailing list, write as if you are sending a personal message to your avatar. Ask yourself what your avatar would like to hear in order to take action based on your email.

When you write to your avatar and use a lot of “you” language, your subscribers will subconsciously think that your email was explicitly written to them and they will be more likely to engage with the message. You need to keep the focus on your subscribers as much as possible, making sure to make your emails about them, and not about you.

Parts of an Email

When you are getting ready to put together an email, it is easy to think that the only thing that you have to worry about is writing the message body. However, there are several different components of every message that you send to your list.

If you want your email marketing campaign to be successful, then you need to put as much thought and effort into the other parts of your email as you do the main message body. Here are the components of an email that are key.

Subject Line

This is the subject of your message. It is the first thing that your subscribers will see, and it is what will determine whether or not they open your message.

Preheader

The preheader is the preview text that is included after the subject line in some email services like Gmail. It can serve as a second subject line that should further encourage the reader to open your email. If you don’t intentionally add a preheader, most email services will use the first sentence or two of your email as a preheader.

“From” Name

This is the name of the person who is sending the email. You want to use your personal name rather than the name of your company because most email users are more likely to open an email from an actual person.

Message Body

This is the main text of your email. It will contain the message that you want to convey to your subscribers.

Call-to-Action

This will be a hyperlink situated at the bottom of your message body that will persuade readers to take a specific action, such as clicking on the hyperlink.

Signature

You want to keep your email signature simple. Long email signatures can be a distraction to the main content of your email. The best signature is your personal name on the first line and the name of your company on the following line.

Postscript

You may want to consider periodically using a ”P.S.” below your email signature to serve as a secondary sales tool after your primary email.

Footer

The footer will typically contain an unsubscribe link and other information that you need to include to stay compliant with anti-spam laws. This might include your mailing address and the name of your company. The footer will likely be the same for every email that you send out.

Keeping Your Emails Balanced

While you will send your audience emails for a variety of reasons, you need to maintain a healthy balance between sending emails that provide value to your audience and email that take value away.

Emails that contain information that is helpful to your audience, at no cost to them, such as educational content, tips, resources, and training videos, provide value to your audience. Emails that ask our audience to purchase a product or take action that benefits you more than them will take value from your audience.

You should consider sending at least two value-added emails to your audience, for every one email that takes it from them. Ideally, you will provide so much value to your audience that they respond to your sales and marketing emails out of sheer gratitude for the value you have already provided.

Writing Great Subject Lines

The most important words that you will write as part of your email marketing strategy is your subject lines. If you write a subject line that is uninspired and doesn’t grab the attention of your subscribers, they probably won’t open your message.

According to a recent report, 64 percent of people say that they will choose to open an email because of the subject line. If you write a compelling subject line, you are guaranteed to receive higher open rates, which will lead to more click-throughs and more sales.

A well-written subject line can often receive double the open rates of a poorly-written one, which will, in turn, double your click-through rates and double the sales generated by the email.

There are also a number of techniques that you can use to modify subject lines to emphasize words and to make unsaid promises about the content of your message.

If you are going to use any of these various techniques, it is essential that you switch them up from email to email and don’t use any one of the methods more than twice each month. Subscribers will notice these patterns if you use them too often and will render them ineffective.

Best Practices to Follow with Your Email

When you are creating an email, there are several best practices that you should follow in order to obtain the best results.

Don’t Rely on Images

Approximately 10-30 percent of your readers will never click “enable images” on your emails. This means that you should never rely on images to convey critical points in your copy. If you do decide to use pictures, make sure that you use clear and descriptive ALT text. You can use CSS styling to make your ALT text larger and more visible to subscribers that don’t enable images.

Avoid Grammar and Spelling Errors

A huge turn off for many email subscribers is poor grammar, capitalization, and spelling errors. If you want to speak with expert authority to your audience, then you need to do so with clear and proper writing.

No one will believe you are an authority on anything if you can’t write a complete, grammar and spelling free sentence. Make sure you double-check every email you write for errors or consider having someone else check your email before you send it out.

Include Multiple Hyperlinks

If you have a specific link that you want your readers to click on, then you need to add a total of three hyperlinks to every email. Be sure to hyperlink your main call-to-action at the bottom of your message, as well as just above your email signature.

You also want to add hyperlinks to a few relevant words in the first paragraph of your email to direct readers to the page on your site that you want them to visit. Finally, you need to include a second call-to-action below your email signature and in any postscript that you add in the emails.

Avoid Design-Heavy Emails

Subscribers are more likely to read emails that come from a person rather than a faceless company. While companies frequently use templates in their email, people rarely do. You want to try to avoid using design-heavy templates so that your emails appear more personal.

Only Use One Call-to-Action Per Email

You don’t want to try to get your subscribers to do multiple things in any single email. Each email that you send out to your list should have a sole purpose and a single call-to-action that you want them to take. Readers will be less likely to respond if they have to consider which, if any, of your calls-to-action they wish to take.

Have a Clear Unsubscribe Link

Don’t try to high or obscure your unsubscribe link. Have a clear unsubscribe link in an average font size. If you decide to obscure your unsubscribe link, your subscribers may report your message as spam, which puts you in jeopardy with your email service provider if your account receives too many spam complaints.

Copywriting is a skill that will take some time to master. For the first several months, the emails that you send won’t be perfect, and that’s okay. Over time your copywriting skills will improve, and you’ll eventually become a great copywriter whose emails get results.

Measuring Results and Optimizing Your Strategy

In order to determine whether or not your email marketing campaigns are working, you need to analyze the data from your campaigns. The marketing measures, when all is said and done, always serve to achieve a pre-defined goal, and whether or not you’ve achieved that goal can only be determined by using the proper KPIs (key performance indicators).

The results that you obtain can also help you to decide whether you can expand your budget for your email marketing strategy.

Also, data analysis is an essential part of being able to optimize your email marketing campaign continually. The only way that you’ll be able to gauge the success of your email marketing campaign at all is if you examine and analyze the most critical measurements on a regular basis.

Delivery Rate and Bounce Rates

Among other measurements, email marketing tools will measure the delivery rate, as well as the bounce rate of your emails. These two measurements are mutually complementary and depend on various factors such as technical conditions and sender reputation.

The bounce rate of your emails should always be less than one percent if you want to have a successful campaign. If your bounce rates are higher than this, then you’ll need to do some maintenance on your list, and determine which email addresses are no longer valid and remove them from the email list.

Open Rate

This refers to the percentage of subscribers who open the emails you send to them. This figure can be based either on the total number of emails opened, or the number of recipients who opened the email. The latter number is more meaningful and is known as a “unique open rate.”

Click Rate

The click rate represents the ratio between the recipients who click on at least one link in an email and the number of emails sent out. You can use this measurement to determine whether your email copy and call-to-actions are compelling enough to get users to take action. This is the most crucial measurement for you to keep track of in your email marketing campaign.

Click-to-Open Rate

This measurement is the ratio of the number of unique clicks to the number of unique opens. The reference value, in this case, is not based on the total number of recipients, but rather the number of recipients who opened the email.

If your click-to-open rates (CTOR) are low, it could mean that the content of the email isn’t fulfilling the expectations raised by its subject line. This means that a large number of your subscribers opened the email, but found the content of the email to be uninteresting and didn’t click on any of the links.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is the percentage of recipients that executed the desired action at the end of the pregistering for a webinar. You can use this measurement to determine the final success of your email marketing campaign.

Unsubscribe Rate

It is quite reasonable with email subscribers to unsubscribe to an email list because they don’t want to get news from the company anymore. The unsubscribe rate describes the ratio of unsubscribes to the total number of emails delivered.

You can typically expect to have an unsubscribe rate of about 0.25 to 0.50 percent for each mailing. As stated previously, it is essential that you include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in every email and to implement an unsubscribe process that is clean and simple.

Email List Growth Rate

The email list growth rate indicates the net increase in the number of email subscribers within a given period. This value is accordingly negative in cases when a mailing list shrinks.

Spam Complaint Rate

This measurement shows how many delivered emails were marked as spam. Your spam complaint rate shouldn’t go higher than 0.3 percent. Anything higher than that and you can expect process. This could be anything from purchasing a product, downloading an e-book, or mail providers to institute penalties when you try to deliver future emails.

Return on Investment

Your return on investment (ROI), is the financial ratio that is used to measure the return of an entrepreneurial strategy. This measurement compares the profit to the invested capital. When used in email marketing, the term refers to the ratio of the costs required for an email marketing measure to the revenue generated by it.

Defining Your Goals

Before you send out your first emails and start analyzing the results, you need to determine the goals of your email marketing and what you are going to measure. You can set goals like gaining new customers, increasing revenue, or raising brand awareness, or it can be a combination of goals. In order for you to define concrete goals, you are also going to need to establish the appropriate KPIs.

Measurements like click rate, conversion rate, and email list growth rate should always be on your list of metrics to analyze. However, you also need to specify and track the correct KPIs depending on the goals you want to accomplish. For example, if your goal is to gain more subscribers, then you need to focus on the email growth rate, as well as the subscribe/unsubscribe rates. If your number one goal is to increase revenue, then you need to focus on conversion rate.

Continuous Optimization

Analyzing the data associated with your email marketing campaigns is a never-ending process. They should be used to uncover potential areas for improvement in your email marketing campaigns and should immediately flow into planning for your subsequent campaigns.

You will need to compare the measurement results that are achieved by your different email campaigns to get a better sense of what did and didn’t work.

As you optimize your email marketing campaign, try different subject lines, sending the emails at different times, placing different call-to-action buttons, and so on, until you find a formula that works. If you discover that specific measurement results aren’t satisfactory, then you need to do some digging to find out the cause so you can further optimize your emails to obtain the desired results.

Conclusion

When you are getting started with email marketing, you have to pay special attention to your audience. Since each of your subscribers will have different needs and interests, it is essential that you analyze your data and effectively create a variety of different strategies that you can implement to influence your audience to purchase what you have to offer.

Make sure that you are providing your readers with exciting, dynamic, and relevant content to keep your audience happy to receive your messages.

Remember email marketing is an ongoing process to try not to get too frustrated if you don’t see immediate results. Your subscribers are knowledgeable, and you will have to work hard to provide them with valuable information and make the connection before you can influence them to make a purchase.

If you make the commitment to implement great business practices, and the more you deliver on your promises, the more your subscribers will trust you, this is the best time to implement email marketing into your overall marketing strategy because the information is readily available, and you have many ways to obtain new subscribers and further promote your business.

Taking the time to implement the strategies in this book will help you become a notable email marketer for your dealership.

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Ways to Drive More Site Traffic

June 6, 2020Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Drive More Site Traffic

As we know, SEO is short for search engine optimization.

This is the very complex yet very visible way of accessing automotive web sites within the organic or non-paid realm of Google search results.

Simply put in its literal sense, is that the more visits or “hits” the more visible the dealer site would be when a search is applied.

Here we are going to review some ideas to help your dealership with traffic to your site.

Create a Facebook Page

Studies have shown that people are spending more time on Facebook than any other website on the internet. By being in front of such potential customers, you have the best chance of being seen. Create a Dealership Facebook Page for your website and install a “Like Box” into your website so that your visitors will know you are on Facebook and join as a follower on your Facebook Page.

Write a Roundup Post

A roundup post is an entry that speaks about a group of people in your dealership niche. This strategy is used to build relationships with influencers. Let them know that you are reaching out to them and promoting their content. More often than not, this leads to them returning you the favor by blogging or tweeting about you. If they are indeed influential in your niche, their return of favor will be sending massive traffic your way.

Produce Videos on YouTube

One of the largest search engines other than Google is none other than YouTube. Therefore, it is crucial to include YouTube in your arsenal of dealership traffic strategies. Create your own YouTube channel. Produce and upload automotive original videos with interesting content for your YouTube channel.

Using the “annotation” feature while editing YouTube videos, you can add a call to action for viewers to go to your dealership website URL.

Another strategy is to interlink your videos with annotations so as to pick up more views and more traffic. Optimize your YouTube channel by including a link back to your dealer website in the profile information on the left panel.

Write Guest Posts

Many bloggers or webmasters have audiences to their websites amounting more than just your own. Approach these people and ask them if they would like for you to write a post for their blog. This could focus on a particular model, vehicle, service or something related to the dealership.

Not only will you possibly get traffic flocking to your site, but it will also get you quality backlinks that will boost the ranking of your site on Google in the long run. In addition, you would have made a friend or friends and build relationships in the process.

Build an Email List

Building an email list enables you to drive traffic at the click of a button to a specific list. With a substantial number of automotive subscribers in your email list, you can also build a community around your site or even your vehicle niche and eventually will make sales after you have established a relationship with the individuals on your list.

However, it takes time, effort and the right strategies to attract people to subscribe to your list. Also, it is essential to use an email marketing service to build your email list.

Create Epic Content

This may seem somewhat obvious, but people love to read content that delivers immense value to them. Therefore, to attract the bulk of traffic to your website, your content must be well thought out and researched, outdoing dealership competitors’ efforts in a particular area.

Give Away Free Stuff

One very effective way of making your dealer content viral is to give away free stuff. You are able to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website, generate leads for your business, and even make sales later by giving away high-quality free stuff on the front end of your sales process. People love contests to win free water bottles, key chains, manufacturer focus trinkets, and maintenance services at the dealership.

Use Keywords in your Title Tags

If you want to get more traffic to your dealer website, it is crucial to know where all that traffic is coming from. The majority of online traffic finds content on search engines using keywords hence the first step to getting found on search engines is to include keywords into your website.

We call this process On-Page Search Engine Optimization. One element to include keywords in is in your title tag, the title of your website. There are many other elements to search engine optimization.

Retweet Contest

If your dealership is active on Twitter, you might have seen some of the marketing tactics in Twitter campaigns. One idea is that you could hold a contest to make the entry based on tweeting a certain link. Using backlink tweets, you can track those who have tweeted your link.

Setup Events On Facebook

Facebook events is an awesome application on Facebook that helps you to organize dealership events.

It is a great way to get more traffic because by leaving all the default settings the way they are – that is, allow guests to invite others, upload photos, write on the wall, etc., every one of these activities creates news items that go out into the feeds of those individuals and their friends. This means that your content or event will go viral very quickly on Facebook.

Add Your Site to Directories

Most online directories offer the free option to add your dealership URL to their listings. You will be able to pick up some high-quality backlinks by adding your site to directories. This is to get your site ranking well on Google.

Conduct Proper Keyword Research

Keyword research helps you to find relevant keywords that are high in demand but low in level competition.

Use the Google Keyword tool to gather this information and then use it for search engine optimization or cost per click campaigns to get your dealer website ranked to be found by prospective automotive customers.

Google AdWords

Pay Per Click advertising is also very effective in getting more traffic to your site. It is highly recommended if you have a sales funnel that more than pays for the cost of the traffic. Avoid PPC advertising if you do not have a product that you are already making sales with.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads allow you to target your specific market according to their demographics, geographical residence, and the users’ preferences. As a result of Facebook’s large user base, you have a large group to market to even if you narrow it down to your own dealership.

Set your Dealership with Google My Business

97% of consumers search for local businesses online. Therefore, your website will get
more traffic if you were to list it with Google My Business.

Give Out Swag with Your URL

If you are looking for an offline method to promote your dealership, consider giving out swag. Everyone loves swag. Make the swag you dish out as cool as possible so that people actually wear it.

Post Content on a Regular Basis

To generate a regular readership on your website, produce content regularly. Try to get your next few posts on standby so that you can always get your automotive content out on the same day even if your week gets crazy and you don’t have a chance to create new content.

Link to your site in your Email Signature

You can get traffic to your site with every email your dealership sends. Therefore, set up a custom signature with a link to your website for everybody in the dealership. In addition, have it as an anchor text with the title of your site, because in that way, there is a good chance that it will get clicked.

Customize your 404 error page

Suggest other content on your site to visitors with a custom designed 404 page. This is
so that even if they accidentally land on that page, they don’t bounce from your site. In most cases sending them to the homepage works best for dealer web sites.

Interlink your Pages

Create links that link internally within your dealership site because the more links you have within your content to other content on your dealer site the better your site will rank in Google. This will also mean more traffic for you. Hence, interlink the pages on your site as often as is relevant – meaning vehicles, models, services, and more!

Create a post “100 _____“ on anything

We all love lists. Examples of lists include 100 ways to improve fuel milage or ranking lists like the top most popular songs etc. Create lists on anything or to make it more effective, create lists of a topic that is currently trending and obviously fun.

Speed up your Website

When we talk about the internet, we are always talking about speed. When a dealership website takes more than a few seconds to load some potential customers will leave simply because they are impatient. Therefore speed up your website – it is key.

Optimize your images

Optimize your images by compressing their size, label their alt tags and title so that they
can be found by image search engines, such as Google Images, quickly and easily.

Build Backlinks

Link building is one of the surest ways to get your site ranked on Google so that you can direct massive amounts of traffic to your dealership site. However, when building backlinks, always keep in mind that it is the quality of links over the number of links.

One link from an authority site can do more for your site than 1,000 low-quality links.

Title Tag Optimization

Ensure that your title tags include keywords you are trying to rank on the Google search engine. By doing that, you increase the chances of ranking in Google and getting more traffic from searches containing those keywords.

Choose a Smart Domain

A domain name that contains the automotive keywords you are optimizing for actually gives you an advantage over everyone else trying to rank for those words.

Submit your Site to Search Engines

Again, may seem obvious but manually submit your new site to Google, Yahoo, and Bing to inform that to crawl it on a regular basis. For a WordPress blog, install and set up the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to enable crawling spiders to check out your site regularly.

Review Google Analytics and Optimize Your Site

Review Google Analytics to track variables that will give you insight into how to optimize your site. For WordPress bloggers, use the plugin Google Analyticator to easily install the Google Analytics tracking code.

One tip is that by looking at the exit paths of visitors, you can see which dealership pages should be tweaked to prevent people from bouncing from your site.

Often visitors end up on the site and look at particular vehicles – keep them engaged with other content to build a brand for the dealership. Next time they are think about what dealer to find their next vehicle, be top of mind!

Spy on Your Competitors

Find your biggest competitors by searching for your keywords in Google. Take the top results from there and spy on their backlinks. Copy your competitor’s URL and paste it in the yahoo search bar in this manner: link: pageurl -site:domain.com

This will show you the links that are pointing to this page so that you can attempt to improve upon them.

Put Your Website Everywhere

Get your dealership website URL known by doing a little “Guerilla Marketing”.

Some ideas: Give out business cards with an incentive for people to visit your dealer site on them and leave them everywhere. You can also get a decal of your URL for your dealership cars. Do whatever it takes to get people to your site!

Ask Your Customers for Feedback

Don’t be afraid to ask for opinions from people about what they think of your dealership site. Because the better you can create your site to be, the more visits you will get over time from repeat visitors. These visitors turn into sales and long term service customers!

Posted by Shawn Ryder

6 Ways to Get Traffic to your Dealership

June 6, 2020Automotive Marketing, Business, Dealership Tips, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Local SEO

How do I get more traffic to my dealership?

The age-old question has always been “how do we get more appointments?” to just get them to the dealership. There has always been a thought process of just get them into the dealer, test drives a vehicle, and then have a good shot at selling them – with a turnover to the Sales Manager to close the deal. Times have certainly changed with the digital age – not counting on the recent Coronavirus but in the last few years of digital dealerships.

So with that here are six ways that I think we can look at for getting traffic – digital and in-person to your dealership!

#1 Social Media

Some dealers are still not comfortable with using social media to its full potential. Building trust for a dealership is certainly key in bringing folks to the dealership. One of the best and most relevant ways is to share your “story” on social media. This means building excitement and consistency in messages on social media. The platforms include Facebook, Instagram (including Instagram Stories), Twitter, and even the newest one TikTok.

For example – delivery pictures and having the customer tag themselves when appropriate – get them to share the picture. It is a strong message to have a customer show where they bought a car, what they bought, and by a simple picture of why they purchased from that dealership!

Another idea is to highlight your team members – people buy cars from people…. so doing something to differentiate from other dealerships on why their team should have a chance to earn the customers’ business.

#2 Targeted Email Campaigns

While a lot of dealers conduct mass email blasts to leads that were received or customers that had purchased. But taking it to another level will help drive specific traffic to your web site and in turn dealership. Using email platforms allows you to do custom lists that are generated from the names, interactions, and current status.

A dealership collects leads from various sources, new and used leads, then broken down to specific models.

Using strong email campaigns allows for targeting based on all of these factors. For example, if you have a manufacturer promotion on a particular model then you can target leads that had shown interest in that specific model. Then track the interaction they have with the email – taking it to the next level how they interact with the web site. So put a landing page on a web site with the promotion, a lead form and also track how the viewer goes through the web site – page by page and who they are specifically.

#3 Local Search Engine Optimization

Local SEO (Local Search Engine Optimization), sometimes referred to as local search engine marketing, is an incredibly effective way to market your local dealership online. It helps businesses promote their vehicles and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them online in the local market.

This is achieved through a variety of methods, some of which differ greatly from what’s practiced in standard SEO, and some of which are far easier to manage using Local SEO tools and can require specific local Search Engine Optimization services.

Whereas anyone in the world with good enough SEO and authority can rank for a search query like “how to fix a blocked drain”. When the query has much more purchase intent behind it, it becomes “car dealers near me” or “best dealership in [specific location]”.

When building content for the dealership web site focuses on the models sold by the location, along with the local market. That way it helps Google connect that dealership with the models sold in the local market.

#4 Targeted Text Marketing

Text marketing campaigns may seem outdated to some, but they are an invaluable marketing tool for others. Last year, on average 456,000 Twitter tweets were sent every minute of the day. A pretty impressive number, isn’t it?

But it’s a measly looking figure next to the 15.2 million text messages that were sent every minute. And that doesn’t include app to app messaging!

Texting is the most effective direct marketing channel. It has the best engagement rates – and is a lot less annoying than a phone call. The open rate of text messages is as high as 99%, according to some reports. This is much higher than email marketing, which has an average open rate of 32%. Thanks to a lack of spam filter and the fact that people check their phones more obsessively than their email inbox, companies can yield a great return using text marketing campaigns.

One of the best ways to do this is to make sure you segment your audience so you can send them targeted messages. This way your texts are more likely to be welcomed by your customer and lead to a conversion.

#5 Local Citations

Local citations positively impact local search engine rankings for a dealership. The number of citations a dealer accrues, the accuracy of the data they feature, and the quality of the platforms they exist on all influence rankings. Search engines like Google amass data about each business. If what they encounter is accurate, the search engine trusts the validity of the data, which is believed to strengthen the dealerships’ chance of ranking well. However, if the data search engines encounter is inconsistent, this trust is eroded, lessening ranking opportunities.

Local citations either positively or negatively impact consumers. Accurate citations help people discover a local business, which can result in web, phone, and foot traffic, culminating in sales, and more service department customers. Inaccurate citations, however, can misdirect customers, leading to a loss of reputation and revenue.

#5 Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps. That includes adding your dealership name, location, and hours; monitoring and replying to customer reviews; adding photos; learning where and how people are searching for you, and more.

Google My Business doesn’t just make it easier for customers to find you physically, but digitally too. It can vastly improve your search visibility in Google.

Not to mention, when prospective customers are looking for local businesses, they are generally ready to make a purchase (or at the very least are highly interested in making a purchase).

Folks don’t Google, “dealerships in Toronto” to read a blog about vehicles… they do so because they’re looking for a vehicle and want to hand over their hard-earned money to whoever has the vehicles they are looking for in Toronto.

Add as much information and media as you can, including a dealership profile photo, the market you serve, your dealership hours, attributes (e.g. “wheelchair accessible,” “free wifi”), the day and year you opened, and a public phone number and obviously website URL.

According to Google, businesses with photos see 35% more clicks to their website and 42% higher requests for driving directions in Google Maps to get to the dealership.

#6 Dealership Reviews

Dealership reviews not only have the power to influence consumer decisions but can strengthen a company’s credibility. Dealer reviews have the power to gain customer trust, and they encourage people to interact with the sales and service departments. Customer interaction ultimately leads to improved profits for the dealership.

One of the best ways to encourage future customers to leave positive reviews? Respond to current ones. Not only does leaving an appreciate response show the original reviewer you’re thankful for their support. But it also makes that positive review stand out on your listing and influences people to leave their own reviews.

You should also respond to negative dealership reviews to show you take them seriously and placate the unhappy customer. But make sure you’re extremely courteous — attacking them back will only make you look unprofessional and their review more credible in the eyes of the reader.

Conclusion

I hope that this list helps you with some thought starters on how to drive more digital and foot traffic to your dealership. Tackling all of these can be difficult for sure so take it one step at a time. Obviously, if you need help with any of these subjects or ideas – contact me anytime!

Posted by Shawn Ryder

Cars R Us Tire Email

June 6, 2020Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

Cars R Us

Cars R Us needed an email designed for a special campaign to promote their winter tires. So designed a special visual to email out to a database of customers and leads to book appointments for their service department.