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Effective Email Marketing for Auto Dealerships
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Effective Automotive Email Marketing for Auto Dealerships

Automotive Marketing

 

Today, Auto dealerships around the world can extensively benefit from an automotive email marketing campaign. It’s simply because most customers accept communications through emails more positively than other platforms. Even in the auto dealership industry, email marketing has been proven to effectively develop customer bases, increase sales, and accelerate ROI. Of course, those success stories always refer to the correct email marketing campaigns held by the auto dealership. Check out practical email marketing tips for auto dealerships below.

Maintain Your Email List

The essential element of automotive email marketing campaigns is the quality email list that refers to up-to-date relevance, accuracy, prospects, and other factors. You can’t have a successful email marketing campaign with an outdated list as the email owners have changed the address and provider. Auto dealerships are one of those businesses that lack an accurate email list. While maintaining the list could be tricky, you better focus your resources on this task to have a strong base for your email marketing.

Employs Personalization

Who doesn’t hate spam emails? Customers would delete your email whenever it appears as spammy or not personalized content. Your consumers would only read a highly customized email with some key elements: name, occupation, car model, phone number, address, lifestyle, service records, etc. Personalization is essential for auto dealership SEO email marketing to keep your emails relevant to the targeted consumers. You can use your database to personalize email marketing content and boost its effectiveness to drive leads.

Optimize Mobile Email Marketing

Most people sync their email accounts on their mobile phones and read emails from the mobile email app. If your emails aren’t optimized for mobile reading, consumers will delete them. Most cases are when the emails don’t fit their phone display due to enlarged font, incompatible images, or not proportional outline. Not only would consumers hardly read the email, but they might also be annoyed with your subsequent emails.

Use Email Marketing Automation Proportionally

Since manual email marketing could be tedious, you can employ automation proportionally. You can set indicators and dynamics that would trigger the emails. These include the consumer’s bio, the car model they’re driving, retention, lifetime value, per-email revenue, and so forth. Triggered emails work very close to fully personalized emails. Most customers would likely open and click through this kind of email.

Be Responsive

Last but not least, the auto dealership’s customer support must be responsive to any reply or email inquiry. They must follow up on any complaints, feedback, or questions to make their automotive email marketing work as a whole.

 

Automotive Email Marketing
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Tips For Becoming Successful At Automotive Email Marketing

Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

Automotive Email Marketing

A great email campaign can bring you an improved reputation, increased profits and the attainment of your goals. All it takes to achieve this is knowing the tips and tricks in this article and a little bit of hard work. Read on to find some advice to help you get started.

When following up to your customers via email, you could try following up with some kind of reminder. For example, you could add a “visit today” button onto your ad. In addition, the closing of the postscript could inform your customers to make sure they do not disregard the CTO.

Be sure to put the logo of your product or business in the email. This way, customers will become familiar with the logo and associate it with your company. It is best if the logo is something that will catch the reader’s eye and be easy for them to remember it.

Customer Feedback

Ask your customers for feedback on your emails. Since your customers are the most important part of your campaign, it is important to know if they are pleased with the emails they receive from you. You could ask them to fill out a short survey with a few questions on what they like and what they dislike.

When you ask people to opt-in, let them know what to expect. Tell them what you will be sending and how often you will send it. People will be more likely to sign up if they know that you are not going to flood their inboxes with wordy emails that they have no intention of reading.

Sending an email to your list more than once every seven days is a bad idea. Your customer base is likely made up of people who are busy and receive many messages each day. By bombarding them with multiple emails, they may quickly begin to disregard your messages without even reading them.

It is very common for people to view the Internet with cell phones instead of using a full-sized computer. Since this is the case, you should make it so that the width of any email you send out is easily viewable by mobile phone. You should also make sure to do the same to your landing page.

Make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your list. This might seem counter-productive since you don’t want your customers to lose interest and leave. However, if your customers aren’t interested in your newsletters anymore, they might get annoyed if they can’t easily unsubscribe. Provide a large button or link so that customers who have lost interest can find it without an extensive search.

Personalized Emails

Any marketing emails you send should be personalized. You can go far beyond simply inserting a recipient’s name into a standardized message. Use all the information you have on each subscriber. Take your subscribers and group them together based on interests. Create emails that are tailored to their interests.

To maximize the effectiveness of your emails, send them out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Research shows that people are actually more inclined to respond positively to various forms of communication on these days, including email. Not only are they more likely to read your email, but they’re also more apt to click on buttons or links, which means that you’re more likely to see an increase in sales. Send your emails at mid-afternoon for optimal results.

Use your email marketing campaign to offer customers a personal perspective of your business. Tell a story about how you got started and why you are passionate about your business while giving them a special promotion or offer. It will build trust in your clients and make them more apt to make a purchase from you.

Avoid using the character string “$$$” in your marketing messages. Many spam messages use this character string either in the subject line or the body of their emails. If you use it, people and email servers may treat your emails as if they were spam, too. Your emails may end up ignored or even blocked.

Be straightforward with your recipients about what they will be receiving. When someone opts to receive an e-mail from you, make sure they know what they’re agreeing to. Keep information easily visible about what they will be receiving in these e-mails and how often these e-mails will arrive in their inbox.

If you are following up with your customers, you can send a follow-up email to them that includes a warning. Attach a line in your message that allows them to sign up. The closing postscript can include a phrase that this can be a very low investment on their part.

Automotive Sales

While you want to use your email marketing to improve your sales. The only way to get potential customers to read your emails is to convince them that they have value. To do this, your emails should always contain concrete, useful information and relevant links, and not just generic sales fluff.

Only send emails that contain useful information; customers will unsubscribe if you bombard them with useless messages. Respect the customers’ intelligence by only sending well-thought-out emails containing pertinent information, not merely sales pitches. Include a promotion, a solution to an everyday problem, or a new way that your reader can use a common item in every email.

With the knowledge, you’ve gained here under your belt; you should be ready to tackle the wonderful world of email marketing. The sooner you get to work, the easier it will be to meet your goals, so start drafting your plan while you have these tips fresh in your mind.

Email Marketing
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Email Marketing Doesn’t Have To Be Tricky

Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing

hose that are new to email marketing may be unfamiliar with the etiquette involved. Professional email marketing is important if you wish to retain customer satisfaction. Read on to learn some strategies for email marketing.

Test the different formats of emails. Keeping your most vital information near the top is important in any layout you try. Yet be sure that you always try out different formats so that you know which ones you get the most responses from. When you find your formula for success, stick with it. This will allow your subscribers to become more familiar with the kind of content in your emails, and also how to obtain more information when they need to.

The importance of branding your dealership extends all the way down to your email marketing efforts. For this reason, it is important to create a template that incorporates your logo, and consistent formatting throughout all your marketing materials. This will make you instantly recognizable to your readers.

Always include an unsubscribe link in your emails. Put your link to unsubscribe in a place that is easily visible and be sure it is a part of every email. It is important that users feel like they are not committed to your emails.

Encourage your customers to buy from you by offering rewards in your emails. They are far more likely to conduct dealership with you when you offer them a very appealing reason to do so. For example, you could provide customers who click through to your site with a code to receive free shipping on certain orders.

Try to secure at least the first name of individuals during the process. This is good so that when you send out emails you can address it to them, which gives things a more personal touch. This will cause your emails to appear personal, and therefore not like spam, which will appeal to the reader.

Only send customers emails that contain information they can use. Do not bore or overwhelm them with strong sales tactics. You can include solutions to problems that commonly come up, new ways to use your products, or special deals in each email you send out.

Be sure that you provide people with a way to opt out of your email marketing newsletters. Email messages do take time to delete if people don’t want them and they may not appreciate having to do that. Being considered a spammer is very bad for business, and you can be blacklisted from certain websites.

Remember, as you develop email marketing campaigns, you are working towards building a solid reputation. Don’t cut any corners, target the wrong customers or use any misleading tactics. The reputation of your dealership rests on every contact with your customers, even by email.

On the subscription form for your mailing list, inform potential customers of what kinds of messages you plan to send. Provide them with information about exactly what their emails will contain, and how often you will send them. That way, your subscribers will be well aware of the content they will receive, and the frequency.

Create a sales list that is extremely targeted to groups of people. The best way to do this is to get your best clientele to help add their friends and contacts to your company’s mailing list. If your list is exclusive, it will seem more professional and command more respect.

Send a nice note on your subscribers’ birthdays. Include a field for customers to opt in so they can receive a birthday wish. Consider including a discount or coupon with birthday greetings to help your customers feel valued and special.

If your company already has a certain brand associated with it, be sure the emails utilize that branding. Use the identical color scheme already in play, and include your company logo with each and every message you send out. If your prior business and marketing efforts have built you a trustworthy reputation, feel free to make use of it by tying your new email to your recognizable brand.

Use Alt tags if your emails contain images. The text in these tags will replace the images that fail to load, or are prevented from loading by the email client. Make sure that the tags contain information relevant to the image so the customer knows what the image is of. Apply these to your links, as well.

Take advantage of holiday spending to develop promotions during these peak retail times. Plan for these opportunities well in advance. Develop email campaigns that center around important holidays like Easter and Christmas. You can also add extra marketing campaigns during slow periods of the year to boost sales.

Always ask explicit permission before you send email to anyone. If you’re like most people, you get penny stock and mortgage emails daily, and block them with a spam filter. Sending email without permission can be detrimental to your dealership. Start off with a good relationship by only sending out email that your customers have requested.

Ask for permission before you email potential customers. If you email uninterested individuals, you may receive spam complaints. Also, a lot of people will not want to get your emails and it may even prevent them from getting them. You might even be penalized by your providers if you are labelled as a spammer.

Know what your competition is doing with their own email marketing campaigns. Obtain an email address specifically for this purpose, and sign up for their lists, using it. You can keep your campaign a step ahead of theirs by knowing what their strategies and promotions look like. Try to see what is missing in their campaigns and develop it in your own. Offer promotions based off of what they are doing.

Using good email protocol with your marketing techniques will help you make more sales. If you don’t treat your customers well, they will quickly opt out of receiving emails from your dealership. If you want happy, satisfied customers who look forward to receiving emails from you, take note of the advice provided here.

Automotive Email Marketing
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Getting Started With Email Marketing: Tips For Success

Automotive Marketing, Email Marketing

Email marketing has so many attractive features that make it a great way to reach customers and to bring them to your business. Email marketing can be inexpensive, lucrative and can even help the environment by saving paper. Whatever your reason for choosing email marketing, you will find useful information about it in the article below.

You, or someone else, should proofread your email before you send it to customers. Ensure that it is free from typographical and grammatical errors. You should also make certain that the message flows easily. By checking these three issues are addressed, your email marketing will have a professional appearance.

Even though it should be obvious, it is important enough to state over and over: Never send unsolicited emails. You should have explicit permission from everyone you send marketing emails to. This is about more than trying not to upset them; a recipient who considers your email spam can cause trouble for you with your service provider.

Make sure that your email subscribers know exactly what to expect from you. An excellent way to do this is to make your first email to every new subscriber a default informational message. You should lay out what sort of content you intend to send them, and also indicate the frequency of messages they can expect from you.

Do what you can to make your email go into your customers’ inboxes. You must work to get your email to pass ISPs and not get tagged as spam messages. If they get tagged as spam messages, your recipient may never see them. Check with customers to see if they are getting your emails, or if they’re no longer interested.

When you are building an effective email marketing campaign, you need to have the proper sign-up forms on your company website. Make sure you have them on every page, and also make sure that they are in the proper locations on your site pages. This is key to getting the customers to sign up.

Test sending your email marketing on different days of the week and at various times during the day. You’ll find that different times and dates will increase or decrease your open rates to your emails. Note the best time/day of the week mixtures and plan your most important email marketing campaigns to be released during those windows.

Put real consideration into where you place links in your marketing newsletters. For example, you don’t want to send readers away from your email before you give them their call to action. You also don’t want to put your priority links at the end of an email where they may be overlooked.

In all your emails, you need to use a call for action. You have to tell your customers exactly what you want them to do. Include obvious links with instructions on how your readers should proceed once they get to your site. You can use these sections in the top part and bottom part of your messages.

Do not send too much information in one email. Customers will get frustrated and overwhelmed if there is an overabundance of information in a single email. Instead, put a sufficient amount of information in a series of emails and be sure that each one contains a few paragraphs. This will keep their attention.

Everyone knows that email filters are getting more and more strict. Graphics and other things included in emails are blocked out, so a reader might not even see what you are trying to say. Therefore, a good piece of advice is to use plain text with a hyperlink to your site.

You might need to try following up to your customers with an alert on a price increase. The email could include a link that says to act now in order to avoid this increase. The ending of the message could convince them to click on the link in order to understand all the details.

Try using A/B testing for your email marketing campaign. This basically entails creating two very different versions of the same email (A and B) and sending “A” to half of a small test group and “B” to the other half. Whichever half receives the most positive response is the one that you should be using for your campaign.

Sales

To get the most of your email marketing, invest in a program that personalizes your emails with every customer’s given name instead of a generic greeting. Ensuring that every email starts with the recipient’s name is key to encouraging your customers to see your newsletters as valuable information and not just more sales spam.

Email is a great marketing tool, but it is not an arena where the hard sell is appreciated. Never pressure your subscribers into buying. Put sales pitches at the tail end of your emails, especially if your readers signed up with expectations of informative content. Consider email as a tool to cultivate interest, not instant sales.

People will appreciate you valuing their time and sending out interesting emails. Don’t abuse their confidence or insult their intelligence by sending them blatant sales petitions. Always add something of value like a tip regarding your service, a suggested use for your product, or a special free offer in each message you send out.

To maximize the effectiveness of your emails, send them out on Tuesday or Wednesday. Research shows that people are actually more inclined to respond positively to various forms of communication on these days, including email. Not only are they more likely to read your email, but they’re also more apt to click on buttons or links, which means that you’re more likely to see an increase in sales. Send your emails at mid-afternoon for optimal results.

No doubt email marketing works on so many levels. It can be one of the most cost-effective ways to reach out to the largest amount of people all over the world. Take the advice and techniques that are offered in the article above to help you design an email marketing plan that works for you and your business.

Automotive Email Marketing
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Email Open Rates

Automotive 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.

Automotive SEO
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Key Automotive Marketing Strategies

Uncategorized

Automotive Marketing Strategies

The best automotive marketing strategies are not always the ones that are the easiest. However, as technology continues to evolve, you can use all of these marketing strategies. Social Media is one of the best automotive marketing methods available for your business. It’s also an important component in creating new prospects. It’s an especially great asset when you have existing prospects or consumers coming back to your website or your business location.

Instagram helps you reach teens today. Instagram is incredibly popular among young adults. Among your best automotive marketing strategies, you need to utilize tactics geared specifically toward Instagram. Young people are more mobile on their devices, which makes them ideal for reaching out to people in the field.

The use of SEO techniques is something to consider when working to gain exposure for your company or dealership. SEO services will help you gain new clients and customers. SEO is a powerful search engine optimization tool that can help you gain rankings in certain keywords that relate to your industry. For example, if you work in the auto repair industry and offer auto bodywork, using keywords like “auto body shop” can bring in a large number of new customers.

When using SEO, it’s a good idea to use content marketing. Content marketing involves posting your articles and videos in different directories that are related to your industry. These articles and videos can be used to create a website that includes content related to your industry. Your website can include helpful information that will inform and inspire new prospects to purchase or hire you.

Car dealerships should advertise in a variety of places including online, local and print media. They should target areas such as online publications, radio, TV, and social media websites. Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are very effective at bringing prospects to your dealership. It’s also a good marketing strategy to offer contests, specials, freebies, discounts, or incentives to attract prospects.

Many car dealerships offer financing programs for their vehicles. They can take their vehicles in for servicing or maintenance, which can benefit them in the long run. Financing programs offer them the opportunity to sell their vehicles. Many car dealerships have fleets of vehicles that they can sell in a variety of ways. Selling off a vehicle can be quite lucrative.

A business that sells cars must keep its business and products updated. The internet is an excellent way to keep your company up to date. Automotive marketing experts advise using a car dealer blog to stay current with the latest trends in your industry. This type of website can keep you up-to-date about changes in the automotive industry and offer you insight into how to better serve your customers. In addition, many blogs offer valuable tips, ideas, and insider information about your company and business.

When it comes to Internet marketing strategies for the auto industry, content is the most important. This is a big sector that’s extremely competitive and you need to take advantage of every tool available to increase traffic and sales. Social Media is a powerful tool that provides valuable information to your customers and potential buyers. SEO plays a major role in gaining visibility and driving targeted leads.

If you’re dealership selling cars in the automotive industry, then you must also understand the importance of getting started as soon as possible. You can choose to specialize in a particular niche market, or even a specific make of car. Either way, there are important automotive marketing strategies that you should implement to ensure you succeed.

Keep yourself updated on all new automotive trends, both on the web and off. A comprehensive online database of information about all of the latest developments in the industry will be beneficial for you and your business. This information should also include product reviews from people who have actually used your particular make and model of cars.

Car dealerships are a vital part of our society. It’s essential that we work together to provide services and products that are worthwhile for the consumers we serve. Investing in effective strategies for your industry will help you meet this challenge.

Automotive Digital Marketing
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Developing your automotive marketing strategy

Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Establish a clear path of action.

Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices (computers) such as personal computers, smartphones, cellphones, tablets and game consoles to engage with stakeholders. Digital Marketing is the promotion of brands using all forms of digital advertising Means to reach consumers.

Digital marketing applies technologies or platforms such as Websites, E-mail, Apps (classic and mobile) and Social Networks. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a component of digital marketing.

Many organizations use a combination of traditional and digital marketing channels; however, digital marketing is becoming more popular with marketers as it allows them to track their ROI (Return on Investment) more accurately compared to other traditional marketing channels.

Today most of the businesses used these new digital technologies/ Types of digital marketing for advertising & promoting the product/services & for reaching to the targeted Customers/Consumers. There are following types / new technologies used in digital marketing

Your strategy, if a comprehensive one, will be around long-term. At the same time, you have to remain open to changes and improvements if, for instance, your competitors take a new direction, you take a new direction. Flexibility is the name of the game.

Let’s take a look at how to start writing your marketing strategy:

Analyze your dealership

  • Objectives and how you’ll reach them
  • Strengths and weaknesses of the team, business, products, services

Analyze your market

  • How big is it?
  • You growth expectations
  • Customers’ behavior and spending power

Analyze your competition

  • Monitor their messaging, marketing campaigns, social channels, products
  • Their strengths and weaknesses compared to yours
  • Compare pricing, customer support, sales channels, customer demographics, messaging, etc.

Identify your customers

  • Segment your existing and potential customers according to what they want from your dealership – high-quality products, low cost, 24/7 customer support, location, etc.
  • Once you’ve segmented, compare your positioning with that of your competitors – customer support, cheaper/more expensive, fast to market, targeted countries, etc.

Analyze your products and services

  • USP – what makes your product or service unique?
  • Benefits – check out your segments as it’s likely they’ll be looking for different things – price, location, etc.

How will you broadcast your benefits?

  • Website
  • Blog posts
  • Social media
  • Email campaigns
  • Promotions and offers
  • PR
  • Paid ads
  • Events and trade shows
  • Traditional press
  • TV and radio
  • Word of mouth

Having agreed on your dealership marketing strategy, you’re now ready to build your marketing plan, and launch campaigns. Your plan will identify budgeting, deadlines, key team members, channels, etc.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

There are many advantages of digital marketing, including:

It’s more affordable to deploy than traditional marketing and advertising

  • Digital marketing goes from planning to execution more quickly.
  • Digital marketing gives fans/viewers/readers a chance to share your content.
  • Digital marketing campaigns are easier to attach to other campaigns & growth in the customer’s base.
  • Digital marketing campaigns have longer shelf lives & access to wide international markets.
  • Digital marketing gives the brand more time and space to tell its story.

Remember what I said earlier, about having a flexible strategy? Your plan, more so.

Automotive Email Marketing
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Automotive Email Success

Automotive 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.

Shawn Ryder Digital
Posted by Shawn Ryder

Automotive Email Marketing Strategies – Grow Dealership Sales

Automotive Marketing, Dealership Tips, Sales 1

We are going to look at the best Automotive Email Marketing Strategies for 2020. We’re starting right now if you want to transform your mailing list into a customer or lead generation machine I’ll show you all my best tips tactics and secrets.

Looking for some awesome Blogs? Check out Feedspot here – Automotive Sales Blogs

Automotive Email Marketing Strategies Report

There is a  new report shows that for every dollar a company spends on email marketing they make about forty-four dollars in return. Which makes that just an incredibly profitable marketing tool. As with any marketing channel you know things change and shift over time. Things that worked last year done necessarily work this year.

Digital Marketing Techniques

Automotive Email Marketing is a great addition to your other digital dealership marketing activities. Why? It builds customer loyalty and leads to engagement without breaking the bank. And, it works on mobile as well! Develop a contact list and how to speak to different audiences based on their interests.

As with any type of marketing, your first step in email marketing should be to set goals. Do you want to use email to showcase the vehicle makes and the service department bringing more visitors to your location? Do you want to use email to drive dealership results, like distributing a manufacturer promotion that brings in at least 10 sales? No matter what your goals are, a good place to start is by building a list of people who’ve expressed an interest in your dealership. 

You don’t want to overwhelm your automotive customers or leads with too much content. Either in one email or too many emails in succession. Start with a friendly hello and an introduction to the dealership. Next, you might send information about your particular location and the manufacturer lines that you sell. At this point, you can ask them one or two questions to narrow down their interest a bit. For example, somebody looking for financing doesn’t need to know about the newest luxury model that has arrived. 

Then, when you have information about your customers, you can send them specific offers or content they might find interesting. For example, if you know that’s a group of these customers recently purchased dog food, you might showcase your most popular toys, collars, and leads for dogs. Be sure to include useful information and relevant offers like tips for dog training or a coupon for dog treats

Automotive Email Marketing Tips

So in this post, I’m going to give you my six best tips of things that are working like crazy right now. To really help you keep that relationship alive over the course of someone deciding to get on your list before actually becoming a paying customer. Hopefully, these tips are going to speed up that process for you

The first thing I want to mention is simpler or no email design. Every time I put together a new email funnel for a new client I start getting emails from them of like little screen grabs or email forwards from big companies. They say why don’t we do something like this. I get it those really designed heavy emails look really cool and they look great in the inbox.

Of course, you would want something like that for your business. Almost every email provider out there even the cheap ones they come with obvious templates. These are built right into the software itself. So why not actually use those templates? It’s really simple because they look like one big fat commercial when they hit your inbox.

Simple Email Sends

Think for a second about what email is actually primarily supposed to be used for, communicating with family and friends. Of course, most use it for work as well. When’s the last time you sent an email to a friend that looked like a full image email? The idea here is to casually slip into your customers’ inbox as a friend or at least as a helpful person.

That they can trust that’s not gonna sell to them but gonna help guide them in the direction they want to go, so I just recommend doing what successful internet marketers have already been doing and that’s just sending out boring old plain text emails. 

Inbox or Promotions

It sounds boring but these emails are much more likely to be read. Because they just look like a genuine email you would get from your friend, neighbor or family member. And the other reason to ditch those template emails is that all the images inside with the links is the best way to make sure that you never reach your customers’ inbox. They often end up in the little promotions tab in Gmail. You don’t want to end up there, you want to end up in the actual inbox. 

Images and Links

Let’s try to keep those images and links in the email to a minimum. I recommend no more than a single link per email and preferably no images at all. But if you have to use one if it adds some color or add something special to the message of the email go ahead. Do one but limit it to that one. The way I like to add an image to an email is not by adding a product image or anything promotional.

Animated Gifs and Humor

Perhaps add some kind of an animated gif that either supports one of the points of the email. Also, add some humor or fun to it so it’s a little more memorable. Just choose it wisely you know your audience you know what they’re gonna find funny. So just make sure it hits home with them and they get the reference all right from the email they receive. 

Storytelling in Emails

Next, let’s look at storytelling in your emails. This is something that I want all dealers to improve this year. It something I definitely want to start incorporating into my overall email marketing strategy. Rather than just delivering a tip or vehicle option in the email make it count for more. Including a really short story that illustrates that point. There are whole parts of your brain that just light up and fire off when it hears a good story. Plus it makes it more relatable and personal. Certainly, if you’re talking about something in your own past or a current or past customer. So rather than just explaining the feature and benefits of a vehicle. 

Videos in Your Emails

Incorporating video in 2019 injury emails and not only put video in your emails but say so write in the subject line that’s gonna double your open rates. The other benefit is people are much more likely to actually consume your content and get the message you’re trying to send. A video format versus reading plain text and almost everybody is much more able to you know understand and retain that information.

When they’re seeing it and hearing it in video just take whatever content you were gonna put in your email. Just make a short video about it and it doesn’t even have to be high production value. That can make people up to thinking they have to get a whole camera crew and spend hundreds of dollars on a video. You 100% don’t just use your smartphone to do a short selfie-style video it’ll connect just fine and you get your point across.

Finally, you just upload it to YouTube and get a little screen capture of the thumbnail. Put that image right in your email and then link it to the video itself alright next play.

Using Email Content

Many dealerships get really intimidated when they start thinking about putting together an email campaign. But more times than not they already have content that they can repurpose and string together into an email series. They can just send up once and then it gets automatically sent out. These can go out to new email subscribers at the exact moment that they end up opting into it on the site. 

Email Sending Cycles

So if somebody opts in for information today, the series starts today with a new helpful email every week until that series is over. Then when somebody else opts-in next April her cycle starts then getting the exact same email series. So if you have some great blog posts already or an interview you did or a video. Anything like that content that you can use you just have to introduce it in the email.

If you don’t have anything yet that’s okay just start writing one new email a week for as long as you think the series should go on. Then just put that email every time at the end of that campaign so essentially you’re just building this email campaign.

Email Marketing – Content is King

I do recommend splitting up the content here and there. Maybe some blog posts, some videos and some weeks you can even go a little easier on yourself and just put the information or the tips right in the body of the email itself,

You could even link out to content every once in a while. It had nothing to do with creating just put your own spin on it in the body of the email letting people know why you think it’s helpful for them. Then just link out to it for the reader to review the content. The other thing that’s working really well now is by using some simple segmentation. Let’s say your dealership offers a few different types of makes or has a few different types of services that interest in different types of customers.

Setting up Email Sequences

Options for your dealership then they get put in that email sequence. so they’re on services and they start getting helpful content related to the service department. This is really powerful because these are different types of customers that have a different goal in mind (sales, service, finance, and others). So if you started just sending out a mixture of those topics to all of those customers a lot of them might start unsubscribing.

You could have one overarching umbrella that’s kind of interesting to everyone. And then have a simple option where they check which vehicle, make, model or service are they most interested in at the dealership. Then you can use a campaign they would see what box they checked and that automatically puts them on either “Track A “or “Track B” for the right content from the dealership. 

Scrubbing and Spam

Now we want to look at re-engaging or scrubbing your list. It’s really good to have a big list, you know quantity can be good as sometimes it is a numbers game. But it’s more important to have a quality list that actually opens your emails. If they are looking forward to hearing from you every week so. When you have a big list of people who really aren’t even opening your emails you run a higher risk of your emails being flagged as spam or getting high unsubscribe rates.

These are basically really bad signals to the email providers like Gmail and what happens is if you get enough people who are flagging your emails as spam box. They may end up either the promotions tab or even worse you can wind up in the spam folder.

That goes for your entire list, not just the people who flagged you as spam. You have someone flags you as spam they’ll they won’t get your emails anymore. But all the people who even like hearing from you it’s going to go in their spam folder as well. You definitely don’t want that to happen.

Another advantage of having a leaner list of only customers who are most likely interested in hearing from you is the sending cost. Most of these service providers basically bill you based on how many subscribers you have on the list. So it makes sense to weed out some of the ones who are just dead weight essentially but before you start.

Recipients That Don’t Open Emails?

The email marketing program again can be used to strip emails. Segment out people who haven’t opened any of your emails for the last 90 days. Then you’re going to want to start a brand new campaign that’s geared just to those people. I would recommend a series of four value-based emails where you’re just educating something helpful about a model or service. Giving some advice in these emails. They are not to be promotional or selling at all these are just pure value.

At the end of the two weeks, anyone who hasn’t opened any of those emails now’s the time when you’re gonna kick them off your list. I know this sounds counterintuitive especially if you don’t already have a big list. But the truth is you know by getting rid of the people who don’t want to hear from you. It’s going to really make your deliverability better for the ones that do want to hear from you. So you can wind up where you want to be which is in their primary inbox.

Custom Email Sends

Then, when you have information about your customers, you can send them specific offers or content they might find interesting. For example, if you know that’s a group of these customers recently purchased a particular model, you might showcase your most accessories, services, and features of that model.

Be sure to include useful information and relevant offers like how to do something with the vehicle, perhaps a feature YouTube that highlights something they could use some education on about the vehicle. 

While you’re educating your customers about your business, you can use marketing emails to learn more about them as well. Ask your subscribers if they’re interested in receiving updates for other products or services. Then, find out how often they prefer to hear from you. For example, do they want to receive emails weekly or monthly? Record what you learn in your email contact database for future email campaigns.

Are You Ready?

Based on my experience, my objective is to work with dealerships and help with their email communication. This means more traffic on the website, in the dealership and more sales! Contact me to learn more about how I help dealers.

Contact Shawn Ryder

    Please, let us know any particular things to check and the best time to contact you by phone (if provided).

    Automotive Email Marketing
    Posted by Shawn Ryder

    Automotive Email Marketing is Key

    Automotive Marketing, Digital Marketing

    Automotive Dealers focus on sales – moving metal from the dealership, hitting monthly targets and ensuring continuous growth. They know how to sell once a lead enters the location but always have challenges getting people into the dealership. One focus needs to be on Automotive Email Marketing.

    Google Think Dealer

    Having recently attended a Google “Think Dealer” event it was a great way to understand the customer buying process. Google looks at it from the perspective of Google Search and the digital journey.

    Automotive Email MarketingOne part that I found interesting was that they defined a “pause” part of the sales process. Where people are simply overwhelmed with information about the vehicle options, models, manufacturers and options available for customers.

    At this point, the customer (lead) may have collected some information about their next potential vehicle. They have watched YouTube videos, read multiple reviews, visit the manufacturer web site and dealership web site. They may have even taken the potential vehicles for a drive. However, the notion of making the purchase has them in a position of uncertainty for moving forward with the decision.

    Email marketing allows dealers to follow up on a regular basis. Automotive Email Marketing uses timely content to ensure that your message is read by the prospective customer. Ways to do this include triggers, timings, monthly specials, and more technologies.

    Automotive Email Marketing

    If a lead comes in on a specific model use content that is readily available for you such as your YouTube videos, PDF brochures, web site content and reviews. This gives the person ways to educate themselves more on the vehicle options, specs, safety options and more!

    Automotive Email Marketing involves much more than a salesperson sitting at their desk sending out emails once in a while. All the time hoping that they get a response from a lead. They may not have heard back from in a month and the crickets are chirping!

    Technology allows for decisions based on how customers interact with the emails sent. For example, if one sent and the customer clicks on a link to visit the web site. This allows for tracking of the interaction on the site but also can trigger another email to be sent as a follow-up.

    Email Follow-Ups

    When a customer sends in an email request to the dealership – there is typically a process of a couple of emails sent out from a salesperson, but not a defined process by the entire dealership itself. Of course, every dealership has a rock star that does amazing follow-up. They work hard to do all tasks in the CRM and regular emails. This is a rare occurrence though as most salespeople do one, maybe two emails and that is the end of the process.

    Using an outside vendor allows for a way to continuing to work leads that may have been marked “dead” by the sales team. There are ways to do this include using automated email marketing, sending based on data. For example, if a contact is interested in a certain model than emails focused on that particular model are send out.  It can get more involved with email sending as well. Target people based on what they click on in the email. Send an email with a link to a video on safety features, follow up with an email that highlights the safety of the vehicle.

    The key to sales in the automotive industry is ensuring that you are staying in front of customers. Automotive Email Marketing can be done by salespeople manually or using automation can do a lot of on behalf of the dealership.

    Paused Customer State

    Google Think Dealer PauseAs seen at the Google Event there is a time that leads become “paused” when it comes to a purchase decision. The causes of this are based on a few factors by the lead. It can be based on simple indecision by the person that submitted their information. So if they are reviewing multiple models in a vehicle class it can mean there is a lot of information, videos and data they have consumed in the process. When the customer is in this state, simple timing can be everything. At this point, it is key to ensure that communication is occurring with new and relevant content.

    As the dealer, you know that if a person is looking for “Sadan A” that there other comparables in the market as well with the competition.