[mattwatson81]

One really common mistake that dealers make (and all businesses for that matter) when sending emails is only sending images in their emails. Almost all email programs these days block images when you receive emails. So if your email only includes images, it will be received like this below. I would imagine that most people open this up, see nothing, and delete it. You also have to think about reading emails on mobile devices where they probably won't see anything but the text in the emails and not any images at all!

I received this email from one of the largest dealers in the world... I'll never know what it was even about!

[umer.autojini]

True so many business do it... dell, hp, bn etc... I'm personally for mixture fo text/images... but if you still want to do full image campaings... here are few tips... inline images are not blocked by most desktop email clients... also... if you sliced the image out more and added alt text... it may offer a better open rate... on Yahoo and AOL you can get certified mail which would show images... also I saw a while back that iPhone mail by default was set to autoload images...

[mattwatson81]

Originally Posted by umer.autojini

True so many business do it... dell, hp, bn etc... I'm personally for mixture fo text/images... but if you still want to do full image campaings... here are few tips... inline images are not blocked by most desktop email clients... also... if you sliced the image out more and added alt text... it may offer a better open rate... on Yahoo and AOL you can get certified mail which would show images... also I saw a while back that iPhone mail by default was set to autoload images...

Also setting the size on the images helps so at least you can see that images are supposed to be there and how big they should be. If you don't set a size on the images then you can't see they were even supposed to be there and the layout is lost.

What do you mean by inline images? Images sent as attachments?

[umer.autojini]

Matt, yes... images as attachments.

[Driving Revenue]

Another tip on how not to send bulk emails --- is not to send bulk emails. May seem like strange advice from somebody who creates and sends email for a living but it's the truth.

Personalized and segmented email will get you a much better response rate than a generic "bulk email". I recommend breaking out your customer base by their vehicle (either owned or desired), by their current status within your dealership (prospect, owner, service, all of the above), and whatever else you can think of to send a more targeted email. Click-throughs are typically 15% higher for a segmented mailing than a generic mailing, which can be well worth a little extra effort.

You should be able to segment your customer base using a query feature within your CRM.