You’re probably monitoring your dealership’s online reputation with customers on DealerRater and Google, but did you know there is another element of your dealership’s reputation that is being scored that can dramatically impact your store’s sales? This is the email reputation your dealership has with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.

If you have a bad email reputation with the ISPs then the next time you hit the “send” button on an email campaign to your customers you’ll find a growing percentage of your emails delivered to your customers’ spam folders rather than their inbox. Customers can’t respond to messages they don’t know that they have so inbox delivery is critically important to generating the sales prospects we’re all looking for.

Here are a couple of free resources that will help you monitor your email reputation:
1. Senderscore.org – This ranking measures your email volume, complaint rates, unknown users (hard bounces) and spam trap hits. (Spam traps are email addresses that have been inactive for a long period of time that the ISPs monitor. The theory is that if John Smith’s email has been inactive for two years and you’re sending email to that address then John probably didn’t request your email and it is most likely spam.)

2. Senderbase.org – This ranking will deliver a good, neutral or poor rating as well as tell you if you are on any DNSBL listing (blacklists).

3. AOL post master reputation - This tool will let you know what AOL thinks of you with a good, bad or neutral rating.

4. SNDS - Windows Live Hotmail Smart Network Data Services is a Hotmail-based report that displays daily delivery metrics by IP. With this tool you first need to sign-up and prove you have authorization to view the stats for your IP. This report includes delivery into all Hotmail-owned domains. I wish every ISP gave this detailed feedback that includes:

• Date: The day your IP address sent at least 100 messages to the Hotmail portal
  
• Sent/Delivered: Volume received by Hotmail and accepted by Hotmail
  
• Color: Your total content delivered as likely spam, organized by color:
a. Green: 0-10% likely the message(s) are spam
b. Yellow: 11-90% likely the message(s ) are spam
c. Red: 91-100% the message(s ) are spam
  
• Abuse Rate
  
• Spam Traps

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Sign-up information is at: Announcements

According to Microsoft, in the last few years they’ve reduced the amount of spam from almost 35% to less than 3% of the messages you see in your mailbox. They accomplish this by filtering out 5.5 billion spam messages out of Hotmail every day. That was BILLION and that was every single day.

Monitoring your email sender reputation will help you gauge whether or not your dealership’s emails are getting included in this group. Next month we’ll look at some ways you can improve your email reputation.

Technical note: to use the free lookup tools above, you’ll need to know the IP address your dealership is sending your emails from. If you don’t know the IP address, you can locate it in the header of one of the emails sent by your dealership.

For help go to: http://whatismyipaddress.com/find-headers

Where will Facebook “be” in 10 Years?

Certain recent research and articles have me thinking about the long-term sustainability of Facebook as a viable Marketing/Advertising platform. I’m curious to learn the opinions of the learned followers of this forum.

Where will Facebook “be” and what will it look like in 10 years? (For our post-70’s born readers, a quick read on the Pet Rock fad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock)

You can’t argue the social and marketing significance of Facebook in today’s marketplace (Advertising Rule #1: Fish Where the Fish Are!), and we’re not discussing if your dealership should advertise on Facebook (it should). This is a discussion about the “patterns” and ebb-and-flow of societal phenomena in the context of today’s Dealers in a Social World.

I will summarize (poorly) the research I’ve recently encountered followed by my own takeaway:

Research Item #1: In the 90’s, Email became an accepted and even a preferred method of communication. In the Dealer World, the promise of Special Treatment & Incentives had consumers eagerly completing forms and offering their email addresses. However, email communication as a viable marketing channel is now and has been in decline for several years.

The promise of “Special Treatment & Incentives” never quite panned-out. Consumers still had to come to the dealership to buy a vehicle, and the incentives were basically the same as if you walked through the door.

Research Item #2: In the 2000’s, the use of Portals soared in popularity; i.e., Yahoo and eBay, etc. Consumers flocked to these portals as a result of the promise of Special Treatment & Incentives. While many of these portals are still viable consumer channels, the use of such is in decline.

At the Dealership, the promise of “Special Treatment & Incentives” never quite panned-out. Consumers still had to come to the dealership to buy a vehicle, and the incentives were basically the same as if you walked through the door.

Research Item #3: Facebook is ROCKIN! 15% of the people ON THIS PLANET use Facebook and usage is on the rise. It’s presence as a significant cultural game-changer cannot be denied. Dealers are encouraged to attract fans by offering Special Treatment & Incentives.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

OK -- in addition to consideration of the above research comparisons, add some recent articles, such as this: Kids, Google + And The Increasing Speed Of Innovation | To Write Is To Think

Summary: the author was shocked to learn that his teen daughters and friends not only prefer Google+, but they view Facebook as intended for old people. My takeaway, quoted by the article:

“Teenagers eschewing their parents’ ways is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow.”

Click to expand...

So, today, Facebook is the Shiny Pet Rock. What is history telling us it will be in 2022?

Actually, there’s probably little debate about the answer: it will either be Gone, or it will be Different.

It will be Texas Instruments, or it will be Apple. Remember when HBO only played movies? Or better yet... MTV played Music Videos (do you youngsters know that MTV, at one time, ONLY played music videos??)

So maybe that’s the better conversation: how will Facebook adapt to keep itself relevant? Because it has to, right?

And then back to the same ‘ol question: how do we, as dealers, keep-up with this constantly changing and expanding landscape?

Not gonna get any easier, is it?