Blast em all! It's no different then sending out direct snail mail. It gets looked at if someone is in the market or it goes in the trash. Advertising and marketing is a billboard. The more times people here you or see then the odds are they think of you when the time comes to buy or lease again. We use email newsletters that are simple with car/lifestyle stories and offers on cars. They work. We also send out old fashioned post cards hand written in the mail(remember those). People love them. We put pics of antique cars on the front. People hang em on the refrigerator. Keep it simple. Simple sells cars.
You know I actually typed out a reply earlier to Alex, but someone came into my office so I just closed out of it. But seriously this..
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And now...
DO NOT send your email blast to your entire database - EVER!!!!
I'm blown away by how many dealers do this and how often it is done. The fact that email is free, and most CRM/ILM tools actually make it easier not to drill down for campaign targeting, are all culprits.
I'm in! ....representing Dealer.com
This is seriously the worst advice ever, this is even embarrassing for Dealer.com. Not even surprised...
Please STOP giving out advice about things you do NOT know about.
Brb. Here's how a person with REAL advice and experience does it. Sending out the entire database's e-mail list to check the bounce rates, and filtering my list to remove bad e-mails at once. My salespeople aren't sending e-mails out to bad or fake e-mails anymore. CRM's do not do that. Checking the unsubscribes list and removing those who not interested later in the CRM. Now I have a damn solid list of contacts to reach out to that don't mind getting promotional e-mails. Wow, I also have data on what the open rates are, and how many people click through to my site or landing pages. I also have the opportunity to determine how aggressive I should market my list, and now I can do
REAL COMPANY SHIT, RCS. Like e-mail marketing, without sitting back and letting my list go to waste.
You know when people sell ebooks and products online, the #1 way they make money is the LIST. THE LIST. I will say it again,
THE LIST. These are the same people that make $50K/Month selling ebooks. Oh wait, I'm one of them.. I was doing $1.5K/Month selling SEO ebooks to my list. I didn't sit back and say, Ah nah... It might offend my customers.. I can't do that, what if this ONE guy gets mad. He will unsubscribe! How magical... So will the rest, and the remaining group of 1-2K people will either ignore your e-mails or read them. And from there you have a solid list, that will keep making more and more money with every send.
You really expected a targeted list NOT to make you money? Pshh... Yeah okay, keep on wasting it..
Oh and if you want to come back at me with some more excuses.. Please do so. Because I have REAL CURRENT geo-location data on all my e-mails and customers now. I can see which customers have moved, what state they currently are living in, their zip code, etc. And a ton of other things I can update in the customer's CRM record. Want more reasons? Please take a moment to actually gain some knowledge and experience first.
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Also Todd's post is spot on as far as the response goes so I won't comment any further.