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Who's sending your marketing email campaigns (blasts?)

There is very little to be added to this as Jeff and others answered correctly.

Only segmented collections of targeted customers with specific, relevant offers is recommended through the CRM (think 1-100 prospects).
Full blasts, if performed out of the CRM, (think - all active prospects) would ONLY every be recommended if the CRM provider used an outside provider as a third party to send those blasts to, as it could potentially get you blacklisted otherwise.

I think MailChimp, which we use at DealerKnows, has just about the coolest UX you can get out of an email marketing platform, yet it is not automotive-friendly. For that reason, rely on using your CRM for targeted email approaches, and on outside providers for full blasts. If you're considering going with an agency that buys lists of email addresses in a zip code, just beware as those have very little return, regardless of content.

Could someone explain why MailChimp is bad for automotive? I love their service. Email on acid as well. Any experiences with constant contact or Litmus? Hubspot?
 
Non-automotive but https://convertkit.com looks promising.

I've seen a bunch of services like this.
They're very cool for onboarding and squeezing consumers.

A great way to use them would be for things like service scheduling, vehicle education, etc.
If I had a full time employee at my disposal in a dealership, I would have them build model specific "welcome" packages for things like how to connect your phone, how often to service your vehicle, scheduled coupons, etc. Time delay the emails and you're fostering a relationship through automation.
 
To clarify, you're speaking about email marketing out of the Dealer Venom system right? What kind of results are you guys seeing?

Here is a screenshot of a recent campaign ran thru our Dashboard service. Obviously, we encourage our clients to use best practices, which this one group in particular does well with not blasting anyone and everyone- segmenting the lists, hyper-targeting your offers, etc... but this is a pretty typical result of a campaign from this dealer group, who does well with the meat and potatoes of their content/offers to targets. (When we began working with them, they were the e-blast bastard type:lol:)

They have grown to use our dashboard for their e-mail campaigns to get into nitty-gritty of following up, identifying higher potential leads, tweaking their lists with the successful variations of messaging and call to actions, etc.. based on the metrics they are seeing from previous campaigns. Our goal is to give the dealer the tools and information to make the job clear and cut (as simple as possible while addressing the most commonly seen e-blast frustrations with CRM/3rd parties), and to provide assistance in any way we can along the way.

To start - Our system sends out responsive emails, which is already a huge plus, as we all know. We can also get very detailed into the opens/actions of the customers, along with frequencies of those said actions. Dealers can see who opened, how many times they opened, where they opened and who performed certain actions - clicking links (how many times), how many and who bounced, unsubscribed, or didn't open.

With all that info, we notice our clients begin to be more pro-active with our user-friendly tools and their e-mail campaigns. These increased adjustments and activity has had a direct positive correlation with higher success of their e-mail campaigns. :thumbup:
 

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Here is a screenshot of a recent campaign ran thru our Dashboard service. Obviously, we encourage our clients to use best practices, which this one group in particular does well with not blasting anyone and everyone- segmenting the lists, hyper-targeting your offers, etc... but this is a pretty typical result of a campaign from this dealer group, who does well with the meat and potatoes of their content/offers to targets. (When we began working with them, they were the e-blast bastard type:lol:)

They have grown to use our dashboard for their e-mail campaigns to get into nitty-gritty of following up, identifying higher potential leads, tweaking their lists with the successful variations of messaging and call to actions, etc.. based on the metrics they are seeing from previous campaigns. Our goal is to give the dealer the tools and information to make the job clear and cut (as simple as possible while addressing the most commonly seen e-blast frustrations with CRM/3rd parties), and to provide assistance in any way we can along the way.

To start - Our system sends out responsive emails, which is already a huge plus, as we all know. We can also get very detailed into the opens/actions of the customers, along with frequencies of those said actions. Dealers can see who opened, how many times they opened, where they opened and who performed certain actions - clicking links (how many times), how many and who bounced, unsubscribed, or didn't open.

With all that info, we notice our clients begin to be more pro-active with our user-friendly tools and their e-mail campaigns. These increased adjustments and activity has had a direct positive correlation with higher success of their e-mail campaigns. :thumbup:
Looks completely white labeled to me. I've seen that interface before, actually.
 
Looks completely white labeled to me. I've seen that interface before, actually.

Our goal was not to say we have 're-invented the wheel of email marketing' - but simply to describe the success we have seen in dealers using 3rd party over a CRM - and the advantages it presents when doing so - the campaigns are simply better. Also, to shed light on how we get there..

Sorry if it came off that we were doing something that no-one has ever seen before - the main advantage we offer is working hand in hand with dealerships to work with the tools at hand, teach them using our experiences, and give them an opportunity to learn what works best for their dealership, so they can see long term success. We work with a many number of dealers, who have a variety of approaches when sending out their e-blasts, so an individual/custom approached effort is always 100% necessary. One solution / platform certainly does not fix all and there is no elevator to the success everyone desires.

The platforms are just a tool (which we provide) used to send out the message and all can have various tracking metrics and features - and any tool can be mis-used or mis-handled. But with the right tool, the right partners, and the right knowledge- success will come with experience. You know... the whole teach a man to fish theory...

However, I will say different platforms allow complete customization of emails, content, offers and tracking to boost user engagement for each campaign - so we find our favorite/s that enable us to best work with our dealers and help us all succeed, reach our targets, and get more sales.