Just read this great blog post by Jason Stum at MarketPunch.com. In it he talks about the challenges with conducting comprehensive, targeted, highly deliverable email campaigns within a dealership CRM. He gives some other great tips about email marketing as well. Basically his contention is that dealership CRM systems are not equipped to efficiently handle highly targeted, segmented email communication. I think he has a great point although the last thing I want to do is introduce another marketing system (Constant Contact for example) into the mix. So why is that CRM companies haven't addressed this? We have a great CRM system but I think they fall short in this important area and I've yet to see one that has done it effectively. Someone said to me the other day that car dealership CRM's are best used for managing internet leads and floor traffic and that functions like post sale follow up, service marketing/reminders, lease retention processing and equity mining should be handled by systems like Red Rocket, Autoloop, XtreamService, etc. What are your thoughts on this?
CRM Systems and Email Marketing - Why Such a Challenge?
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Hey Andy, glad you found my blog post and shared your thoughts here on DealerRefresh!
In my perfect world, our CRM (eLeads) would have all the functionality and flexibility that Constant Contact gives us to launch our Email Campaigns. And you are right, adding another system into our mix presents it's own set of challenges. For example, when someone unsubscribes via CC Safe Unsubscribe, that is not communicated directly to the CRM. Each week we have to export the unsubscribe list from Constant Contact and manually unsubscribe that customer from eLeads as well (luckily, we get very few unsubscribes
)
We're blessed to not only have a very organized individual on our digital team to head up our email efforts (he's sitting across from me now and has no idea I'm talking about him!), but eLeads does a superb job at providing whatever assistance we need to make the back and forth between systems go as smoothly as possible.
I think it's only a matter of time before one of the main CRM players will not only add the advantages a Constant Contact style system to it's core offering, but improve on it as well to meet the specific needs for it's automotive clients.
Thanks again Andy, you ROCK!
In my perfect world, our CRM (eLeads) would have all the functionality and flexibility that Constant Contact gives us to launch our Email Campaigns. And you are right, adding another system into our mix presents it's own set of challenges. For example, when someone unsubscribes via CC Safe Unsubscribe, that is not communicated directly to the CRM. Each week we have to export the unsubscribe list from Constant Contact and manually unsubscribe that customer from eLeads as well (luckily, we get very few unsubscribes
)We're blessed to not only have a very organized individual on our digital team to head up our email efforts (he's sitting across from me now and has no idea I'm talking about him!), but eLeads does a superb job at providing whatever assistance we need to make the back and forth between systems go as smoothly as possible.
I think it's only a matter of time before one of the main CRM players will not only add the advantages a Constant Contact style system to it's core offering, but improve on it as well to meet the specific needs for it's automotive clients.
Thanks again Andy, you ROCK!
Andy and Jason, you make some great points. Your posts have pushed me to write my first post on dealerrefresh . I believe the term CRM is a butchered term in our space. CRM does not mean "Lead Management System". It means "Customer Relationship Management". The true value of any CRM is in its ability to automate targeted unique processes catered to get your most valuable prospects AND customers moving through your customer for life process. The more targeted the automated process, the more relevant your message will be to your customers, which will in turn create higher ROI on your campaigns. Your marketing should lead your previous customers in to buy vehicles, your sales should feed your service department, and your service department should feed your marketing strategy with happy return customers who buy additional vehicles.
One best practice that we like to push to our dealers to automate (on a daily basis) in helping them send more relevant messages to their customers has the following criteria:
-any customer who spends over $500 on a Customer Pay RO
-where the Purchase Date is over 2 years ago
-where the Estimated Mileage is between 30k and 120k
Dealers send an automated email/letter followed up with a call offering them a refund/credit up to $500 on a new car if they trade in the car that just had the work done to it the previous day.
When dealers create these types of rules in their CRM's, they will see more consistency in their business and more importantly have the power to manage what works and what isn't working with regards to demos, test drives, and sales that are resulting from these "everyday" processes that are running.
Consistent processes generate consistent pipelines, which drives consistent growth in sales and service business. True CRMs (Customer Relationship Management Tools) help a dealer create consistency in their business by helping automate targeted unique processes.
. I believe the term CRM is a butchered term in our space. CRM does not mean "Lead Management System". It means "Customer Relationship Management". The true value of any CRM is in its ability to automate targeted unique processes catered to get your most valuable prospects AND customers moving through your customer for life process. The more targeted the automated process, the more relevant your message will be to your customers, which will in turn create higher ROI on your campaigns. Your marketing should lead your previous customers in to buy vehicles, your sales should feed your service department, and your service department should feed your marketing strategy with happy return customers who buy additional vehicles. One best practice that we like to push to our dealers to automate (on a daily basis) in helping them send more relevant messages to their customers has the following criteria:
-any customer who spends over $500 on a Customer Pay RO
-where the Purchase Date is over 2 years ago
-where the Estimated Mileage is between 30k and 120k
Dealers send an automated email/letter followed up with a call offering them a refund/credit up to $500 on a new car if they trade in the car that just had the work done to it the previous day.
When dealers create these types of rules in their CRM's, they will see more consistency in their business and more importantly have the power to manage what works and what isn't working with regards to demos, test drives, and sales that are resulting from these "everyday" processes that are running.
Consistent processes generate consistent pipelines, which drives consistent growth in sales and service business. True CRMs (Customer Relationship Management Tools) help a dealer create consistency in their business by helping automate targeted unique processes.
- Apr 7, 2009
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- Joe
Thought:
Email management systems are highly specialized... as are CRMs. If there was an API based system that could push a campaign from CRM to email mngt system, and back the other way where the opt-outs and 'repy-to' data could get routed back to CRM, then you'd have the best of both worlds.
As I recall, email management systems obsess over email performance ratios and... lets just say... they're not interested in the challenges of our industry I went 100% white hat with mailchimp and found email campaigns to be extremely complex to execute and stay in their good graces.
Email management systems are highly specialized... as are CRMs. If there was an API based system that could push a campaign from CRM to email mngt system, and back the other way where the opt-outs and 'repy-to' data could get routed back to CRM, then you'd have the best of both worlds.
As I recall, email management systems obsess over email performance ratios and... lets just say... they're not interested in the challenges of our industry
I went 100% white hat with mailchimp and found email campaigns to be extremely complex to execute and stay in their good graces.Great thought Joe. We recently had a conversation eLead CRM about the possibility of doing something just like that. We we're hoping at minimum we could send them the list of recipients & opt-outs for each campaign and they could automate a process of making a note in the customer's profile that the email was received/opened and opt them out in the CRM if necessary.
Hoping they come up with a solution as this would be an awesome next step.
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Before I forget, Hi Peter! Nice to see you step out from the shadows and make your first post on the forums. Welcome sir, your insights are appreciated!
Thanks for the welcome Jason! I've learned a lot in these forums over the years.
Opt outs aren't the only thing that would be missing through using a 3rd party marketing company.
Managing Current Vehicle Ownership (Inactivating vehicles) in your CRM is extremely important when sending relevant messages to your customer base. Your customers should have the ability through the click of the link to tell you that they no longer own the vehicle referenced in the email so future campaigns are not automated based on a vehicle they no longer own.
Email Opened alerts would be hard to communicate when using another email system. Push Alert through our App to the user that sent the email notifying them that their customer/prospect opened the email wouldn't occur.
Customized links tied directly to customer records such as vehicle brochures and schedule service appointment would all be generic through a 3rd party email systems. In our CRM, these links are tied directly to the customers that are opening these links, so when they schedule a service... they are choosing which of their vehicle they want to bring in rather than having to input all their information again (frustrating to customers).
Opt outs aren't the only thing that would be missing through using a 3rd party marketing company.
Managing Current Vehicle Ownership (Inactivating vehicles) in your CRM is extremely important when sending relevant messages to your customer base. Your customers should have the ability through the click of the link to tell you that they no longer own the vehicle referenced in the email so future campaigns are not automated based on a vehicle they no longer own.
Email Opened alerts would be hard to communicate when using another email system. Push Alert through our App to the user that sent the email notifying them that their customer/prospect opened the email wouldn't occur.
Customized links tied directly to customer records such as vehicle brochures and schedule service appointment would all be generic through a 3rd party email systems. In our CRM, these links are tied directly to the customers that are opening these links, so when they schedule a service... they are choosing which of their vehicle they want to bring in rather than having to input all their information again (frustrating to customers).
The best solution we have found for us is using a service called MyEmma.com. It's pretty similar to constant contact, but I loved the simplicity and usability of the MyEmma product, so we went with them. They offer both templates and custom HTML emails (what we use). There was a little bit of manual setup up to start and general list monthly maintenance exporting lists from CRM and importing into MyEmma, but pretty basic stuff. We exported each list independently (service, solds, freshups, etc) and manually created mailing lists for each group within MyEmma. If someone opts out on an email from MyEmma, even if we reimport that contact, it keeps them opted-out. Duplicate records are eliminated automatically so we don't have to worry about multiple entries into our lists.
MyEmma has a pretty good reporting system which gives you the names and emails of people who opened, when they opened, clicked through, opted-out, etc, etc. Tie that in which Google Analytics tracking we have a pretty decent reporting system on both fronts.
MyEmma has a pretty good reporting system which gives you the names and emails of people who opened, when they opened, clicked through, opted-out, etc, etc. Tie that in which Google Analytics tracking we have a pretty decent reporting system on both fronts.
I've found that with the right level of communication between your CRM and your Marketing Campaign tools you can create very highly targeted, engaging, and eye catching e-mail campaigns with highly trackable ROI. I've created campaigns with a 46% click through rate and a 22% conversion rate. Slicing and dicing the information contained in your CRM tool and creating multiple targeted campaigns that reach all of the different subsets of your customer base is possible, with the right tools.
- May 1, 2006
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When we were in the planning phase of building a CRM from scratch we looked at outsourcing the email campaigning portion to quite a few different email service providers like MailChimp and ConstantContact.....plus about 17 more. When we told them we represented car dealers....
Whoa
We were shut down almost immediately by all but 3 companies. Apparently car dealers (as an industry) are very close to the top of the list of violating all the email practices these companies enforce in order to provide fantastic deliverability rates.
With that said, I applaud this thread as this is precisely what we should be talking about to get our industry's reputation out of the toilet. Targeted emails, that the receiver finds relevant, are the first step to this. But I want to point out the obvious thing that most dealerships don't know:
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.
Since we have DealerSocket, Dealer.com, and VinSolutions in this thread I propose a "vendor pact" to help dealers with this.
Step 1: Change the default in our email blast tools to make it easier to target customers over just blasting the entire database.
Step 2: Provide limitations on sending to a blast list of X size (to be discussed) or some sort of alternative (also something that needs discussion)
Step 3: Help to raise awareness on email deliverability and how we can only make it better as an industry. It would be really cool if our companies dropped the competitive spirit on this front and maybe launched some marketing campaigns together?
I'm in! ....representing Dealer.com
Whoa
We were shut down almost immediately by all but 3 companies. Apparently car dealers (as an industry) are very close to the top of the list of violating all the email practices these companies enforce in order to provide fantastic deliverability rates.
With that said, I applaud this thread as this is precisely what we should be talking about to get our industry's reputation out of the toilet. Targeted emails, that the receiver finds relevant, are the first step to this. But I want to point out the obvious thing that most dealerships don't know:
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.
Since we have DealerSocket, Dealer.com, and VinSolutions in this thread I propose a "vendor pact" to help dealers with this.
Step 1: Change the default in our email blast tools to make it easier to target customers over just blasting the entire database.
Step 2: Provide limitations on sending to a blast list of X size (to be discussed) or some sort of alternative (also something that needs discussion)
Step 3: Help to raise awareness on email deliverability and how we can only make it better as an industry. It would be really cool if our companies dropped the competitive spirit on this front and maybe launched some marketing campaigns together?
I'm in! ....representing Dealer.com
Alex,
Thanks for the mention. I share the same sentiment. 3 1/2 years ago, our CRM (DealerSocket) made a tough decision to mandate some pretty rigid spam policies (many are targeted to your below steps) that has grown to benefit our entire customer base. At first our customers were very agitated that they no longer had the ability to send emails to their whole email database. With explaining the very issue we are discussing in this thread, we have changed many minds.
We all need to check our own inbox and think to ourselves, do I enjoy the companies that blast irrelevant messages to my inbox. Your query building tool should be merely a Testing Ground for new marketing ideas and if there is success, your CRM should have the ability to change that list/query into a business process that happens everyday. This creates a manageable pipeline that creates consistent sales and service business.
"Step 1: Change the default in our email blast tools to make it easier to target customers over just blasting the entire database.
Step 2: Provide limitations on sending to a blast list of X size (to be discussed) or some sort of alternative (also something that needs discussion)
Step 3: Help to raise awareness on email deliverability and how we can only make it better as an industry. It would be really cool if our companies dropped the competitive spirit on this front and maybe launched some marketing campaigns together? "
Thanks for the mention. I share the same sentiment. 3 1/2 years ago, our CRM (DealerSocket) made a tough decision to mandate some pretty rigid spam policies (many are targeted to your below steps) that has grown to benefit our entire customer base. At first our customers were very agitated that they no longer had the ability to send emails to their whole email database. With explaining the very issue we are discussing in this thread, we have changed many minds.
We all need to check our own inbox and think to ourselves, do I enjoy the companies that blast irrelevant messages to my inbox. Your query building tool should be merely a Testing Ground for new marketing ideas and if there is success, your CRM should have the ability to change that list/query into a business process that happens everyday. This creates a manageable pipeline that creates consistent sales and service business.
"Step 1: Change the default in our email blast tools to make it easier to target customers over just blasting the entire database.
Step 2: Provide limitations on sending to a blast list of X size (to be discussed) or some sort of alternative (also something that needs discussion)
Step 3: Help to raise awareness on email deliverability and how we can only make it better as an industry. It would be really cool if our companies dropped the competitive spirit on this front and maybe launched some marketing campaigns together? "
