- May 1, 2006
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- Alex
CRM Systems and Email Marketing - Why Such a Challenge?
- Thread starter andwrig
- Start date
We've produced white papers on best practice marketing processes for quite sometime, all of which encourage our customers not to spray and pray messages out to their database. Click on link below to view and feel free to include and quote any of this material in your marketing efforts.
Resources - DealerSocket
All the best,
Pete
Resources - DealerSocket
All the best,
Pete
- Apr 30, 2009
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- Jock
Agreed, email delivery is a constant battle and ever changing landscape. It's hard to convince our clients that if they are sending email to their entire database the ARE spamming. Count DealerPeak in to support this educational initiative.
- Feb 9, 2012
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- Todd
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...
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.
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 industryI went 100% white hat with mailchimp and found email campaigns to be extremely complex to execute and stay in their good graces.
+1 for Joe who understands this and has experience..
It's pretty annoying to move the unsubscribes/bounces back into the CRM to update it, but worth it in my eyes...
Also Mailchimp is pretty strict, what I've found to work best is for any dealer wanting to try out e-mail marketing... Go with Constant Contact first, or any other generic provider you don't mind losing/getting banned from. You'll have a TON of bounces, unsubs, etc the first few times. Just keep filtering your list and get it more targeted until you have a compliant list.. THEN move over to MailChimp, and you'll love it. Of course, there's more to it, because if you're sending out bulk campaigns too often you're going to get screwed regardless.. So keep it mind, e-mail "blasts" as dealers call them, are NOT bad at all. You just have to know what you're doing, most don't.
- May 1, 2006
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- Alex
Is this the pot calling the kettle black?
So Brian ....whoops ....kcar,
Maybe I should continue to respect your desire to not actually be you (although I've known who you are for nearly 2 years I am getting a bit tired of it).
So kcar,
What you're saying about list management is true despite your tone and how you chose to phrase it. However, in all your long years of experience (do you now have 3 years?), I would like you tell us how many dealers would actually go out and manage their email database as you have? No doubt, you've done something unique and special in that regard. But your advice does not even speak to most of the 1% best dealers out there ...wait a second... none of what you're saying matters.
You're looking for a job aren't you? You're trying to appeal to another poster in this thread
....I see what you're doing. Nice strategy :thumbup:EDIT: Jeff just told me you left the car business. If that's true why do you keep coming to DealerRefresh?
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What Alex is saying is correct. As a CRM company we have struggled with this one too. We have finally landed on a multi-layered solution that manages to check each and every email first before they are sent out of our system. It checks if the email is a spam trap or a potentially dangerous email and then also checks to see the usage pattern of the customer (i.e. does the customer mark everything they get in their inbox as spam, etc.) before we send a campaign to them. We also have multiple checks as to the "health" of the email (e.g. if the email has bounced 2x within the past 30 days and we have not received an incoming email from a customer within the last 120 days, etc). Essentially, it's about keeping the one bad apple from spoiling the rest of the bunch.
We rank our emails in 8 different categories to determine their validity and if they are dangerous and will flag the dealership as a "spammer" (which they are not - they just want to get the word out for their sale, etc.). We also check the content of the email itself and flag it if we think the ISP's (internet service providers - yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc.) will see the email content as possible spam.
I say all this to say this - it's a tough, complicated subject. You can't just "blast them all" or else you will be shut down by the ISP's in no time. Actually, you can blast them all. But, 70% of your emails will never show up in the customers inboxes so it doesn't matter anyway. They will all end up in the spam folder.
Once we started digging into things a little further to really trace our emails and their deliverability it opened our eyes majorly. We have drastically improved our deliverability rate now but are still working on it on a daily basis.
You definitely have our support on this subject. It is a constantly moving target to get our dealership's emails into the inbox. But, we are winning the battle (especially when I see conversations like this to help educate the dealer as well!)
Thanks!
We rank our emails in 8 different categories to determine their validity and if they are dangerous and will flag the dealership as a "spammer" (which they are not - they just want to get the word out for their sale, etc.). We also check the content of the email itself and flag it if we think the ISP's (internet service providers - yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc.) will see the email content as possible spam.
I say all this to say this - it's a tough, complicated subject. You can't just "blast them all" or else you will be shut down by the ISP's in no time. Actually, you can blast them all. But, 70% of your emails will never show up in the customers inboxes so it doesn't matter anyway. They will all end up in the spam folder.
Once we started digging into things a little further to really trace our emails and their deliverability it opened our eyes majorly. We have drastically improved our deliverability rate now but are still working on it on a daily basis.
You definitely have our support on this subject. It is a constantly moving target to get our dealership's emails into the inbox. But, we are winning the battle (especially when I see conversations like this to help educate the dealer as well!)
Thanks!
This is sort of off-topic from Email marketing and CRM - It's more so about emailing within your CRM (although we should consider every email we send as "marketing"...) In most CRM systems, you can attach or embed a vehicle listing into the email, which links out to some the vehicles detail page. And I do think this is great because it re-engages the shopper with your vehicle, etc. But, on the flip side, a plain-text type email is much more likely to make it to their inbox.
Does anyone have any recommendations/ stats/ studies about the trade-off between using plain text emails vs. inserting an inventory listing or multiple listings with alternatives into an email to a customer. Does anyone here track deliverability rates with inventory inserted vs. plain text? Any recommendations?
Another twist to this is the use of smartphones accessing their email, so the inventory listing in the email should be formatted for a smaller device and link to a mobile site vehicle details page.
I would imagine most CRM companies have some good insight into this.
Does anyone have any recommendations/ stats/ studies about the trade-off between using plain text emails vs. inserting an inventory listing or multiple listings with alternatives into an email to a customer. Does anyone here track deliverability rates with inventory inserted vs. plain text? Any recommendations?
Another twist to this is the use of smartphones accessing their email, so the inventory listing in the email should be formatted for a smaller device and link to a mobile site vehicle details page.
I would imagine most CRM companies have some good insight into this.
I have just joined this forum and found it weird that no one has mentioned or heard of One Command. I am the BDC Director of Greenway Automotive with the corporate headquarters located in Orlando Florida. I use them for all of my email marketing because I have been black listed several times. I found that my delivery rate and open rates were a lot higher and they also provide a constant marketing strategy that is consistent with the times and is not the same old message that you are used to hearing (Call to action). I service 10 stores for the group and it makes the process very easy. They constantly have the data from my DMS and CRM and it works great. I also use multiple CRMs because our dealerships are given full autonomy with regards to process. Hope this helps. Im excited about this website and what I can learn.