Email "Blasts"

[sweece]

I'd like to get some opinions on this. A lot of the fixed ops managers at my store think we can just email "blast" people whenever we want. I'm personally under the opinion that we do more harm than good by sending out too many emails (I'm the one that sees the unsubscribes & spam warnings) and that we should limit our emails to about 1 or 2 per month. I know customers didn't sign up for our list so that they could be sent coupons every week and I'd like to include all of those offers in the email that goes out once a month. I just don't entirely know how to get the message across that this is a bad idea...

Or is it?

 

[Neil Frutuoso]

I think it varies store to store, I see you are a Buick GMC dealer, I am a single point Buick dealer but my customers love emails. If I can get three out a month, a mixture of service and sales we will see better web traffic numbers from the sales click throughs and we see great response on the service side. Our customers just love specials.


It is clear to me that an email balst to your own customers can only take you so far, but if we need service work we know we can send an email and fill the bays.

Our opt outs are low and I have tried sending 1, 2, 3, and 4 a month. You need to feel out what your customers are ok with.

Who is your email provider?

 

[Stefan]

I'd like to get some opinions on this. A lot of the fixed ops managers at my store think we can just email "blast" people whenever we want. I'm personally under the opinion that we do more harm than good by sending out too many emails (I'm the one that sees the unsubscribes & spam warnings) and that we should limit our emails to about 1 or 2 per month. I know customers didn't sign up for our list so that they could be sent coupons every week and I'd like to include all of those offers in the email that goes out once a month. I just don't entirely know how to get the message across that this is a bad idea...

Or is it?

Do u have a post sale/service survey? If you don't, you should! Ask your customers! After you have their answers sit down with all your mangers, show them the results and decide together how much are you going to push the envelope.

 

[JamieS]

Another thought would be to target a specific group of people. Even if it is a small group of people, the chances of the information being more relevant to them are greater and therefore more meaningful. It doesn't have to be 3,000+ people every time. As a basic example if you can target say, everyone that declined a transmission service in the last 4 months, and then send them a transmission service discount email, you might get a small number of people but you are giving them something they can definitely relate to. I think as long as the email is relevant it's ok to send out more than twice a month.

A bad example would be a dealer I have purchased from several times. I have never leased a vehicle, ever. I have purchased 3 small cars from them. I get lease offers at least once a month. Not even for the same vehicle class either; SUVs, wagons, the lot. It's not relevant to me, I delete it. They are more like "You're a name in a database and we don't KNOW you at all.....but just in case you're interested" emails.

The more you specific you can get with your blasts the better imo.

 

[sweece]

Do u have a post sale/service survey? If you don't, you should! Ask your customers! After you have their answers sit down with all your mangers, show them the results and decide together how much are you going to push the envelope.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think this comment sticks out the most to me. Doesn't matter what I think, ask the customer! It's fair to say that our post sale survey is a little less than efficient so I'll dig into that and add some additional items.

I also agree that the more target the email, the better. I'll be honest here though -- I absolutely hate using ADP's campaign tool to segment our list. It's the most confusing thing to use and I really just wish we had something simpler.