Email Marketing Works!

[Alex Jefferson]

I am a big believer in consistent email marketing. I’d like to get more heavily involved in conquest email marketing in our area. I have been in touch with Polk and City Twist but have yet to find a vendor that will sell me list of email addresses in my area. I would rather send out myself using a platform like vertical response. Does anyone know of a reputable company that I could get a list from?

 

[Andrew Carr]

I have not found a great company to get a list from. The concept makes complete sense to me but I hear so many bad things from people that I am not sure what direction to go in terms of conquest. We do conquest direct mail all of the time and it has a great ROI for our store when the piece is right. I would think that e-mail could be even better if it is done right.

I agree completely with your statement about e-mail marketing working. Many dealerships still missing it.

I use Mac Pages to create my own content and probably do two e-mail blasts each week on average. I use them to market my people, my place, and my brand. When you review the CRM each month and look at sold customers, a very large percentage are either retained previous customers who get our e-mail or they are 120 day plus old leads who get our e-mail but have fallen off of "intense follow up" by our internet department.

It's a lot like outbound phone calls, they need to have a purpose. I always hyperlink the graphics to an appropriate web page and some of the items I do on a regular basis are:

* Monthly newsletter personalized from customers salesperson ( I design and send on their behalf).

* Manufacturer themed promotions that tie into national advertising "Ford Truck Month", "Toyota Saved By Zero", etc.

* Service promotions (great retention tool. If they aren't getting it from you they ARE getting it from Valvoline).

* E-mails about upcoming community events that our dealership is involved with. ( We are big on concert promotion and sponsorship and leveraging on our events to raise money for American Cancer Society, National Childrens Cancer Society and Fallen Soldiers. I use our e-mail blasts to spread the word!)

* I also do tailored campaigns to people who own or have expressed interest in certain vehicles. An example would be letting all of my 2008 and newer Ford Escape owners know that there is a good chance we can upgrade them to a remaining 2012 and lower their payment given the current programs.

These are all very inexpensive branding opportunities to people who either have been interested or are interested. Good luck with finding a good local list. Please share if you have any luck!

 

[Andrew Carr]

Some other thoughts about e-mail marketing... when you begin to do this in your dealership you will hear complaints. You will hear it from your sales people, your service advisors, and even some of your customers. Strangely your staff will be the ones telling you most often that "it's too much...it's excessive...you are scaring people off." (The same sales people that you have your BDC following up with their unsold customers and helping them close deals because they don't want to scare anyone off.) Keep in mind that if you have 10,000 good e-mails in your data base you will get 20 or 30 opt-outs each time you send out a piece. About 90% of your blast won't ever even be opened (It seems like 4-6% is an average open rate...and with conquest I will bet it's lower). I don't think you can count on even most of that 4-6% to take action, but you are looking for that handful...those additional 3 or 4 deals...those 5 or 6 extra service appointments that were about to use their Valvoline coupon...you are looking for RETENTION.

So stay the course and in 4 to 6 months you will be able to start showing those people where a good portion of the deals they closed were on people receiving your material.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Alex and Andrew,

Yes - email marketing absolutely works but is often overlooked by dealers. I believe this is mostly due to dealers not sure where to turn. They feel as if it should be a low cost to free medium. And in some cases it sure can be. But with the FREE option, dealers are usually left to using their CRM and someone in-house to design and manage the campaigns. Of course we don't need to talk about why this is usually results in a FAIL.

Most industry CRM's are not equipped to send and manage email marketing campaigns. It's a long list of reason so I'll digress form listing them out.

This has been a topic of discussion here on DealerRefresh many times before... you can use the Search feature up there on the right side to find them.

Alex, as we discussed via email I'm not of any company that's allows on to actually acquire email lists but I'll see what I can find out for you.

 

[DGervasio]

Feel free to reach out to me. I am an expert in email lists and email marketing. I started doing it back in 1995 at the very beginnings of the industry. My company at the time created the software that a good portion of the industry was using to send and collect emails. My company managed lists of over 50 million emails for all kind of campaigns. Because of this, I know people in the industry and I have several sources for email lists. More importantly, I know how to get email delivered. If you are sending emails and getting open rates of 4-6% to existing customers something is not right. We routinely have 20% opens for our dealers measured by image loading, when in reality the true rate is much higher. Feel free to PM me if you need help.

 

[ddavis]

Alex and Andrew,

Yes - email marketing absolutely works but is often overlooked by dealers. I believe this is mostly due to dealers not sure where to turn. They feel as if it should be a low cost to free medium. And in some cases it sure can be. But with the FREE option, dealers are usually left to using their CRM and someone in-house to design and manage the campaigns. Of course we don't need to talk about why this is usually results in a FAIL.

As I read through this, I am aware that many dealerships are doing their own email marketing with predictable results. It dawned on me that many dealers might not be doing consistent email marketing, at all. Until right now, I hadn't imagined that could be the case. Email marketing has to be the most effective/cost efficient advertising ever available to a dealership. I have used the same company for some time with good results. They would send out a new car blast, a used car blast and Parts and Service blast. The parts and service blast easily paid for all of it and insured that customers didn't opt out. By using a professional company, the quality was superior to anything we could have done.

 

[yagoparamo]

Have you thought about using a cheap system like Constant Contact ($15/month) and emailing the dealer's personnel?

Average dealer in the US has 70 employees so if you do an email that this month any family or friend of your employees gets an oil change for lets say $15, you can have those 70 people share in their FB to at least 200 people each (70 X 200), etc.

You can provide them with the graphics to share in their social media via the email campaign.