web based email marketing

[joe.pistell]

... What are the must have's of any solid email marketing software?

Biggies for me are:

- segmentation (being able to effectively group people into lists. ex. Truck buyers not getting emails about Ford Focus)

re: segmentation
In ReyRey, you can create lists with segmentation in nearly any flavor you want. Here is a screen shot of a mini-van owner only list:

If you want, you can add "I want prior minivan owners (or prospects) that have an email. You add this thread:

You can add date ranges, reps, all kinds of parameters to refine your segmentation. Like I said, it's all there, but just try to find it.

 

[joe.pistell]

What are the must have's of any solid email marketing software?

Biggies for me are...

- tracking things like open rates, conversions (people that bought in a defined time frame after receiving the email), click thru's (yes people that use outlook preview pane aren't counted. I'm aware of that)
- double opt in - increases deliverability exponentially
- scrubbing of bad emails, duplicates, etc
- obsessive management when it comes to staying on the white lists or keeping off the black lists

Andy,
All the above is standard equipment with Mail Chimp (incl heat maps).

When you run a Chimp campaign, it "self-cleanses" the list automatically. That is a VERY good thing. The cluster F* comes in keeping all those segmented lists fresh. Prospects buy cars and need to be removed. Sold lists grow. Optout requests in MailChimp needs to be manually moved into CRM. You need a sharp player in-house that can follow a process on a scheduled basis to keep on top of this mess.

Next... if you blow this "cleansing process" off and just dump a fresh SS in for each campaign, the people that opted out earlier get wacked again and they ain't happy!


All this made possible because ReyRey Mail management is circa 1996.

 

[andwrig]

Joe

I am aware of how CM handles segmentation. The only problem is that there is no way of telling in a customer profile if they are currently a member of a specific list (i.e. this customer is on the list for Odysseys, therefore they don't send them communications about Civic Hybrids). That's what I meant by segmentation. Nobody seems to have a well thought out set of rules and ways to define segments so people aren't getting multiple emails with multiple messages causing confusion, bombardment, etc. Maybe I'm unrealistic. The closest thing we have to effective segmentation is on the service side with respect to customer buckets (people that haven't been in for 6, 9, 12 months, etc) and lease returns (6 months left on lease, 4 months left on lease, etc). Maybe I'm overthinking it but the proofs in the pudding and the pudding is opt out/unsubscribe rates, open rates, etc.

 

[joe.pistell]

Joe

I am aware of how CM handles segmentation. The only problem is that there is no way of telling in a customer profile if they are currently a member of a specific list (i.e. this customer is on the list for Odysseys, therefore they don't send them communications about Civic Hybrids). That's what I meant by segmentation. Nobody seems to have a well thought out set of rules and ways to define segments so people aren't getting multiple emails with multiple messages causing confusion, bombardment, etc....

oooo... I hadn't thought of that one Andy! (prolly 'cuz I sell used carz!

Hmm... auto enroll people based on profiles. Have newsletters that address these profiles. Create a hierarchy where the "lower" newsletters are superseded (or delayed) by the higher. Wow. Lots of orchestration but I see what you're seeing!

 

[sweece]

Bump. Relevant.

So lately I've been having some discussions with folks over here about which customers should be receiving our email "blasts" (as they call them). It seems like every resource I find online from reputable email marketing sources says that we should only be sending to people that signed up via a double opt-in platform. Furthermore, they say that we should only be sending to people that have explicitly signed up with the intention of receiving email marketing materials from our store.

Let me get this out first: I wholeheartedly agree with these standards.

That being said, the management here thinks that every single one of the customers in our database deserves to hear our message on a monthly basis, even if they never explicitly agreed to receive marketing emails from our store. They believe that since we have a customer's email in our database, that we have every right to "blast" them once a month with a sales message, so long as we give them the ability to opt-out.

So this really seems like a question of an opt-in vs. opt-out approach.

I haven't seen a single automotive email marketing provider that even addresses this issue, but I definitely see this being discussed outside of our industry.

Is anyone here operating using an opt-in approach? Have you had success? The idea is hard to sell to certain individuals who think that email is a cheap form of communication that needs to get sent to the greatest audience possible.

 

[Alex Snyder]

sweece - glad you caught that other article about double opt-ins. I don't know of a single dealer who is practicing it. I know of some companies that do it, but they're only managing it on their own database. i.e. a newsletter company sends an email to customers the dealer submitted to them asking them to "re" opt-in but that's solely based on the newsletter company's own database. It does not speak back to the DMS, the CRM/ILM, or anywhere else the dealer may be housing email addresses.

I probably shouldn't be sharing this, but what the hell.

In building a CRM system from scratch one of the things we debated on was outsourcing email. We RFP'd with a bunch of different email companies and most were not too happy to hear from us because we represent car dealers. Apparently, car dealers have a reputation as not abiding by spam rules. Thank you

...captain obvious

Double opt-ins, a singular customer database, and an understanding of what can be considered spam are all things non-automotive email companies want guaranteed. We certainly couldn't guarantee that dealers would be in 100% compliance with these items, so we decided to continue enhancing our own email service instead of outsourcing.

Email is such an abused and over-used marketing system that it is becoming extremely unreliable compared to other channels. Yes it is free, but free doesn't always mean effective.

 

[sweece]

In building a CRM system from scratch one of the things we debated on was outsourcing email. We RFP'd with a bunch of different email companies and most were not too happy to hear from us because we represent car dealers. Apparently, car dealers have a reputation as not abiding by spam rules. Thank you

...captain obvious

Double opt-ins, a singular customer database, and an understanding of what can be considered spam are all things non-automotive email companies want guaranteed. We certainly couldn't guarantee that dealers would be in 100% compliance with these items, so we decided to continue enhancing our own email service instead of outsourcing.

Email is such an abused and over-used marketing system that it is becoming extremely unreliable compared to other channels. Yes it is free, but free doesn't always mean effective.

Hey Alex,

Sorry for the delay -- I've been out of town for a week.

We're definitely on the same page. It's funny to hear that you talked to several email companies who are well aware of the abuse of emails within our industry.

I think it's fairly strange that I never hear anything regarding CAN-SPAM or email marketing etiquette whenever I talk to email marketing companies in the auto industry. Every other provider I've seen has made that a priority, whereas it feels like the auto companies purposely avoid it because they know dealers want to reach the highest number of people possible.

It seems like many individuals I've talked to view email marketing as direct mail with a bonus. They remember a time where it was ok for businesses to send unsolicited advertisements to whoever they wanted, and now they think they can do that in the digital age using a new medium at a lower cost. It sounds great in theory, but I am anxiously awaiting the day where someone can prove that abuse of emails is affecting a dealer's reputation & customer retention. Maybe that day will never come, but I suspect that there is a fair amount of abuse going on within our industry and it really doesn't seem like anybody cares or actually wants to care.

 

[joe.pistell]

I'd always hear "it's free! c'mon... just blast 'em!". We didn't have any tactical email game plan in place. I considered every email we had as a small piece of gold, so I killed every single "blast 'em" request... until it got hired out. Now the HIPPO is blasting 'em.

I ask "50,000 emails sent and how many people clicked your blast and spent time looking at our inventory?" You don't know? I continue "How many people said F*K U and opted out never to receive ANY more emails from us for ever?" You don't know?




Nice move CO

... Nice move.

 

[a-tec]

I use MailChimp, not because everyone's using it, but because it is a solid solution.
Never had problems so far.

 

[Randy Cole]

For those thinking of using Mailchimp, be aware that when/if uploading a mailing list and it detects too many "bad" addresses (usually hard bounces), it will ask you to stop using the list on their platform, delete it, and upload it again only after it has been verified. After testing various email verification platforms I found the tool at Verify-email.org to be one of the best/easiest to use. I especially like the final product (for anal data peeps like myself), which gives you a report on every single email - such as why it's bad, what the result was, whether they have spam filters in place, etc. This is important, as certain emails CAN be delivered if one understands what the issue might be on the recipient's end.

I also love Mailchimp waaaay better than Aweber (which I have been using for several years), especially the new automated segmenting tools, tracking etc. that they have updated very nicely. While slightly cumbersome to create email automation/drip campaigns, which other dedicated platforms do a lot easier, it does offer a fairly usable option for those wanting to keep everything under one roof.

Hope that helps anyone who is thinking of moving to Mailchimp - I find it well thought out (says the web manager who has had email automation platforms built out at a cost of a few hundred thousand dollars in an earlier life), and very user friendly. With a little imagination Mailchimp can take you quite a ways down the marketing road.