What do Honda and Justin Bieber have in common?

[john.quinn]

Brian,

I am 100% in Arts camp. The net pukes out oceans of noise. The most important marketing hook we have is relavence.

In other words, if you FINALLY get an interested shopper to read your email and it's filled with... noise, then, you've dilluted your PRIME mission.

Uncle Joe, what efforts do you make to maintain a relationship with your clients during the 3-5 year buying cycle?

 

[joe.pistell]

Uncle Joe, what efforts do you make to maintain a relationship with your clients during the 3-5 year buying cycle?

All the usual horsesh*t, CRM calls, direct mail, CRM emails and carpet bombing TV.

After they hit the 24 month mark, we throw their name back into the monthly email sales campaigns.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

HMM I'm kind of on Brian's side with this argument and I feel like I'm sticking my neck out BUT... Yes ... Ok, I'll say it. Our. Newsletter had the Bieber piece in it too. (he's clearly is more relevant to Ford customers...riiiight) but rather then having the pissing match and pretending like we know what's best for our customers the lesson should be, look at your analytics. I'll admit we pushed the Beebs article to the bottom like a redhead, but I'll look at the analytics today and throw em up here.

 

[terrencegordon]

Terrence- I have no idea why you would take this concept to task.

Brian, firstly I want to be clarify that I didn't get this newsletter from Balise. It was from one of my local dealerships. Second, the reason I took this to task is because these are the types of products I used to sell back in 2000 when I brokered online ad deals for a living, and I was curious if this method was still effective (which you answered so thank you).

There is NO debate about the value of a business's database. It could arguably be their most valuable asset.

And that is precisely my point. As a CUSTOMER of this dealership, I find the "air cover" ridiculous, while the transparency of the effort (especially when I receive the same newsletter with the same content from numerous other dealerships in my area) leaves me feeling like I'm just part of their SPAM list instead of a valued customer. But that is just my opinion.

With the technology of today I have to imagine database marketing would match specific customer information from the CRM and/or the DMS, and the message would be personalized to me - either about my existing Honda or offers about my specific payment and getting me into a new one. If it's not directed at me personally, the email gets read the first time (not including the Justin Bieber article)...but never the second.

So if dealers are actually having success with this type of newsletter, I have to imagine success would increase exponentially if the marketing message was customized to the individual.

Mitch - looking forward to seeing real data. Thanks!

 

[BrianEpro]

The question isn't whether people read the Justin Bieber article...readership of that article will be low. The question is "Do my eNewsletters provide ongoing, highly profitable engagement over a long period of time?" The answer in our case, and in the case of thousands of other dealers, is absolutely yes. Across a 6 figure database, our opt outs are below 1% and our open rates remain very high, as they have for the past 18 months. Further, our monthly influx of THOUSANDS of clicks to the profit centers of our web site indicate to me the eNewsletters, and their content, work.

And Terrence, I wasn't taking issue with you showing the eNewsletter or thinking that it was Balise (I didn't). In fact, if anyone would like to see our Honda eNewsletter, you can see it here: Balise Honda eNews.

Say what you will, but we are constantly complimented on our eNewsletters by customers and by the OEMs, and further, this particular edition netted us approximately 500 clicks to our new and pre-owned inventories, along with approximately 400 clicks on coupons. And my marketing team all made the joke about "ugh...Justin Bieber" while we were adding our content, but we held our noses and left the article in there. Because we recognize that if we only engage with our database from the angle of "buy something from us," we're going to earn LESS attention from our database, not more.

And Terrence- I get a chuckle when a web site vendor complains about "getting the same eNewsletter from numerous other dealerships in my area." I'm going to go ahead and assume you guys now custom build every single one of your web sites. I know when we had ours with your company, there were a bunch of other dealers who had web sites that oddly enough, looked just like ours.

Regardless of the people who disagree with me on this board, a properly constructed eNewsletter filled with good, professionally written content and promotions for your store is one of the most powerful marketing tools you can use.

BTW- Uncle Joe- after years of lurking on this board, I need to make sure you know I stole your line about "social media fairies" and particularly loved when you wrote about how when you asked them for the ROI they would "jump onto their unicorns and run away." In fact, I did a presentation to some dealers awhile back and actually used that line on one of the slides, and yes, I attributed it to you directly on the slide!

 

[john.quinn]

The question isn't whether people read the Justin Bieber article...readership of that article will be low.

Curious... Why include something to which you assign little or no real value? Is the effort to create the illusion that you are not trying to "sell?"

 

[tomwhitejr]

Just because you receive a ton of traffic from a promotion/email campaign/newsletter doesn't mean it's GOOD traffic. What's the time on site, bounce rate, and goal conversions for the traffic. I can quickly get 1000's of visitors to my site, it's what happens after they get there that decides whether or not the campaign was successful... Just sayin'

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Just because you receive a ton of traffic from a promotion/email campaign/newsletter doesn't mean it's GOOD traffic. What's the time on site, bounce rate, and goal conversions for the traffic. I can quickly get 1000's of visitors to my site, it's what happens after they get there that decides whether or not the campaign was successful... Just sayin'

You don't have to go philosophical. If you send A CAR DEALER promo, email campaign, newsletter etc... and you get a TON OF TRAFFIC, it's a great thing, no questions asked. In this case, with a newsletter you're dealing with a database of people who've done business with you. They aren't just traffic, and if you can get them to your site, you're winning. You're more then 100% correct that it's what happens after they land that decides whether or not their successfull but this isn't a chicken or the egg situation, this is a 1,2,3.

Get the traffic.
Convert the traffic to a lead.
Appoint and sell the lead.

You start from the top and tune it up accordingly.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

Curious... Why include something to which you assign little or no real value? Is the effort to create the illusion that you are not trying to "sell?"

It's not an illusion, it's really what's going on. It has little to no value to me and you, but to someone who thinks Beebs is the shit, they're all over it like a chubby kid on ice cream. That's content that we supplied from our brand, and is just another little thing to keep them tied to our brand.

This is going to come off contradicting myself and my previous post and I'm happy to go deep but this isn't all about converting to a lead, there's a solid case for this being similar to your Facebook presence, Twitter presence, touchy feely blog etc... It's about the customer ownership experience (SMOT if you wanna get into ZMOT) and optimizing that so when they're ready for a big transaction like a new car, or a small transaction like an oil change, that there's no reason to go anywhere else then our place of business.

 

[Mitch Gallant]

From the analytics I'm going to deffer to Brian on this... we had 11 people read the article, and to be honest I can't seem to get into any analytics that make sense or are relevant to this debate... and if anyone knows what IMN's #'s would be valuable or relevant tell me what they are and where to find them and I will post the data.