There’s a little celebrated holiday coming up: Groundhog’s Day!

Are you hoping for another six weeks of winter or an early spring? Either way we have a template that will work for a fun Groundhog’s Day Sales event!

If you are interesting in running a Groundhog’s Day Sales event, don’t hesitate to contact us! You can either email us, or visit our Contact Page and fill out our request form!

Well January seems to be off to a busy start here at CIMA. Getting your new templates must be a little like unwrapping a present each month. I know it is for me. Whenever I submit an event request from you to our Fabulous Design Team, I am always excited to see what they have come up with – Especially when it is monthly template designing time.

We have been sending out our “monthly templates”  for awhile now and this seems to be working well for you.  For the month of January, the most popular Service Event template ordered was the “Looking Forward to a Bright 2012”. Maybe it was the optimistic heading and the hopefulness that a new year brings, the cheery colors or that it was the first template on the list…Or maybe a little of each. We have also noticed that you prefer 4 + coupons in your Service Event templates with at least one oil change, and a couple of freebies.

We design these templates with you in mind. So if you would like to see more or different coupons than we are offering we would love to hear from you!  We would also like to get your feedback on our designs. Helping you to reach your customers in the best and most effective way is our goal. We look forward to hearing from you!

PS – Remember to order your Valentines templates!

Your customers do want to hear from you. Many of them even love you and want to know about your specials and promotions. Whenever a customer receives an automated phone call reminding them of their service appointment, part ready or a Happy Birthday wish, it always offers them the option to leave their email address at the end of the message. By doing so, an email notification is generated to you along with their Customer ID # and the voice recording.

Open the attached .wav file (you must have speakers or an audio card to hear the message) and write down the email address your customer provided. Then enter that email address into the customer record located in your data management system. It is strongly recommended you designate one or two people at the dealership to manage this task.
The next day that customer will receive the Welcome Message with a valuable coupon that they can redeem immediately (click on Welcome Message attachment) instructing them to add you to their ‘safe sender list’.

Now any subsequent promotion or special offers you wish to send them they will receive right to their Inbox!

The Goal

You may find yourself reviewing your website traffic reports and thinking: which specific email customers are browsing our website, and how can I utilize my Google Analytics to give me more detailed information about my email campaigns?

The answer to this common question begins with link tagging.  By applying link tags to a URL, Google Analytics (GA) reports is enabled to differentiate email recipient visitors from all other website traffic.  A given link tag requires at least 3 parameters (variable=value) to be defined.  Then this new link tag is added to the end of all links for a given email.

Understanding the 3 GA parameters

The following 3 parameters below are required for GA reports to segregate your email visitors from other web visitors.
utm_medium=email                 utm_source=any value              utm_campaign=any value
(Other predefined & custom defined tags can be added along with these three, yet these three are essential for GA reports to begin filtering your email visitor traffic from other web traffic).

Definition of each tag:
utm_medium is assigned the value “email” because the visitor landed on your site as direct click from your email blast.  It is vital for GA reporting that the “utm_medium=email” in order to filter email visitors from all other web visitors.

utm_source – is who you partnered with to send your email campaigns - CIMA Systems.

utm_campaign – is the name of the email blast, campaign type, or the subject line that you use to segregate one set of emails from another.

To grasp the basic on how each of these 3 parameters may be assigned their values we’ll use a brief example:

You decide to have a Sales Event at your dealership and CIMA Systems creates an email blast named: “Lowest Prices of the Year” to draw your customers in.

In this example the 3 parameters would be assigned values similar to this:
utm_medium=email
utm_source=CIMA
utm_campaign=Lowest Prices of the Year

Preparing the Link Tag

Now with your 3 parameters defined, we order them as a query string for GA to read at the end of a link.
?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CIMA&utm_campaign=Lowest Prices of the Year

So we’ll take your new inventory link http://www.mycarlot.com/new-inventory/ and add the link tag.
http://www.mycarlot.com/ new-inventory/?utm_source=purchase%3Ayrs2%2B&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lowest%2BHybrid%2Bprices%2Bof%2Bthe%2Byear

This revised URL replaces any use of http://www.mycarlot.com/ new-inventory/ within your email so that those 3 parameters can be tracked by GA automatically when your email recipient clicks the link.  We simply repeat appending of ?utm_medium=email&… to all the links so when a user clicks a link they are taken to that landing page and GA will read the 3 parameters accordingly.

Conclusion

So we now know which web traffic originates from your email events generated by CIMA.  On my  next post we might look into the specifics of setting up GA filters, so that data specific to your email customers can be reported separately.  Hope this encourages you to start your email campaign tracking.

For a thorough explanation on link tagging, and how to filter them in reports, refer to Analytics Talk.

Not even two weeks into the New Year and we’ve already received requests for February templates! Not to worry though, as we will be bringing them to you even earlier this month. Be sure to look for our monthly newsletter next week.

Now of course we have plenty to offer in our February templates, in fact we have abundance. Plenty of new creations for you to enjoy, but we’re resurrecting the classics as well. You’ll have over 30  templates to peruse this coming month!

• Valentine’s Day – already taking over the shelves at all your local stores, and well represented in our collection. We have parts, service, and sales campaigns to set your heart aflutter.
• President’s Day – also well represented and ranging from completely patriotic to more subtle variations. A little something for everyone in the mix.
• Mardi Gras – A bit less demand for “Fat Tuesday” but we still want you to have options. Plus who doesn’t like to surprise their customers with some unexpected savings?
• Leap Day – It may not be a holiday to you, but it only happens once every 4 years! That alone makes it kinda awesome. Our template even more so.
• And More… we have some other templates we created for the everyday in between the holidays… winter Road Hazards, and more generic as well.
• Manufacturer Templates – of course. We always try to provide you with some samples of what their offers are every month.

So there’s our plan. We hope you find everything you’re looking for and maybe even find something you never would have thought of. Look for our newsletter with the link to all our new templates in the coming week. And as always we’re happy to hear your feedback. Have an idea for some templates, or want to request a holiday we didn’t cover – leave us a comment and let us know!

Wagonmaster Group and CIMA Systems a Customer Interactive Management Application (CIMA) that serves as an automated business development center (BDC) for dealerships, are proud to announce a partnership that will bring CIMA’s communication solution to all of Wagonmaster Groups dealerships. CIMA’s patent-pending solution works in the background like a Virtual Business Development Center (BDC) for your dealership by capturing any vehicle, parts and customer data out of your dealer management system (DMS) and automatically communicates two-way unlimited marketing/advertising campaigns to your customer based on this data.

CIMA Systems has been rated as the number one Ownership Marketing System in the auto industry (as voted by thousands of dealerships on drivingsales.com). Dealerships that have implemented CIMA are seeing dramatic increases in revenue while decreasing their monthly expenses. Under the agreement, as a valuable customer of Wagonmaster Group we will co-op a major portion of your CIMA Systems billing to encourage you to take full advantage of their offering. Further, CIMA Systems is the Exclusive or Preferred Ownership Marketing System of several auto manufactures which also offer you special co-op toward your CIMA System.

Click HERE for more information on CIMA Systems.

The Subaru “share the love” event has helped donate $5 million to American Forests, ASPCA, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Meals On Wheels and the Special Olympics. Over the last four years they have reached a total of nearly $20 million for these charities.

Make sure your new Subaru owners take advantage of this generous offer before January 31st, 2012!

Anyone sending emails on a regular basis knows the plague of writing a good subject line. You need to grab your reader’s attention as they skim through their full inbox of emails… but how? What does a good subject line have to do with spam filters? How do I tell my readers what is in my email, without overloading my subject with ‘spam trigger words’?

There are a lot of questions and theories out there about email subject lines. Heck, if you google ‘email subject lines’ about 12,000,000 entries show up! But don’t be overwhelmed, we are here to help you understand the facts of the subject lines and spam.

As the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and web email clients get more sophisticated in accessing emails, the sender’s reputation ends up being the trigger for ‘spam’ filters rather than the subject line. Luckily, here at CIMA Systems we are always checking our reputation and our email deliverability. BUT the subject still plays the major roll of who really decides what is spam: the customer.

What we know:

• The FROM name is one of the most important items in a subject line. It lets the reader know who the email is coming from and that it is a trusted name.

• The subject line is the second element the user sees, after the FROM Name. Where they are viewing this email can depend, so you want to make sure that your bottom line information is right there to persuade them to open.Don’t Lie. That is a sure fire way to make someone unsubscribe, and it violates the The USA’s Can-Spam Act which bans emails that are…”…likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message…”

• Rest assured, you CAN Say ‘Free’ or ‘Sale’ or ‘$50 Off’ in your subject line! Gone are the days of emails being filtered just by subject line alone. There are hundreds of variables that mail filters use when checking spam vs legitimate marketing emails. A good rule of thumb: if it sounds spammy, then it most likely is. Instead of saying “FREE FREE FREE!!!” try “A Free Car Wash, our way of saying thanks!”

You may be thinking to yourself “But I have SO MUCH good stuff in my email, how can I fit it into a short subject line?” Fear Not, for now we have…

• The Pre – Header. The Pre-Header is the first line of text that the email shows above your HTML and graphics. This can also act as a call to action by flowing with your email’s FROM name and the subject line. Within the Pre-Header we have a little more room to play with our words, and our call to action.

To This:

Keeping those items in mind we are now allowed to focus on the customer and what would get them to open up the email. Trying to convey a sense of urgency, or by letting the user know that they have “exclusive” savings is also known to help open rates. By putting your email’s call to action first in the subject, letting them know who it is from, and keeping good template standards will help keep your emails to stay out of the spam box!

Can you believe it’s  already 2012! If your last year was like ours then you’ve been busy, and you’re probably going to stay busy well into the New Year. We wouldn’t want it any other way, but we also want to make things as easy as possible for you.

So to help you help us stay on top of all your upcoming events and sales promotions we’re providing you with a month-ahead planning guide. Sort of like a crystal ball into what we’re planning to design and the holidays that are coming up. Sure you could look at a calendar, but that’s just not as fun.

Outlined below is what we’re planning for your January templates. Feel free to leave some comments and let us know if there is something we haven’t listed that you’d like to see!

• Ben Franklin’s birthday (Jan.17th), and we know you’re probably wondering why, but he discovered electricity. And electricity powers today’s eco-friendly vehicles. So we want to help you promote your electric or hybrid vehicles.
• Winter-ful Wonderful Templates – It is still winter, and still cold (most places) so we’re bringing you some more cold weather inspired templates. But don’t worry we wouldn’t forget all of you warm weather patrons. We’ve come up with some adorable sunny winter templates for you as well.
• New Year – always a classic and always a favorite we’ve got you covered. Don’t miss out on reminding your customers to ring in the New Year.
• Sales, sales, sales – We’ve got an extra helping of sales and manufacturer specific email templates for you this month!

Look for our newsletter in your inbox soon for a link to all our great templates!

We would like to wish all of you a Happy and Safe Start to the New Year 2012!

Your Friends at CIMA Systems!