DMS data, to drive marketing campaigns and sell service, is especially effective right now. And those campaigns are even more powerful when you can use the exact communication channel that your customers prefer.

Proactive marketing of factory-recommended services as well as dealership recommendations prior to the customer arriving in the drive not only pre-sells your service business, but displays your expertise at keeping their vehicle in top performance.

To accomplish this, you will need a plan of action and some automation to make such pre-selling practical, largely hands-off, and effective. Your audience must include new and used vehicle customers, current service customers, those you haven’t serviced in a while, and those which declined some of your recommended services.

Today, most dealers attempt to do this with a “blast” direct mail or email offering one-time service specials like a lube, oil filter or brake special hoping customers will see a coupon that is applicable to the service they feel their vehicles need. Although this plan does result in a spike in service, it is only temporary.’

A more assertive, retention-building approach practices by many of today’s successful dealers is to proactively inform customers of their vehicle’s service needs, based on service intervals, previously declined services, and other factors, before they arrive on the service lane. This strategy builds their service business using a planned, continuous program destined to pre-sell customers on using their dealerships for these services.

Technology available today makes this straight-forward by automatically creating messages and offers specific to the customer’s vehicle make, model, mileage, and individual needs. Each communication is then delivered to the customer in their desired format (e.g. phone, text, email, etc.) with an appropriate link to details about the recommended services.

Here are the basics for getting started:

• Put into place an automated service reminder program that sends service-due notifications based on the vehicle’s service history within the dealer management system (DMS) and factory/dealer recommendations.
•  Link each communication (i.e. email) to a recommended service menu, based on vehicle make, model and mileage.
•  Include a link into an automated service appointment system. Some systems will automatically log the customer into your appointment system with preloaded customer and vehicle information. The customer then simply needs to confirm the date and time. The idea is to make it easy for your customer to do business with you.
•  Communicate other recommendations periodically, based on vehicle history within your DMS, such as previously declined services, recall notifications, seasonal services, etc.
• Review recommended services at write up if the customer did not respond to your proactive recommendations. Consider placing a video terminal in the customer lounge so customers can again review the recommended services and “why” explanations.

source: Dealer Marketing Magazine

According to Reuters, auto sales dropped 12 percent in March alone and predictions are that they will continue to decline through the second quarter of this year. Experts counsel that a strong focus on promoting your parts and service business is the way to keep your profits up during this down time. I’d like to offer a different perspective to ensure you focus on your entire dealership.

Although individual promotions for parts and services, vehicles sales, or any other aspect of your dealership are an integral part of your marketing plan, sending communications that promote specific departments to the exclusion of others sets you up for a roller coaster ride. For example, a marketing promotion that only touts a $9.99 oil change may make your service business rise briefly, but it may soon go right back down again, leaving you in a constant state of peaks and valleys, scrambling to come up with even better promotions.

Instead, focus on promoting your entire dealership. This approach gives you room to highlight a particular department, for instance your service department, while still tying in all the services and products you offer that meet the full gamut of customer needs. Marketing your dealership as a whole sets you up for a steady stream of revenue, so your business remains strong even during the most difficult economic conditions.

To see what this type of communication would look like, let’s take the example of a service special. A dealership creates a June promotional email offering half off of a spring vehicle tuneup. Most dealerships would throw this offer into their basic dealership communication template (i.e. mailer, phone, email, text, etc.) and shoot it off to their entire customer database. They would get some business and then as that drops off, go to work brainstorming a new offer.

Using a dealershipwide approach, you would send the service offer above via email, but would also include direct links to ‘new vehicle promotions,’ ‘accessorize your vehicle,’ ‘schedule service,’ and all the other departments of you dealership. Suddenly your communication go from attracting one business stream of revenue-service-to more than three. This type of approach allows your customers and prospects to view all aspects of your dealership and easily access the information they need at that time&hellipnot just the specific item you are promoting.

Let’s look at another example. You send a ‘thank you’ or ‘congratulations’ email to new vehicle owners with details about your service department, such as hours and contact information. This is a missed opportunity! Instead, this email should include not only the ‘thank you’ message, but an introduction to your service department with staff photos, a personalized message and Website link, and a link to your parts and accessories department. Now the customer can get complete service information with one click, and explore a full list of accessories for their new vehicle. There are even on demand communication systems in the space that allow customers to log in and then accessorize an interactive image of their vehicle, change their communications method, view their vehicle history, and more. Adding these links for one-click access to your complete dealership is an easy and effective way to boost your business.

With any type of marketing plan it is imperative that you reach your customers in the way they want to be reached. This means asking customers if they prefer phone, email, or text message contact, and then communicating with them through their preferred channel. Just as important is making it easy for them to access the information they want and need. If you are only sending oneoff promotions for individual dealership departments, you may be cheating yourself out of a lot of business. By adding information about your entire dealership in every message, you are embracing a dealershipwide marketing approach that meets your customers’ needs and allows you to reap the maximum profit from every part of your business, in all market conditions.

Gary Nixon is president and CEO of CIMA Systems, a Customer Interactive Management Application that helps serve as a 24-hour, automated BDC for dealerships. He can be reached at 925-461-4600 or email gnixon@cimasystems.net

By Gary Nixon

I grew up practicing the maxim that every cloud has a silver lining, and you’ll find one even in this dark-cloud market if you’ll simply look at the situation as opportunity.

I realize many readers are doing the best they can just to hang on today. Each dealer I speak to is looking closely at every single expense with the goal of dramatically reducing each while increasing business. One expense that can be reduced significantly is marketing and promotion.

Yet many of the dealers I speak with continue to use expensive non-technology-based means for advertising their products and services, such as hardcopy mailers. I encourage these dealers to reconsider those expenditures and look closely at email marketing as a better alternative.

Email marketing continues to be the most cost effective way of communicating those important dealership promotions/announcements and service due notifications with customers and prospects.  A recent Aberdeen Group study confirmed this fact: “While 60% of marketers plan to cut their traditional marketing budgets this year, 47% of marketers plan to boost their email marketing budgets,” the study reported.

Now more than ever before, dealerships must look at the most cost effective way of marketing/communicating to their customers/prospects resulting in achieving the most effective return on investment (ROI).

Email marketing continues to reign as the lowest-cost, most-effective marketing medium to promote business to your dealership. However, as effective as email marketing is, let me state as an important aside that email marketing is not always the kind of communications every customer wants to receive from you. As you go about building your customer and prospect base, be sure you give customers the opportunity to tell you how they prefer to be contacted. For instance, while most customers will desire email communications, some still prefer phone contact, traditional mail or, in growing popularity, text messaging and related communications (e.g. live chat). A majority of our dealership customers offer each of these variations to their customers to ensure their message has the highest probability of being acted upon.

With email marketing, the broader your list the wider the net you can cast on an ongoing basis. Important Note:  Be sure you offer your customers the opportunity to “opt-out” of future email communications to keep within the CAN-SPAM regulations.

Just as your compliance to CAN-SPAM regulations is an act of integrity, so must each of your communications. In other words, every email must work toward building trust in and reliability of your dealership and its people. This is most easily accomplished by insisting on quality standards, including the proper use of language and grammar, the proper content and message, and the proper salutation. It is best to address a recipient by name (e.g. “John Smith” or “Ms. Sally Jones”) and where the customer’s name is absent from the email database then use a generic formal greeting such as Dear Valued Customer.  

Email templates should be crisp and visually appealing, and ideally their styles and formats should mimic the styles and colors of your web site so there’s continuity of brand and presentation.

Emails must also include an appropriate call to action or what it is you want the recipient of your mailing to do as a result (i.e. click for more information, search for more information, make a service appointment, view a multi-media presentation or any number of other actions).

Keep in mind that while email provides a low-cost marketing solution, it is important not to take advantage of this by “flooding” customers continually with your promotions. Instead, be sure to send notifications based on specific events requiring action applicable to that customer or prospect. I have seen dealerships “blast” their messages out continually, eventually paying the price by having their emails being flagged as “spam” by their customers’ and prospects’ Internet Service Provider.

When used properly – with an increasing number of consumers preferring this communications mode – you will see greater response rates to your email messages and associated cost savings. After all, email is a way of marketing two-way communications with your customers and prospects that gives them the opportunity to respond to your offer immediately. I can just hear readers commenting, “I agree, but our dealership has done a very poor job of collecting valid emails…in fact we probably have fewer than 15% email addresses in our dealer management system (DMS).

Do not fear, email append is here!

Okay, let’s help you build your email list. Here are some proven ideas that will help you capture customers’ emails to your DMS and/or improve the email quality:

1. Email Appending Services. Most dealerships upon investigating the depth and accuracy of their email list will be disappointed. The industry’s as a whole has not done a real thorough job at collecting these increasingly valuable addresses, but hope is not lost.

Email Appending is a process whereby a vendor will capture all of the names and addresses from your DMS database and compare them to the National Change of Address (NCoA) service and check for name/address validation.

The append service, such as CIMA Systems, will then compare these customers with numerous national databases to find a match of each name and address and if found an associated email address. These databases contain email addresses from customers who may have ordered a newspaper or magazine at one time.

If a match is found, the append services vendor will contact these customers on your behalf asking them for their approval (with the opt out option) of communicating valuable information about dealership specials and their vehicle needs. Once approved, the email is “pushed” or placed back into your DMS for future communications.

 Important Note: Some email append service vendors will keep the newly found email address on their system. The reason behind this is to get you locked into using only their system for your email communications. It is important to make sure you get these emails into your DMS and are not held hostage by any vendor.

Email appending is an excellent way to “prime the pump” in getting started with an email base. Once established, it provides you with a strong foundation to begin building on communications with your customers utilizing this method.

1. Collect them at your store. Fundamental but often neglected is the collection of email addresses from customers and prospects by sales and service personnel. When engaging customers one-on-one or by phone, ask if you might have their e-address for ongoing communications with them about special offers, discounts, vehicle notifications, etc.

What process can you put in place to make the collection and capture of these addresses easy and assured? There are several methods used to encourage email captures. Dealers have found that providing something in return to your customers is a sure way of receiving it. First, it is important to inform the customer that the email address is kept confidential and will be used solely to keep them abreast of important information regarding their vehicle and dealership announcements. In order to encourage them to provide this address, provide them a special offer such as entering their email address in a monthly drawing for a free iPhone or oil change. In fact, one of our dealership customers has used many of the recommendations within this article and has 90%-plus customer email addresses in their DMS.

As a cautionary note, we have seen some dealership offer a “spiff” to their employees for collecting email addresses. Collecting emails in the rush of business can be tough and result in incomplete or inaccurate addresses collected or if no address collected an imaginary one created (e.g. sallycustomer@anywhere.com). Be sure your staff gets valid and accurate addresses. Doing so will ensure that your list is clean, bounces are reduced and your response rate improved.

Important Note: If you’re using a vendor to manage your email communications program, insist that they notify you promptly when bounces and other inaccurate or “dead” addresses are returned so your list can remain cleansed and therefore more effective.

1. Offer an e-newsletter/Blog. Another way to capture an email is to offer your customers a newsletter or blog as another method of capturing their email. Be sure to market it visibly on your web site and other materials; for instance, create a simple, small paper form that you clip to every buy order or repair order that triggers the salesperson or service advisor to ask the prospect to offer his or her e-address information. Be sure the newsletter or blog link on the web site enables you to capture their email address. One dealership that does this very well is San Francisco Ford, Lincoln-Mercury (www.sanfrancisoford.com). Check out their Blog and you will see that they ask all visitors to join their VIP program which automatically captures the visitors email address for all future dealership promotions/communications.
2. Offer a customer loyalty program. In order for the customer to receive rewards, you inform them that they must provide you with their email address. Tie the program into service visits or parts purchases or other profit center offers to entice repeat business and retention. Such a program need not be costly. Like many coffee and sandwich shops have proven to be effective, start a redeemable-for-service-type program whereby with every 10 LOF services the next one is free, etc. Obtain participants’ emails when they sign up and let them track their “points” on a special section of your web site.

A recent Digital Dealer poll showed many dealerships have had success offering a free rental as part of their loyalty program when customers bring their vehicle in for service. Have printed information on the front counter of your dealership and make it a policy that every consumer receives a copy when they visit.  Train your service and sales teams to ask every one of these potential rental customers or loaner users to provide their email address. 

1. Start a car clinic. By doing so you can inform the customer that they will be notified of future sessions only through email. As part of its promotion, require responders to provide their email address.
2. Your ideas. You’re probably using email address-building ideas not mentioned here and, if so, I’d love to learn about them and perhaps feature your ideas in a future article.

In summary, before you can have a successful email marketing campaign you have to build a viable database of email addresses. Make sure you’re not putting the cart before the horse; take the time to build an accurate and comprehensive database so that your special offers, insightful newsletters and dealership incentives are actually received, read and acted upon by your target audience.

Now is the right time to turn the dark clouds into the silver lining of an accurate, healthy email marketing list that will benefit your business greatly now and going forward.

About the author

Gary Nixon is President and CEO of CIMA Systems, a leading provider of automated multi-channel, multi-medium customer communications solutions for automobile retailers. For more information visit www.cimasystems.net.

Embrace a dealership-wide marketing approach that meets your customers’ needs and allows you to reap the maximum profit from every part of your business.  

We all know the current market situation. A decline in consumer confidence, along with high fuel prices, and the worry that the weakened market could turn into a full blown recession has hit the automotive industry hard.

According to Reuters, auto sales dropped 12 percent in March alone and predictions are that they will continue to decline through the second quarter of this year. Experts counsel that a strong focus on promoting your parts and service business is the way to keep your profits up during this down time. I’d like to offer a different perspective to ensure you focus on your entire dealership.

Although individual promotions for parts and services, vehicles sales, or any other aspect of your dealership are an integral part of your marketing plan, sending communications that promote specific departments to the exclusion of others sets you up for a roller coaster ride. For example, a marketing promotion that only touts a $9.99 oil change may make your service business rise briefly, but it may soon go right back down again, leaving you in a constant state of peaks and valleys, scrambling to come up with even better promotions.

Instead, focus on promoting your entire dealership. This approach gives you room to highlight a particular department, for instance your service department, while still tying in all the services and products you offer that meet the full gamut of customer needs. Marketing your dealership as a whole sets you up for a steady stream of revenue, so your business remains strong even during the most difficult economic conditions.

To see what this type of communication would look like, let’s take the example of a service special. A dealership creates a June promotional email offering half off of a spring vehicle tune-up. Most dealerships would throw this offer into their basic dealership communication template (i.e. mailer, phone, email, text, etc.) and shoot it off to their entire customer database. They would get some business and then as that drops off, go to work brainstorming a new offer.

Using a dealership-wide approach, you would send the service offer above via email, but would also include direct links to ‘new vehicle promotions,’ ‘accessorize your vehicle,’ ‘schedule service,’ and all the other departments of you dealership. Suddenly your communication go from attracting one business stream of revenue—service—to more than three. This type of approach allows your customers and prospects to view all aspects of your dealership and easily access the information they need at that time…not just the specific item you are promoting.

Let’s look at another example. You send a ‘thank you’ or ‘congratulations’ email to new vehicle owners with details about your service department, such as hours and contact information. This is a missed opportunity! Instead, this email should include not only the ‘thank you’ message, but an introduction to your service department with staff photos, a personalized message and Website link, and a link to your parts and accessories department. Now the customer can get complete service information with one click, and explore a full list of accessories for their new vehicle. There are even on-demand communication systems in the space that allow customers to log in and then accessorize an interactive image of their vehicle, change their communications method, view their vehicle history, and more. Adding these links for one-click access to your complete dealership is an easy and effective way to boost your business.

With any type of marketing plan it is imperative that you reach your customers in the way they want to be reached. This means asking customers if they prefer phone, email, or text message contact, and then communicating with them through their preferred channel. Just as important is making it easy for them to access the information they want and need. If you are only sending one-off promotions for individual dealership departments, you may be cheating yourself out of a lot of business. By adding information about your entire dealership in every message, you are embracing a dealership-wide marketing approach that meets your customers’ needs and allows you to reap the maximum profit from every part of your business, in all market conditions.

Gary Nixon is president and CEO of CIMA Systems, a Customer Interactive Management Application that helps serve as a 24-hour, automated BDC for dealerships. He can be reached at 925-461-4600 or email gnixon@cimasystems.net

Dealers often ask us, with the many ways to reach out to customers which channels work the best for communicating important dealership promotions/recommendations to drive customers for life? Mailers, business development centers, emails, automated calls, enewsletters and blogs are just samples of various communication possibilities. In this series I’d like to help demystify some of the more common forms of marketing communication and share with you the pros and cons of each. There’s a variety of ways to bring in customers, all of them with good and bad points. Regardless of which way you choose to pull in customers, sending the right message at the right time and in the right way is your best bet for pulling in additional leads and sales.

This month’s article will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of direct mail and email. In future articles we’ll focus on: automated phone calls, live phone calls (or Business Development Centers-BDC’s) and newer technologies such as text messages and Blogs (or timely two-way enewsletters).

Direct Mail: Is it Working for You or Against You?  

Simply put, a blog (or web log) provides interactive commentary or news on a particular subject (i.e. latest announcements from your manufacturer, dealership news/promos) to your customers. A typical dealer blog combines text, images, links and video content applicable to the auto industry. Further, the reader has the ability to leave comments in an interactive format on each of your blog subjects.

A 2006 study by PQ Media, “Blog, Podcast and RSS Advertising Outlook” showed the combined spending on blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds by companies rose from $6.8 million in 2004 to close to $50 million in 2006. In addition, a recent CapGemini study shows of the tools auto shoppers use when researching a vehicle for purchase, a healthy 16 percent used interactive marketing in the form of blogs or discussion groups when compiling information. These two studies point out a trend happening throughout the business world: as more companies adopt blogs, more consumers are visiting them and driving explosive growth in the new medium.

A blog has certain characteristics that qualify it to be a unique marketing tool above and beyond your typical marketing channels such as e-newsletters. It is timely, delivers fresh content, is quick and establishes a direct line from management to customers. Let’s identify the strengths of each of these qualifiers directly as they pertain to the automotive industry.

Timely response
Unlike any other online tool available, blogs give dealerships the opportunity to respond to their environment in an immediate way. For instance, a quick look at General Motor’s forward-thinking blog, Fastlane (www.fastlane.com), shows me I can find out the truth about the latest rumors regarding Buick breaking its contract with Tiger Woods. (Buick, in fact, did not and General Manager Jim Bunnell sets the record straight in his post, “Tiger Woods and Buick.”) In the post Bunnell candidly discusses the rumors and writes to “set the record straight”; letting Buick loyalists know that the contract is intact and the hoopla was started due to sensationalized headlines in the media.

This is a perfect example of the power of a blog when it comes to disseminating information quickly and controlling the message. GM could have chosen to continue letting the rumors fly and eventually send out a statement in their e-newsletter, but by taking the bull by the horn and posting the truth on their blog, they’ve taken the mountain and made it back into the molehill, stopping rumors in their tracks.

Fresh content
A frequent complaint heard by e-newsletter readers is they’re faced with the same content they can find on the company’s website or marketing materials. Nothing is fresh. This happens often with dealership e-newsletters as dealers recycle content used on their web site or in their online promotions. Not only does this discount the time your customers have spent reading the enewsletter, it also is a surefire way to dissuade customers and prospects from giving you their e-mail address for future communications. A blog, on the other hand, enables dealerships to add small bits of content the reader can’t find anywhere else. Due to the nature of a blog, posts are often personal comments and thoughts from leadership and can feature anything from news about the industry to their opinion on current events. It’s a view into the dealership a reader might not see through any other source.

Quick
Today’s consumers want to scan information in bite-size chunks and pull out the content that catches their interest or pertains directly to them. Some of the best media sites on the web have already invested time and energy into designing their sites to attract readers in this way. Take the Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com, for instance. One glance at the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the reader will see several headlines that make up the news of the day summarized in four lines or less.

A dealership blog taps into this trend by giving users bits of information that can be easily scanned. The best blog posts are no more than a few paragraphs long; with one paragraph being the general rule of thumb for length. Compare that with an e-newsletter that often contains three to eight feature-length articles and long lead-ins and it’s not hard to figure out why e-newsletter conversion rates are dropping.

Direct
Perhaps the most important benefit of a blog is the direct link it creates between customer and executive leadership, or in the dealership world, buyers and sellers. While an e-newsletter article may inspire a reader to shoot off a quick e-mail to whoever maintains the mailing list, a blog creates the opportunity for one on one interaction between the reader and the poster. Teddy Stephens, General Manager of Fiesta Ford Lincoln Mercury, in Indio, CA has seen the power of his blog, Fiesta Ford eNewsFlash (www.fiestaford.wordpress.com) firsthand.

Since beginning his blog in February of this year, Stephens has received positive feedback from posters all over the nation. In this way, eNewsFlash, is pulling interest into the Fiesta dealership from sources across the U.S. rather than pushing information out to those readers in his geographic area. Again looking at the Fastlane example from above, Buick was able to begin a one-on-one communication with its brand loyalists the moment the contract rumors began. No other form of marketing gives you instant, direct communication in this way.

While blogs will by no means make e-newsletters or other forms of interactive marketing extinct any time soon, they should be considered as an addition to your marketing mix due to some of the attributes noted above. Blogs, unlike any other form of online marketing, can bring fresh, timely, interesting information to the reader and establish a one-on-one communication channel that can’t be matched today. And if you need a further push, look to your competitor down the street. I’ll bet within the next year you’ll see a blog pop up on their web site. Take my advice and establish a blog to get those buyers first. Best of luck.

This article is published in Digital Dealer Magazine, here.

Read the original article at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/15140.asp