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.

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!

It’s the Most Wonderful Sale of the Year, and we want you to be able to let your customers know!

At CIMA we have access to many manufacture email designs — so if you would like to send out The Nissan Most Wonderful Sale of the Year email, or any other Manufacture sale or service, please give our Sales Team a call at 925-461-4606!

Make sure to place your order by Wednesday, December 14^th to guarantee delivery for your Christmas and New Year’s Events!

We knew once you saw all of our amazing December templates there would be a holiday ordering frenzy, but we never imagined you would like them this much! It looks like this could be our busiest year ever; so first, we want to thank you and second we wanted to remind you of our holiday deadline to ensure that you don’t miss out on sending any of your favorite events this season.

Also, we like to be helpful, so here are some things to keep in mind for you holiday marketing:

1. Email volume increases by more than 45%  during the holiday season, so order early and order often. Consider sending out multiple events spaced at the beginning, middle or end of the season to emphasize your event(s) to your customers. We wouldn’t encourage you to email them every day, but if you want to make sure your events don’t get lost in all the other holiday offers, it might be worthwhile to send out multiple events and plan your sending schedule in advance.
2. Allow for extra processing time – between all the orders, revisions, and people on vacation it can seem like everything takes longer to get done during the holiday season. While we strive to provide you with timely turnarounds, the more time you allow between your order and delivery date, the happier everyone will be. We all want everything to go according to plan and planning some extra time is a big part of that!
3. Most importantly: Don’t Miss the Deadlines – We don’t like to say No to anyone, but we are only human (well, most of us…), and there are only so many events and campaigns we can get done at once.  Of course we’ll take an event past the deadline if we can, but don’t count on it!

And in case you missed them, you can check out our templates by clicking on the links below.

It’s a new year which means a fresh start for all of us. At CIMA, we invite you to join us in making this year a successful one. Here are a few tips on how you can maximize your experience with CIMA and use our services to promote greater customer retention and higher profits.

1. 1. Utilize our holiday and seasonal event templates. Each month, we send you our pre-designed CIMA holiday and seasonal templates for you to choose from. Simply contact us and tell us which template you wish to use, your desired incentives and your target audience. Shortly after that, we will send you back your completed template, ready to be approved and sent! This is the easiest way to ensure you are sharing specials with your customers on a regular basis and it’s of no cost to you!
2. 2. Plan your marketing strategy ahead of time and request campaigns early. Your email marketing strategy will be most beneficial to you if it is well planned out. Take the time to think about what sort of events you want to run ahead of time. Do you want to start sending monthly coupons? Do you want to offer a weekly special? Thinking about a quarterly newsletter? Now is the time to start a new strategy and turn your marketing practices into habits that will last. Let your emails complement all your other marketing practices. Make sure when you have that tent sale, or safety clinic, that CIMA is contacting your customers to share that information. It’s easy to do, and again it’s free!
3. 3. Use our system to the fullest. Are you aware of all the different daily campaigns you can run with CIMA? Are you sending out coupons to your customers on their birthdays? Or on the anniversary of their vehicle purchase? Are you sending out recall notices, parts ready notifications, or 12 month service reminders? We have a wide variety of campaigns we can send to your customers automatically every day with minimal setup and virtually no maintenance on your end! Contact us today to discuss what campaigns to add that may be of great benefit to you. And yes, once again these are all included in your CIMA package at no cost!
4. 4. Try something new. It’s a new year, and your customers are always changing and growing, so it’s time to adapt to this new environment. Make 2011 a year of trying new things – experiment with a Facebook page, or grab a Flip Camera and shoot some videos at your dealership to share on YouTube. Maybe even try to tackle Twitter! Just make sure whatever you try out, keep committed to it. You may not get 100 Twitter followers in the first week, but keep consistent with your strategy and your work will pay off. And be sure to include CIMA in your plans, we can link your emails to your social media sites and work to make sure our campaigns complement all your new efforts.

We are here to work with you to make 2011 a profitable and exciting year for your store. Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions about our services, and make sure to use us to our fullest potential.

*Unlimited events are included in most, but not all customer contracts. Please contact us for details. Some daily campaigns may not be compatible with all DMS systems.

Are your customers contacting you to see if their vehicle is ready yet? Timely customer communication is critical to maintaining customers for life and driving service profits. From the moment the appointment is made until the time your customers pick up their vehicle, how you communicate and the timeliness of those communications is one of the keys to how they rate their overall service experience.

*CIMA’s Vehicle Ready application is designed to CALL, EMAIL, or TEXT your customer when it’s time to pick-up their vehicle. Dealers utilizing this feature are saving up to 40 minutes a day per Service Advisor.

CIMA is currently offering special pricing for
Vehicle Ready application thru February 28th, 2010.

The Vehicle ready feature for us was the biggest selling tool for CIMA, we wanted our customers to know their vehicles were ready the moment the invoice was printed. CIMA does just that. The system seamlessly alerts our customer by phone, text or email that their vehicle is completed. We no longer have to rely upon the human memory to make that call, and better still, CIMA never calls in sick or is affected by being short staffed.

Andrew Gates

Victorville, CA.

*Available for ADP or Reynolds + Reynolds DMS only.

By Gary Nixon for Dealer Marketing Magazine

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.

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Determine the pros and cons of each of your marketing methods for maximum success.
by Gary Nixon for Digital Dealer

In the last of my three part series on the right marketing mix for 2008, we’re going to focus on a growing and exciting portion of the automotive industry: new technology tools. This last year brought several intriguing ways to communicate with customers on a 24 by seven basis, including: text messaging, interactive chats or instant message (IM), and blogs.  I think we’ll see an explosion in these communication methods in 2008 and would like to share with you some of the pros and cons for each of these tools. My hope is that by sharing the advantages and disadvantages with you for each marketing method, you’ll be able to determine the right marketing mix for maximum success in your dealership this next year.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Determine the pros and cons of each of your marketing methods for maximum success.
by Gary Nixon for Digital Dealer

In my last article I shared with you some of the pros and cons of two marketing methods you’ll be considering in your marketing mix this next year, direct mail and emails to your customers. While both methods have their share of benefits and pitfalls, they are not the only method you’ll be utilizing in 2008 when reaching out to customers. This month, I’d like to focus on the advantages and disadvantages of two other lead generators, automated calls versus live calls, or Business Development Centers (BDC). My hope is that by sharing pros and cons with you for each marketing method, you’ll be able to determine the right marketing mix for maximum success in your dealership this next year.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Determine the pros and cons of each of your marketing methods for maximum success.
by Gary Nixon for Digital Dealer

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).

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