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!

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!

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.

How often should you send out Service Specials?  Will your customers just wait for the specials and only come in for these offers? 

The answer is both yes and no.  In the current economic climate consumers are now looking for ways to stretch their dollars more than ever.   There is even a program on cable called Extreme Couponing.  Sometimes your customers will wait for the discount offers but other times they need the work done by a certain time so they will come in anyway.  However, you increase the likelihood that they will come into your service department when you send emails with offers out more frequently.  Also a way to overcome the possibility that they will only wait for the specials is to make sure the expiration dates are good until the next offers are sent.

Don’t wait until things are so slow before you decide to send out email offers, be consistent and they will come and so will the $$$$s!

The following offer was very effective for a particular dealership.  $73,745 in RO Revenue generated from 395 ROs.

Successful email marketing requires a clean email list. The size of your list is not as important as is the quality of the email addresses in your database. Important emails are sent out each day on behalf of your dealership. Service Reminders, Special Order Parts, Vehicle Ready, Surveys (to name a few) all require valid email addresses to ensure delivery to your customer. Listed below are a few simple ways to keep your email list clean:

1. Enter only valid email addresses – Avoid entering bogus email addresses into your database. Invalid email addresses like na@aol.com, noemail@yahoo.com, abc@abc.com, or emails made up by the dealership should be deleted from your name file. Bogus email addresses affect delivery rates and reputation. If you have to enter an email address, use na@na.com or none@none.com. CIMA Systems will filter out these email addresses from loading into CIMA.
2. Delete bounced emails from your name file. CIMA Systems will delete bounced email addresses from your CIMA System instantly. However if you do not remove bounced email addresses from your database, those emails will reload into CIMA once we run another import from your DMS. This is important because big ISP’s such as Yahoo or AOL, will label you as a spammer if you repeatedly try sending emails to non-existing (expired, mistyped, etc) addresses. This is because it may appear to them as typical spammer practice.
3. Flag customers who have opted out of email as “do not email” in your database. Please contact your DMS support center for instructions on how to flag opt-outs.
4. Actively seek email addresses from your clients. Opt-in email lists achieve higher open/click-thru/retention rates. Customers who are willing to opt-in to receive your email messages are more likely to open, read, and purchase products and services. Customer facing associates should ask for emails addresses and educate customers on the benefits of giving their email address. On the service drive or in the cashier’s office, associates should not only ask for email addresses but they should also verify the email address on file is still active.

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By the end of 2011, It’s projected that over half of the U.S. population will be using smartphones. This means your customers will be opening your emails more frequently on their phones instead of computers, and will likely not be connected to a printer while they are viewing your coupons. It’s time to start shifting from printable coupons, to mobile coupons.

How do you get mobile coupons added to your CIMA emails? It’s simple! Let us know you want your coupons to be valid on mobile, and we will add a line telling the customer they can show the coupon on their phone to redeem the offer.  When the customer comes in, have your cashier honor the coupon presented. Using mobile coupons is yet another way to make it easier for your customers to do business with you, and we’re here to help make the transition a smooth one.

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.

Dealer Magazine

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.

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