Nineteen years before Al Gore created the internet, Ray Tomlinson sent the world’s first email message (to himself) in 1971. Email predates Windows, Apple and the entire web itself. Today, marketing emails are an essential tool for any industry’s marketing strategy.
After more than five decades of having the technology, the world sends billions of emails every day. Although this might seem like a firehose of communication, it’s still easy for businesses to stand out and provide value in the inbox.
Here in the age of social media, email is the most private and personable medium for dealers to connect with contacts. Unlike social media, the inbox remains a comfort zone of tailored information. It’s the original source of permission-based marketing, where anyone from auto dealerships to healthcare clinics can not only talk to contacts but also learn from them in real time.
As Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms constantly tinker with their algorithms, email remains a reliable, direct connection with people in your database.
Email Reigns with Trust
There’s a reason every form you fill out online requires an email address. Email acts as the intermediary between your online experience and your house. With receipts, confirmations, bills, reminders, deals, newsletters and more — email still fills an important, trusted role in our online shopping experience.
As leads and customers interact with your business in real life, that long-term relationship is sustained through effective marketing emails. This is why your business needs to have a clear and understandable email marketing strategy.
Sending Opportunities Throughout the Realm
It’s important for marketing managers to stay on top of their own email marketing strategies.
Email marketing isn’t just about blasting out your best offer. Email allows your business to automatically segment, clean and qualify your database. And even though email is the elder digital marketing tactic, it’s still the best way to send relevant offers to people at the right time.
Measuring the Throne
What role does email play in your business? In our experience, many folks are sending:
- Personal, one-to-one emails to active leads
- Lists of regular monthly incentives, sales or offers
- Product overviews
- Blog post notifications (for subscribers)
- Reminders for appointments
These things are all essential to an email marketing strategy, but — as with any queen — the real reigning happens behind the curtain. For example, does your store follow up with engaged leads? Do you send specific offers to active shoppers? Do you qualify contacts based on website shopping?
Here are a few ideas inspired by an auto dealership’s email marketing strategy to get the right message in front of the right people:
- Segmentation emails, which qualify contacts based on what they click. For example, an auto dealership often sends out emails to unqualified contacts (people who haven’t indicated an interest in a specific unit or model) to gauge their interest and learn from their browsing behaviors. We then follow up with more relevant emails specific to their needs.
- Equity mining (trade-in) emails, which go out to people who own desired used vehicles and ask them to request a trade evaluation. These emails not only complement sales but also help your dealership stock the right types of vehicles at the right time.
- Incentive roundup emails, which allow readers to see all your available incentives in one message. Although this might sound counterintuitive to a personalized email marketing strategy, we’ve found that many email contacts prefer to opt in to see all of the dealership’s programs every month — with a clear option to opt out at any time.
Although these apply to an auto dealership specifically, a similar strategy can be applied to any business. If you are in the auto industry, here are some more ways to improve your email marketing.
The #1 Way to Improve Your Auto Email Marketing
These are just a handful of tactics your business could use to better qualify your database over time and provide a more delightful experience for your contacts. If you’re looking for further inspiration, check out our posts about email templates, automated emails, and more!
Royal ROAS
Return on ad spend or ROAS can help confirm you’re putting your marketing dollars in the right place — email marketing.
According to HubSpot, “ROAS is a metric which measures the revenue that’s generated compared to every dollar of an advertising campaign.”
Attribution isn’t easy. A lot of marketers struggle to determine which channel(s) helped a customer decide to buy. Tools like LeadsRx can help with supporting your marketing decisions, and provide a visual representation of the journey your loyal subjects are taking, both with and without emails.
Message for the Masses
When done right, an email is a cost-effective, fast, and simple way to keep customers informed and excited about what your company has to offer.
With email marketing tools such as HubSpot, MailChimp or SharpSpring — or even your CRM — the process for contacting customers and leads is simplified and affordable, allowing for greater automation and customization.
Take Control of Your Business Email Empire
With this clear understanding of how important email marketing still is today, you’re probably wondering what the next step is. We suggest watching this webinar, which provides great insights from and examples of successful email marketing for auto dealers.
Go forth, and take advantage of all the potential that email marketing can provide for your kingdom.
Long live the queen!
Leave a Reply