Auto Dealership Marketing

Does your auto dealership have a permission-based email marketing strategy?   If not, be careful that you are not a "Tarzan."  In other words, let's say your dealership has 21000 customers in their automotive CRM database.  You have been actively collecting data and your email capture is up to 40%.  So you have 8400 customers that you can actively target with with permission-based digital marketing...

A “Tarzan” is the auto dealer or business development (BDC) manager or someone else in dealership sales management who does three mass emailers to these customers monthly because they can.  So in essence, the are jumping up on the table, beating their chest, and screaming the Tarzan yell, hoping that customers will respond to their dealership marketing.

What you are really doing is “over-farming” your data and subsequently diluting your dealership advertising message.  Your opt out rates will likely skyrocket and your WILL get blacklisted.   When the time comes that you have a message the car-buying customer actually wants to hear, you will have “cried wolf” so many times, that he or she will have tuned you out.

Autobase CRM recommends a blended email strategy using an eNewsletter as a nucleus.  eNewsletters are nice “soft” touches to your entire database of Service, sold and prospect customers.  Incidentally, our newletter has less than 1% opt out rate.

We then recommend a more targeted or laser marketing approach.  Go after smaller cross sections of your customers based on vehicle interest, where they are in their trade cycle and current programs.  You will get a higher response rate on three email campaigns of 1000 to 1500 per campaign than you will blasting your entire databse three times a month.

For years, we have asked our auto dealership sales consultants to check the service appointment log for their customers.

In theory, your sales person would then "happen" into the service waiting room and strike up a conversation with their customer.  We would hope the sales person would gauge the customer's interest in a new vehicle or work the customer for a referral.  Dealership marketing on legs, right?

As a sales manager, I used auto CRM from Autobase to tell me who was going to be in service within the next 48 hours and do "one on ones" with the sales staff regarding the opportunities walking into service.  This way the salesperson was better prepared and we were able to cross-sell effectively from the service drive.

Be proactive! Turn your dealership sales managers into money-making coaches.

by Shawn Belles

Autobase has some pretty cool product offerings about to be announced ... additions to our current auto dealer CRM solution.  There, I said it.  I can't go into details, but I’m thinking to myself that this product couldn’t come at a better time for our dealers.

I was on the phone with a general sales manager at one of our dealerships in Chicago area and he summed it up best on the current climate. He said, “A couple of years ago CRM didn’t really matter, we didn’t really care about the software we were using. We were just sitting back and counting the money... Now you have to use everything that is available to you like reports, Save-a-Deal, and Call Verification to get ahead.”

Agreeing with him, I told him about the upcoming [let's call it Project X] and how this could help his dealership even more. He was really excited and eager to get this tool going at the dealership. The ability to pin-point potential clients and accurately market to them is so vital in this current day. I know products like this will become solid part of how our dealerships market to their clients in the future and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

By Neil Schuman

Although most dealers view CRM as a customer retention tool and a way to maximize profit from a range of marketing techniques, they do not see the real soul of CRM. Many auto dealers see auto CRM software as a search engine and dealership marketing tool, but what most people don’t see if the possibility of change and renewal inside their own stores.

Automotive CRM has to be looked at differently; it cannot be compared to just another data organizational system that allows you to systematize every prospect or owner that has ever set foot into your dealership. For real CRM success, a store should identify its own objectives, and take into account every process the dealership entails (and not only the sales process). Any auto dealer CRM solution worth its salt (take, for instance, Autobase and its supporting staff) can help your dealership pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses in your processes and the way you handle situations.

This consulting process allows you to find out who you are as a dealership, reanalyze your goals on an ongoing basis, and find out truly what type of relationship you strive to establish with your customer base. Auto CRM provides the tools to adjust your efforts from not only a macro outside point of view but also on a micro level within your own dealership.

By Allison Tanner

I had an auto dealer lamenting to me that he was having a hard time finding viable used vehicle inventory.  Units at the auctions were rising in price and what was available was slim.  His pre-owned sales were suffering.

We started discussing alternatives to auctions.  Using his automotive CRM system (in this case, it was Autobase CRM), we were able to run a search of his Service RO’s and find loyal service customers who were driving vehicles with mileage between 30K and 36K.   We put together a dealership marketing strategy to send out a permission-based digital marketing campaign letting these customers know he needed their vehicles in trade.  1/3rd of these customers were loyal to service but had never purchased a vehicle from the dealership.  This was a great CONQUEST opportunity.

Thinking outside the box, he then searched Autobase CRM for closed RO’s in which customers had been into service in the last 90 days with over 90K on their vehicles.  He then had his sales staff reaching out to these customers.  Timing was perfect as CASH for CLUNKERS was just ramping up...

Dealership sales management can admit that sending communication via email is much more wallet-friendly then sending sales, service, or customer loyalty campaigns through the postal service ... but what we don’t know is how efficient it really is.

Of course you can try to calculate your return on your dealer marketing push through the Internet by how many people mention the ad once they step in the dealership, but that is assuming they do come in and they do mention it. Why not start pinpointing exactly what catches the eye of your consumer and watch the way different demographics navigate through your email?

With permission-based email marketing in the Autobase CRM you can easily achieve such a complex task. Every click of the mouse will be noted and you will easily be able to see who opened your email and the steps they took thereafter. Instantly you are able to fine tune your marketing efforts. Who is interested in what car? Where do they live? What did they click? How long were they inside the email? All of this can be at your fingertips, so ... why keep guessing?

by Allison Tanner

How about a great idea to cut costs, help the environment, gain large number of email addresses for permission-based email marketing, and leverage your automotive CRM to do it? 

Our Account Manager northeast Ohio and  northern PA has been working with automotive dealers to “GO GREEN”.   Any printed material leaving the auto dealership has a solicitation for gathering the customer's email address in order to “Go Green.”  The dealership added a “GO GREEN” tag to select printed forms in their Autobase CRM.  Since “green” is a hot button with many customers and the media, this is a perfect vehicle to up email capture rates.

This campaign has been a perfect segue for our Account Manager to run one of his “meetings in a box” on email capture.   He  runs a 20 minute meeting the extols the benefits of email capture for both the customer( immediacy of message) and the benefit to the dealership (marketing with significant ROI).  As a result, we have seen email capture rates jump for 8% to over 50% in a little over 90 days.  Try it at your store!  

by Shawn Belles

As a car guy, I often have this picture of a Dealer Principal or GM sitting at their desk and thinking “Am I a lemming or an eagle?”  Unfortunately, many of these same people, either consciously or unconsciously seem to opt for the lemming answer.  Here's what I mean ...

When we car guys consider our dealership advertising and look at our dealership marketing budget we tend to make decisions that are in line with what our local competition is doing.  If I had a dime for every automotive dealer who has told me that they are in the newspaper or on the radio because everyone else is, I could probably retire.  Like the lemmings that get pushed off the cliff because of the press of the crowd (they don’t really commit mass suicide, it just looks like it) they do it just because the crowd does it. 

The reality of the situation is that automotive dealership management is sitting on a potential marketing goldmine ... and that is their own customer database.  On top of that, if they have a powerful Auto CRM system that was easy to use (of course, we'd suggest you begin with Autobase CRM), they have many options to market directly to that database at little or no cost.

It is well known that these clients and potential clients offer a much more fertile group than the blind shot advertising of the newspaper or radio.  Too many auto dealers simply are not mining their own data and, unfortunately, are the lemmings mindlessly following the flow.  A great opportunity still exists if you are willing to be the eagle.  Go on -- SOAR!

I recently read an eMarketer.com article entitled, Online Coupons Clipping Along.  In the article, a startling statistic was presented:

"According to coupon processor Inmar (www.inmar.com), 13% of online coupons were redeemed in 2008, versus only a 1% redemption rate for print coupons."

If you're marketing a business (like every dealer weathering the current economy), this is fantastic news as "Online coupons are growing at a furious pace, too, posting a 140% growth rate over 2007’s previous high. Unfortunately, online coupons represent only 1% of the 2.6 billion coupons offered annually in the US."

This is only "unfortunate" only because "most consumers still get their coupons from paper sources, such as Sunday papers, receipts or in a store. Less than 30% of consumers claimed to go online to find coupons."

To sum up: as a consumer, I'm 13x more likely to redeem an electronic coupon, but you have to convince me to go and find your coupon in the first place. Question: what if the allure of an electronic coupon could be blended with the convenience of having a relevant offer personally delivered directly to my Inbox?  For automotive dealers, this is the beauty of permission-based email marketing.

With a simple, but powerful auto dealer CRM managing your contact strategy so as to ensure customer touches are both relevant and personal, your latest sales drive or current incentive can transform customer data into dollars.  (And we haven't even mentioned what that campaign could like with other dealership marketing tools at work, tools like permission-based text messaging and digital marketing).

• In December, we brought every last person on our nationwide team to Indianapolis to unveil and train on the latest and greatest in automotive CRM, lead management, dealership marketing, etc. etc. etc.  Simply an inspiring time for the entire Autobase team!
• We then took this growing package of products and auto dealer services to New Orleans at NADA.  Beyond the basics of dealership software like permission-based marketing and ILM, auto dealers learned about our new offerings in voice messaging, toll-free number call tracking, SMS text messaging, and a number of other additions to our marketing solutions.  The overall traffic was down as many of you know -- but Autobase had a great show!
• Finally, Autobase Business Solutions (formerly, Autobase Platinum CRM) continues to be recognized by auto dealers as one the highest returning investments they can make in today's market.