March 13th, 2009 by Bruce Etzcorn
We’ve all received one. It’s that email that arrives in record time after I’ve forgotten my password or when I’ve ordered something online that assures me that my purchase will be here soon. The Auto-response has become viewed as a modern day receipt, instantly delivered and dynamically generated. In most cases, the response is originated from your CRM or website provider when a action is performed but that doesn’t mean it has to sound like it was generated by a computer.
We should be looking at Auto-responders as the first step to building a long-standing relationship with our customers. After all, this is the first message you are sending from your dealership. It is possible to create an auto-responder that is dynamic and “feels” like it’s a hand typed response. By creating custom Auto-responses for each type of lead, you can produce well written, meaningful responses that your customer is expecting.
- Make it personal. You are sending an Auto-responder to a person who has willingly shared some information with your dealership, make sure you use it. Use every bit of information that you have to personalize your response to the reason that person sent you their information in the first place.
- Make a great first impression. The Auto-response is the first message a customer receives from your dealership, make sure that it’s a good one. This person is excited about the vehicle they just emailed you about to schedule a test drive, or may have a question about their service plan and what is covered. Your response to them should be positive and let them know that you understand their needs and are working to ensure they are met. “Thank you for your interest in our dealership. Your message has been received and we will contact you shortly” is the absolute worst thing you could send someone looking for some sort of resolution and is a huge disappointment.
- Provide the details. The Auto-response should always provide additional instructions to contact your business. Include the the dealership street address so your customer can get driving directions. Include your phone number with instructions to call with questions. Include items that they may need to bring with them to assist in getting the financing process started. Providing additional helpful instructions for your customer will help everyone know what to expect. You’ve got someone interested in your business, now it’s time to relax and start building the relationship.
Contact your CRM and/or website provider and ask if it is possible to create separate auto-responses based off lead source, most major CRM’s support this. Use the above guidelines to assist in the creation of more meaningful automatically generated responses to your customers. Improving the content of these messages will help create relationships and better first impressions.
Tags: auto-responders, Autoresponders, crm, customer service
Posted in Best Practices, Uncategorized, auto-responders | 1 Comment »
February 21st, 2009 by Bruce Etzcorn
The page view on your analytic reports is useless.
There seems to be a trend on the rise among Internet Managers at dealerships and other web professionals that look to the Page View number on their analytic reports as a measurement of success or the health of a website. All that number means is that someone viewed a page on your website.
When you really stop to think about it, web pages get viewed for all sorts of reasons. Pages on your website could have been reached on accident. They could have meant to click the Parts link and accidentally clicked Service. Your report shows that page was viewed, but the visitor made a mistake. Maybe someone visited the Service area of your website and was looking for your hours of operation but didn’t find it, so they clicked and clicked a few more pages until they found the information they were looking for. The visitor viewed many pages to get to the information they were looking for. Your page view report indicates this as well. Because a page was viewed does not mean that there was any sort of engagement or that the visitor met their objective while visiting your website.
Page views are just viewed pages. You have no performance indicators in this statistic. The only situation I can see page view’s valid is if you were tracking a thank you page or some other page that could only be reached after an order was processed or information was given. By reviewing the page views on these types of pages you could use page views as a measurement tool but setting up a goal in your Analytics tool would be a much more efficient way to track success.
Tags: Analytics, Page Views, website traffic
Posted in Analytics, Page Views | 1 Comment »
February 16th, 2009 by Bruce Etzcorn
With instant messaging, social networking, and blogging more popular than ever, now is the time your dealership needs to start looking to social media and start attracting customers to your online inventory with Social Bookmarking.
Social Bookmarking is a system that allows visitors to your website to save web pages they want to remember or share. This concept is very similar to using the Bookmark feature in your favorite browser except the bookmarked pages in a social system can be public and shared with an entire online community.
So why should your dealership care? Imagine this:
- Scenario One: A visitor to your website is browsing your online inventory at work and found a vehicle that they may like more information about so they save the page in their bookmarks of their default work browser. That night when they come home they have a few minutes and would like to follow up and possibly send you a lead letting you know they would like to come in to see the vehicle. They go back to your website and have to remember what search they performed, what the stock number was, etc. Because this information is saved on their work computer bookmarks they choose to start researching other dealership’s inventory and will come back to send you that lead tomorrow… maybe.
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Scenario Two: A visitor to your website is browsing your online inventory at work and found a vehicle that they may like more information about. They have a Social Bookmarking account so they save the page in their Delicious account, add a few tags about the bookmark and a note to help them remember why they bookmarked this vehicle. That night when they come home they have a few minutes and would like to follow up and possibly send you a lead letting you know they would like to come in to see the vehicle. They open their browser to their Delicious Bookmarks and click the link to the vehicle, review the information and send you a lead that they are interested. You get the lead, follow up and sell the vehicle. Everyone wins.
Some of you might may be thinking that the person illustrated in both scenario’s could have just emailed themselves the link or some other method for getting the information home. Sure they could have, but this post is about Social Bookmarking and by promoting the Social Bookmarking system on your dealership website you gain enormous value.
5 Reasons to support Social Bookmarking on your website:
- Social Bookmarking helps your website create high quality back links. Back links are links to your website that exist on other websites on the Internet. In the world of SEO that translates to popularity.
- Sites that are bookmarked socially can be viewed by anyone which exposes your inventory and brand to a variety of sources, including search engines.
- Social Bookmarking helps your content travel. By giving your content the ability to travel you allow your information to be distributed quicker online which makes your site available to other streams of traffic.
- Social Bookmarking allows users to add tags and notes to their links to help them remember why they bookmarked the page. These user defined tags appear on the public listing and assist in promoting those tags as keywords. These tags are also used in search results on their respective pages.
- Social Bookmark links promote accessibility. Links that are bookmarked can be viewed from any device (including mobile phones) that are connected to the Internet. If your inventory is bookmarked a visitor can return to their place no matter where they are and what computer they are using.
If you need extra traffic, you should focus on adding Social Bookmarking tools to your automotive website. Adding a Social Bookmarking tool set to your website allows your content to travel, assists visitor research and lets the Social Bookmarking community know that you support and understand their needs.
Tags: delicious, Social Bookmarking, website promotion, website traffic
Posted in Social Bookmarking, Social Media | 3 Comments »
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