With all the social media, content and pay-per-click marketing available at the push of a button, many forget the power of email marketing.  After all, who still uses email?  Turns out, most people do, and email still gets surprisingly high response rates.  The sole purpose of many campaigns is to build an email list.  For the uninitiated, here are some email marketing tips to get started.

Target markets are key to email marketing.  Make sure that the content of email marketing matches the audience it's being sent to.  It is therefore a good idea, given access, to split email lists into targeted markets so that the recipients will receive the most relevant messaging and be more likely to respond.

Do not send email marketing to someone who didn't opt in.  In the same vein, for those that did opt in, avoid sending spammy or extraneous messages.  Simply deliver what was promised when the user opted in.  Sending irrelevant messages or delivering messages to those that aren't interested is simply a waste of marketing time and money.

Other marketing channels such as social media, content marketing and pay-per-click SEM can help to get sign-ups for email marketing.  This is often better than buying an email list from a shady marketing company.  If a business is struggling to build a marketing list but wishes to do email marketing, it may be a benefit to try and get onto another related business' established email campaign until their own list can be built up.

The benefits have been widely talked about when it comes to classic email marketing.  How are you all finding success building up your email marketing lists?

Automotive dealers often struggle with the perception that dealerships are untrustworthy.  Therefore, a lot of effort is put into building trust on a dealership website.  One way customers assess trustworthiness is by seeing positive customer testimonials about the dealership.

Although sites like Yelp and Google Plus provide a public forum in which to post reviews, many dealerships also solicit their own customer testimonials. Research shows that the best time to ask for a review is when a shopper is at the peak of happiness regarding their purchase.  For an automobile, this is generally right after buying.

In order to build trust with future clients (and also gain some SEO value along the way), dealers should post their customer testimonials to their website. If possible, these reviews should then be framed in or otherwise routed onto the site's VDPs in the most unobtrusive way possible. Since most dealerships only have a minute or two to grab a shopper's attention once they are on the site, they need to build trust as soon as possible.  Being able to see or at least access customer testimonials on a VDP will help to quickly establish the trustworthiness of the dealership during the precious few seconds the shopper has to be influenced by the VDP.

Customer testimonials definitely help a dealership to appear less shady to a potential customer.  What are some ways you all are utilizing testimonials to build trust on dealer sites?

One of the most popular requests SEM agencies get are for campaigns related to conquesting the competition.  While bidding on competitors can sometimes be effective, it is usually a mixed bag.

An earlier article on this site touched on relevance in SEM.  Price and relevance of course go hand in hand, thanks to Google's overarching interest in providing only the most relevant results, including its advertising.  While the type of business a competitor is in might be relevant, the terms and brands most likely are not.  In other words, if advertiser A wants to bid on advertiser B's brand-related terms, the odds that advertiser A's website will contain relevant text with advertiser B's branding is very low.  Thus, bidding on competitors names and related terms is likely to result in very high costs per click.  If an SEM campaign has a limited budget, this practice may rapidly eat right through it.

Shoppers that enter brand names are usually looking for that exact brand.  While bidding on competitors may get a few clicks, the CTR will typically be low because most shoppers will bypass the ad in preference to the brand they were actually looking for.  Also, bounce rates will be higher for this traffic as many clicks to an ad are likely accidental.

Finally, Google has allowed certain brands to trademark their name and related product names.  Therefore, ads used for bidding on competitors simply won't show if the term appears in the ad.  Ads that don't contain the keyword searched are seen as less relevant and typically get lower click through rates - which ultimately drives up cost and pushes the ads down below the fold or onto the next page.

Some find success bidding on competitors but most find it to be a money pit practice.  What are your thoughts regarding bidding on competitors terms and brands?

Many dealership websites share similarities in structure.  Shoppers can do an inventory search and wind up on an SRP (search results page - some call this page a VSR,  or vehicle search results page).  These pages can make or break the customer experience.  Here are some SRP design tips that can be utilized to help drive more zero-moment customer action!

The first mistake that many make with SRP design is offering as many details as possible.  Really, this should be the work of the VDP (Vehicle Details Page) rather than the SRP.  The SRP is intended to give the shopper an overall idea of the car and help them quickly narrow down their search.  Thus, only the most essential information should make it into the SRP design, preferably in list form so that it can be easily scanned.

Second, conversion buttons should be for the most part left off of SRP design.  Users are trying to narrow down a query, not get a price quote, apply for credit or contact the dealer.  Those conversion options are better utilized on a specific vehicle's VDP.  The call to action on the SRP should be to funnel the customer into a VDP.

Finally, real photos should be used instead of stock photos whenever possible.  Stock photos in an SRP design can subtly promote the idea that all of the vehicles are the same.  Clients have a tough time emotionally connecting with stock images.  Therefore, a good looking photo of the actual vehicle is much more likely to cause a customer to connect enough to click through to a VDP.

The SRP's design can be just as important as the VDP’s, if used correctly.  What are some SRP/VSR tips you guys have?

Many dealership websites opt for the clean, professional look of stock photos.  While this practice might work well for promotional materials, automotive dealers should try to use actual photos on VDPs (Vehicle Description Pages) whenever possible.

Inventory often needs to make it onto a dealership site before there is time for photos to be taken.  In this case, many will choose a stock photo or a "coming soon"-type image rather than no photo at all.  While this might be an acceptable temporary solution, a dealership should always attempt to get actual photos of their merchandise on their website for all VDPs.

The single biggest "selling" factor on the VDP is the initial photo that loads on the page.  If this photo is a stock photo rather than an actual photo, the customer will only have a generic idea of what the vehicle may look like, rather than how it actually looks in terms of color, condition and features.  When photos of the actual vehicle load, it significantly builds trust with shoppers.  The dealership is showing that they have nothing to hide with respect to the vehicle's appearance.  This is an important hurdle to cross, considering that trust is a major issue that dealerships may face with customers.

Not only should actual photos be used, there should be many photos showing various aspects of the vehicle - something stock photos tend not to do.  For a list of standard photos, see here:  http://zmotauto.com/wpz/inventory-photos-vdp-photo-ideas/

All in all, photos play a vital role in a vehicle sale that begins online.  Are you all still using stock photos or do you have a system in place for keeping actual merchandise photos on site?

While most dealerships have a website, and some are mobile-enabled, many have not been optimized to provide the fastest delivery of content.  Whether it's a slow loading picture or a bad piece of flash animation, site speed is still an issue for a lot of automotive dealer websites.

Even a small delay in site speed with regards to load times will dramatically decrease customer satisfaction, page views and conversions.  Most people expect a site to load in just a couple of seconds, and many will abandon a site if it takes too long to load.  Businesses like Amazon and Walmart have taken steps to remedy slow site speed and have noticed lifts in conversions.

Some quick ways to improve site speed include reducing the number of elements on a page, using CSS instead of images when possible, combining several stylesheets into a single file, and reducing the amount of scripts running.  Similarly, cleaning up extra spaces, line breaks and indentation in the code can shave some load time.  Optimizing images for different page widths can help make site speed better by loading a smaller image on smaller devices.  Moving inline CSS to a stylesheet may also help improve site speed when practical.  Finally, plugins and redirects can make a website slower, so minimizing their use can give it a bit of a boost.

These aren't the only methods that can improve a website's speed, however they are typically the easiest to implement.  Are your sites as fast as they should be?  What are some things you all are doing to improve site speed?

There is an idea circulating in the digital marketing world that the benefits of digital marketing can be had essentially for free. Auto dealers in particular have fallen prey to rumored "SEO hacks" and think that all they need to do is a couple website fixes, some black hat techniques and their organic traffic will rise exponentially. There couldn't be an idea that is more wrong than this one. Digital marketing costs money, while SEO hacks generally will get you blacklisted from Google. Writing and publishing content is not free, and neither is social media management.

Many dealerships believe that they can just get one of their existing staff to handle the digital marketing. So, in addition to their regular duties, they are now in charge of PPC management, SEO content creation, reputation and social media management. Having someone do digital marketing as just "another task" in a list of responsibilities puts a dealership on the fast track towards having an unsuccessful campaign and potentially wasting lots of money in PPC and social media fees.

A successful digital marketing strategy will bring ROI, but auto dealers need to be prepared to pay for top-notch results. Rather than pawning the job off on an existing employee or doing some minimal black hat SEO techniques, dealerships should seek out a legitimate digital marketing partner with a professional staff that can take their campaigns to the next level of effectiveness.

It won't be cheap, but it can be worth it to spend money with a team that focuses on doing digital marketing the right way. How many of you all have tried to get by on low or no cost digital marketing?

Large amounts of money are often spent on digital marketing to get shoppers to click through to an automotive dealership website.  Often, however, the site is not prepared to further move those shoppers down a definite sales funnel.  The "everything but the kitchen sink" method of VDP design is thankfully starting to fade with more focus on a path for shoppers to take.

Traditionally, "sales funnel" has referred to the various stages of advertising such as "awareness/branding", “consideration” and “purchase”.  Here, "sales funnel" is used to describe the most efficient path that zero moment of truth customers can travel to get the product they are trying to purchase.

The main ingredient is to deliver what was promised in the marketing.  With zero moment advertising, a dealer will want to focus on putting the same offer on their website that was referenced in the advertising, along with one or possibly two paths to receiving the offer.  Those paths could include chat, phone, or form lead submission.  This creates a sales funnel as the dealership marketing and website are effectively funneling a customer towards purchase.

Delivering on the offer that the customer was promised with a clear method of continuing down the sales funnel towards purchase is key to a car dealership's digital survival.  How are you all guiding your customers towards the actions you want them to take?

In the broadest sense of the term, landing pages refer to whatever pages on a website you are sending a potential shopper.  Typically, the traffic to landing pages comes from some form of marketing such as blogs or social media.  For landing pages that drive direct actions (conversions), a few key differences separate these pages from other pages on a dealership site.

Conversion-driving landing pages tend to be a bit stripped down in comparison to a normal website page.  The goal with most marketing is to create a path or funnel for the customer to follow.  Having lots of other options on the page such as social media share buttons, or even site menus, can distract a user from that path.

Landing page text tends to be simplistic, with a headline displaying a key benefit of whatever product or service is being sold along with some bullet points for details.  This is usually followed by a call to action.  Attention-getting call to action buttons help push shoppers in the right direction, so landing pages tend to feature one (two at most), with language that matches whatever marketing sent the potential client to the page in the first place.  Consistency and simplicity are the keys to getting clients to do what is required to continue down the desired funnel.

Lastly, pictures, videos and trust-building items such as certifications, awards and reviews help to round out landing pages and make them seem like less of a dry sales piece.  If the page is overly simplistic, it might turn off potential shoppers.  One of the most difficult challenges of landing page design is the balance between too much and too little information on the page.

Landing pages can help take shoppers to the end of the sales cycle.  What are some standards you all abide by when creating landing pages?