A new year is upon us and that means new opportunities and possibilities for both your customers and your dealership’s success. Fortunately you know how to create success for your dealership, improve customer retention, effectively solicit new business at a low cost, and sell and service more vehicles to increase revenue. Sounds simple enough. Here is a creative way to help you do just that. This week’s campaign idea plays on the New Year and will help you move additional vehicle inventory from your lot.

Out with the Old, In with the New
I know you’ve heard this old saying time and time again, but it’s mostly used in reference to spring cleaning and not the New Year. Well put a new spin on it. The new year is a time to renew and refresh, just like spring, so it’s a perfect time to communicate with customers about sprucing up their current vehicle with a new 2015 model.

Target Ready-to-Buy Customers
The important thing about a campaign like this is that you have to target the right audience. Since the average consumer is keeping their new vehicle for approximately 93 months, or about 8 years, you’ll want to take that into consideration when creating your list. Also, think about the average length of a new vehicle lease and target customers who may be ready to swap out their ride. Reaching customers at the optimal time is key to eliciting a response.

Restock Used and Move New
A campaign like this will help you make a resolution to move your vehicle inventory. Not only will you stock your pre-owned lot with quality vehicles that have been serviced at your dealership, but you’ll move additional new vehicle inventory as well.

What are you waiting for? Start your new year off right with a profitable resolution.

With the holidays and end of the year just around the corner, the team at OneCommand wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Without your support and continued business, our success would not be possible. We understand you have many options in the marketplace and we are pleased you chose OneCommand as your preferred vendor. We are deeply thankful and would like to extend our best wishes for a happy and safe holiday season and a prosperous new year.

The OneCommand offices will be closed on December 25^th and January 1^st, however we will be available December 24^th and December 31^st, should you need any assistance.

We look forward to continuing to serve you in 2015. Thank you again for your loyalty to OneCommand, it is a pleasure doing business with you!

As 2014 quickly comes to a close, we begin to reflect on the year and look towards 2015 as a year of new opportunities and possibilities. But before we put 2014 behind us, there is still time to reach out and connect with current customers and bring new business to your door. Check out these three ways to end 2014 with a bang.

Make a Resolution
Everyone makes some kind of New Year’s resolution, whether it be to lose weight, stop a bad habit, or simply be a better person. Think about making a resolution to your customers. I’m sure you have standards in your Sales and Service Departments and may have some new standards that either customers have asked for or you’ve recently implemented. This is your chance to communicate these standards to your customers and make a resolution to them to provide top-notch service in the new year.

Gather Feedback
Along the same lines, the new year provides a perfect opportunity for you to ask customers for their feedback about your services, personnel, and their ownership experience. This will make them feel like you care, but will also provide you helpful insight into your business. You can use this intel to make changes to your business and learn where there may be opportunities for your employees to grow and improve your processes.

Go Social
New Year’s is another time of year where you can gain additional exposure from your social media marketing. Think about asking followers to post their New Year’s food spread, decorations, drink of choice, or even their midnight kiss. Be sure to remind followers to drive safe and call a cab to get home if needed. You could also offer information about local cab services or offer these services in one of your new 2015 models.

Provide Year End Incentives
Everyone knows the end of the year is the best time to buy a vehicle. Ok, maybe not everyone knows that, but they should. Inform customers that your entire 2014 stock must go before the end of the year and provide exclusive offers that are only available at your dealership. Make sure your campaign conveys your dealership “why buys” – why they should buy from you versus your competitor. Not only will you increase end-of-the-year sales, but you’ll also move those 2014s off your lot to make room for your new inventory.

The end of the year brings about the time for change and to renew and refresh for the new year. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity to communicate with customers to stay top of mind and drive additional traffic and revenue to your door.

In case you didn’t notice, the holidays are quickly approaching and before you know it, they will be here and gone. If you haven’t started, you need to get your holiday marketing plans together to connect with customers and drive additional traffic to your dealership. Read on to learn three easy ways to leverage the upcoming holidays in your customers’ marketing.

Communicate Happy Holidays
Probably the easiest way to spread holiday cheer is by sending a heartfelt communication to customers to let them know you appreciate their business and wish them well during the holiday season. This communication should include any hour changes your dealership has for the upcoming holidays. A simple thoughtful message like this will demonstrate you care and go a long way in building customer loyalty.

Get Social
Another great way to spread holiday cheer is by turning to your social media channels. Think about hosting a contest on your Facebook page or even Twitter account. The contest can be for the best lights display, ugliest sweater, or most ridiculous gift, whatever you choose. Ask your social community to post pictures of these items and then award the individual who gets the most likes or retweets. This type of communication will build engagement among your social community and extend your campaign’s reach.

Give Back to Your Community
Lastly, a great way to spread holiday cheer is by pitching in and giving back to you community. You could organize a toy drive, collect canned foods for a local food bank, or even donate money to a local organization for every vehicle purchased or serviced throughout the holiday season. By pitching in and spreading holiday joy for individuals who need it most, you’ll see increased traffic and revenue during the holiday season.

No matter what decide for your holiday marketing, you need to start planning your strategy now. Anything from a simple thank you to a contest will bring your dealership increased brand awareness and improved customer satisfaction to drive more traffic to your dealership this holiday.

The holiday travel season is in full swing, with an expected 90% of travelers opting for a road trip over air travel. What does this mean for your dealership? Now is the time to prep your customer’s vehicles for their holiday journeys. Here are three easy ways you can keep your dealership top-of-mind, build brand recognition, and drive additional service business to your store.

Remind Customers of Maintenance
This idea is probably a no brainer, but I want to make sure to state it. Deliver a communication to customers about needed maintenance on their vehicle before holiday travel. Think about offering a Holiday Road Trip Service Package, wherein your team would perform and check all vehicle elements to ensure they arrive at their destination safely and without hassle.

Offer Assistance
The holidays bring about a lot of busy work and things to keep straight, which means, your customers may forget some key elements when hitting the road this holiday. Remind them of the manufacturer’s roadside assistance information and if you have a local towing company you work with, be sure to provide their contact information to customers as well.

Be Helpful
Road trips, even around town, can be downright frustrating. Remind customers of apps like Waze or Roadtrippers that can spot traffic, law enforcement, restaurants, hotels, and more. These apps are incredibly helpful when hitting the road and can be a great suggestion to customers who have never used them before.

Be sure to start planning your holiday travel marketing soon - with over 90% of travelers expected to use their vehicle, it presents a perfect opportunity to reach out with relevant marketing. Not only will you increase your service drive traffic, but you’ll also build customer loyalty by offering great travel tips.

Every business needs customers, right? Keeping customers loyal to your business and ensuring they come back to you for future purchases involves a retention marketing strategy. Although this type of strategy is incredibly important and needed for a successful business, today we are going to focus on developing a conquest marketing strategy.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “You tell us all the time - it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.” This is a very true statement; however, there comes a time for every business when you have to look outside of your current database and acquire new business to grow your current customer pool and increase revenue. What if I told you that acquiring new business doesn’t have to be so costly? In fact, dealers who use OneCommand’s conquest email solution have seen a $15 return on investment for every one dollar spent. Today I’ll share a cost effective conquest marketing strategy that brings additional sales and service customers to your store.

Go with Email
First things first - let’s take a look at how you can simply reduce marketing costs. We all know that material cost can be a big money pit, by leveraging email you can reduce this quickly. Let’s compare an email with a direct mail conquest campaign. Typically, email costs about a fraction of a penny to deliver, whereas a direct mail campaign can cost up to a couple dollars per piece. If all other costs are equal (purchase price to acquire a list, creative design cost, etc.), a delivery channel like email can save you a lot of money.

Present Clear Offers, Calls to Action, and Dealer Info
No matter who you are, everybody loves a good deal. Check out Groupon or Living Social if you don’t believe me. This is the very reason you’ll want to design your conquest email accordingly. Think about having big bold call outs for pricing and to get noticed. You’ll also want to make sure you have clear calls to action in your email piece. This will help drive recipients to your website to increase web traffic, but also get them thinking about how they would customize their ride of choice or schedule their appointment. Along those same lines, be sure your dealership information is clearly presented on your email piece. Lastly, you’ll want to make sure you have your offers, calls to action, and dealer info arranged in an aesthetically pleasing design with striking visual components to grab a reader’s attention.

In-Market Data
This step can be a little difficult to achieve on your own simply because you may not be able to query in-market conquest databases. However, if you work with a company that provides email data to you, ask if they have a way to target in-market buyers in your area. There are also a handful of companies out there who are able to provide this data to you, or contact us, OneCommand, and we can help. Once you have the in-market data, be sure to bounce it against your database to exclude any current customers. By doing this, you’ll ensure you aren’t spending money on marketing to the customers you already have.

Test and Try Again
One of the best things about utilizing email marketing is being able to test a particular element and if it doesn’t produce the desired results, change the element and try again. Think about testing different subject lines to achieve better open rates, or change up your calls-to-action or placement of links to increase click-through rates. If you are seeing a lot of spam complaints, bounce rates, or unsubscribes, think about changing up creative and ensure your emails are SPAM compliant. At the end of the day, email is a great medium to get outside the box and really see if what you are doing is working and achieving the desired results.

Check Campaign Effectiveness
Like all marketing, it’s only as good as its results, and the same is true for conquest marketing. Don’t be alarmed, however, if your results aren’t up to par with your typical customer email results. You have to remember these are conquest customers - they don’t know you or have a relationship with you, so the results will always be lower. A benchmark to go by for conquest open rate is 5%, where as a click-through rate is typically 3%.

But an open rate and click-through rate are only as good as the revenue they drive to your dealership. To really determine your conquest email’s effectiveness you’ll want to wait about 30 days, then take your initial data and bounce against your purchase and service records from that time period. Be sure to match against name, email, phone, and any other information you have available and then you will know not only the success of your creative and content, but also your marketing efforts as a whole.

Start Your Conquest Email Marketing
If you’re looking for a cost effective way to attract new buyers in your market area and influence them to purchase their next vehicle or service their current vehicle with you, then conquest email marketing is for you. You’ll lower your current conquest marketing budget by leveraging a cheaper delivery channel, you’ll increase your dealership’s brand awareness, and you’ll drive additional sales and service revenue to your door.

Holiday frenzy is sweeping the nation and people everywhere are starting their holiday shopping. Ok, maybe not exactly, but children are starting to think about their Christmas and Hanukkah wish list, parents are attempting to figure out how they will pay for this year’s must-have gifts, and retail outlets everywhere are getting ready for the holiday rush.

Have you started planning your holiday marketing? You should be. Today I’ll share easy ways to engage customers during the holiday shopping season to get them to your door.

Think Big
The holidays mean increased competition from not only your competitors, but also for your customers’ attention from other retail outlets. This is when you have to “go big or go home.” If you don’t put out a sales or service offer to attract the consumer’s eye, you might as well forget it.

Get Outside the Box
On the same wavelength, to grab consumers’ attention, you’ll want to use marketing that gets you noticed. For example, if you plan to leverage email marketing, the average inbox receives significantly higher emails during the holidays. You’ll want to use an attention-grabbing subject line to increase opens, simple, striking, creative imagery, and of course, your offers need to be front and center to generate increased response.

Leverage Shopping Days
This tip may sound like an obvious one, but be sure to participate in the usual holiday shopping days: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and of course the weekend in between. Some dealerships we work with offer shuttle services for shoppers on Black Friday, especially if they are located close to a mall or shopping center. This is the time to get creative to determine how you’ll increase holiday traffic.

Get Your Message Heard
Because the holidays are such a busy time for consumers, you’ll want to leverage communication mediums that matter most to them. Social media, email, and direct mail are important channels to utilize and deliver your message. They ensure consumers don’t have to search for your content because you’re reaching them through methods they are already use daily.

Depending on your end-of-the-year goals, the upcoming holiday shopping season presents a perfect time for you to get noticed. So what are you waiting for? Start planning your holiday marketing now.

Wow, how time flies! Looking at the calendar we are already in November and that means the end of the year will be here before we know it. This month we’re going to share campaign ideas that get you the most bang for your buck to bring in additional end-of-the-year traffic and revenue. Here’s a guide to plan your Thanksgiving marketing.

Traditionally Thanksgiving is a time to spend with family and friends and reflect on the things for which you’re thankful. This is the very reason we recommend not sending customers hard-hitting deals in your Thanksgiving marketing. There are plenty of events in November, Black Friday and Cyber Monday for example, that are perfect campaigns to leverage your November deals; however, Thanksgiving is just not one of them.

Instead, thank customers for their continued patronage throughout the year. The best channels to send this heartfelt thank you message is through voice messaging or email marketing, both of which are inexpensive channels of delivery. If you have the ability, think about making a video of your staff thanking customers for their business and then link to it in your email campaign. This type of communication really shows customers that you go above and beyond to show your appreciation to them.

If you must put an offer in your Thanksgiving communication, stage it in a way that looks like you are offering your customers something for being so loyal such as a $9.95 Loyal Customer LOF for customers who have been in your Service Department in the past 12 months or a Thank You $2,500 on their vehicle trade for customers who have purchased from you in the past. The only problem with these types of offers is that they muddy your message of being thankful by trying to reap benefits from your customers. So if you must include an offer, be sure to put your customers’ best interest first.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a couple weeks away, but now is the time to start putting your thoughts together to determine how you will show your appreciation to customers.

Creating an effective marketing strategy in today’s world is not an easy task. Should you spend your time and money to conquest new customers? Allocate your marketing budget to build brand awareness in your community? Create a program to strengthen customer retention among your existing database? Or should you focus your energy on all of the above? The possibilities are endless. Chances are the answer to an effective marketing plan lies in a perfect combination of a new and current customer strategy that delivers the most optimal return. The problem is finding a harmonious balance.

We all know the old adage, “It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.” If this is true for your dealership, then it is in your best interest to capitalize on every opportunity with current customers. Make sure they are informed about needed vehicle maintenance, communicate service savings, share OEM incentives on new vehicles, etc. Now I’m not telling you to give up conquest marketing, but you’ll want to be smart and accurately measure the effectiveness of these efforts to create a low cost, highly effective strategy. If you’re looking for an easy way to bring in new sales without the cost of conquest marketing, here are some quick and easy ideas to get you started.

Identify Ready-to-Buy Customers
You’re probably already trying to determine how to identify current customers in your database who are ready to buy a vehicle. The simplest way is to target any customer who has owned their vehicle for 5 or more years, since according to AAA the average length of vehicle ownership in the U.S is 5.95 years. A little more complex way to identify ready-to-buy customers is to gather customer vehicle payment information from your DMS. This should be found in the F&I records for each customer when they purchased their most recent vehicle. Then, determine which customers are in an equitable position in their current vehicle and would benefit greatly by trading it in for a newer model. If you like the second option, but it’s a little too complex, think about partnering with a third party company to obtain this information about your customers.

Target In-Store Service Customers
You’ve probably noticed that even if you are able to identify in-equity customers in your database, a communcation to them via email or direct mail is not always effective or you typically have to send several communications before your message is heard. An easy way to reduce the cost of these communications is to target in-equity customers when they are in your Service Department. If you can flag customers in your DMS who have equity in their current vehicle, then you can identify them when they arrive for service. This will provide a perfect opportunity for you to start an impactful dialogue between your sales staff and current customers.

Train Your Team to Approach In-Equity Customers
After spending the time to identify in-equity customers who have appointments in your Service Department, the last thing you want to do is send a “too eager” salesperson out to scare them. Make sure the salesperson you have talking with these customers is seasoned and understands these customers are not at your dealership to buy a new vehicle. They should be trying to inform customers about the equity in their current vehicle. You’ll also want to make sure your salesperson doesn’t sound like a predator stalking its prey, so have facts and maybe even a document that can be used as a talking point for the customer to reference. It isn’t likely a customer entering your service drive will buy a new vehicle the very same day, so any steps you can take to ensure they are at ease about the conversation and excited about a new vehicle are necessary.

Follow-Up with In-Equity Customers
In a perfect world, you’d be able to sell an in-equity customer a vehicle on the day of their service appointment, but this is not reality. They typically have a spouse they need to talk to, budget they need to reference, or even research about what vehicle they’d like to purchase. Because of this, you have to follow-up, which can be done in multiple ways and depends on your specific dealership. If you have the manpower, have the salesperson that approached the customer reach out to them by phone, send an email to the customer with specifics about their in-equity position, or if you have one available to you, have your BDC communicate with the customer to set up a test drive. Whichever way you decide to follow-up is totally up to you, but just make sure you don’t lose sight of the potential sale.

Start Building Sales Among Existing Customers
With data directly from your DMS, a knowledgeable sales team, and accurate follow-up, your dealership will return additional sales from your existing customer database. This approach is an efficient marketing strategy that will help you STAND OUT among your customers and differentiate you from your competitors.

The spirit of the holidays is in the air. Halloween is next week and before you know it, Thanksgiving and the end-of-the- year holidays will be here. With all the excitement of these upcoming holidays, many retail companies will glaze over a very important tribute, Veterans Day on November 11^th. This day of remembrance and thanks to veterans for their commitment and sacrifice to defend our nation deserves a place in your end-of-the-year marketing strategy. Here are two ways you can honor veterans, drive traffic and revenue, and STAND OUT from your competition.

Offer Exclusive Veterans Savings
This idea seems like a no brainer because it is! Put together valuable discounts, something you’d typically offer your most loyal customers, and advertise them exclusively to veterans and active duty military personnel who visit your store during the month of November. You could also decorate your showroom or service drive with red, white, and blue to show your support of these brave men and women who have sacrificed so much for our freedom.

Start a Thank a Veteran Campaign
This is another simple idea and one that is really easy to execute. All you need to do is start a marketing campaign using all delivery channels at your disposal; be sure to include mediums such as email, direct mail, and even social media to get your message out. The content of your campaign should be to ask the members of your community to use the month of November to show thanks to veterans and active duty military personnel. A campaign like this goes a long way in showing your support for these individuals, but also in building strong bonds in your community.

All gestures, big or small, will be recognized by your community and your dealership will receive recognition for giving back to those who have served our country. You’ll generate brand awareness among prospects and customers, which will make you STAND OUT this holiday season.