Increasingly, the internet is becoming an influential factor for potential buyers in the automotive industry. As of 2012, in Germany alone 70 percent of automotive customers said the internet the most influential factor in their decision. This number has been rising steadily since 2000 when only 15 percent of automotive customers said the internet was their most influential factor. Now, at 70 percent, it can only grow.

In order to be successful in the Automotive SEO, you need to take advantage of the online world and all the tools that are available. Marketing automation is ideal for the automotive industry because it allows you to engage clients and potential buyers personally while keeping communications organized and streamlined. Read on to learn about the benefits of marketing automation in the automotive industry.

Web tracking

As previously mentioned, the internet is a huge factor for potential automotive buyers. As a result, you need an effective method to make sure this works in your favor and an engaging website it a great place to start. By using web tracking software on your website you can see which aspects of your website visitors engage with most. This will give you an idea of how to improve and optimize all aspects of your website in order to drive traffic. Web tracking will also allow you to see what each individual visitor views on your website.

When you use this software in conjunction with an all-in-one platform, you can store this information to later use to personalize individual communications. An all-in-one platform will allow you to create individual profiles for all of your website visitors, known and unknown, and store any interactions they had on your website.

In order to make the most of web tracking software, make sure to include a signup from that visitors can use to get more information from you. Including this form will allow you to gather contact information, link profiles to web tracking histories, and send personalized content.

Personalized content

The main advantage of using marketing automation is that it allows you to deliver personalized content to your clients and potential buyers. The information that is taken from your web tracking software, and any other interactions you have had with your clients, is stored in the marketing platform and can now be used to personalize communications with your clients. This means if a known visitor was viewing particular car details on your site, you would be able to follow up with them with more information about that particular car.

Being able to do targeted marketing like this automatically will allow you to save time and resources while boosting client engagement. In fact, over 80 percent of consumers said they felt more positively about a business after reading custom, personalized content.

Multi-channel communication

How are you communicating with your clients? Is it only through automotive email marketing or do you have a multi-channel approach? If you’re only sending communications through one communication channel then you are not fully engaging your clients. Everyone has a preference when it comes to communication. Some of your clients check their email constantly while other preferred phone calls or even fax. Guarantee clients are getting your messages by sending them through a multi-channel platform.

A multi-channel marketing automation platform ensures that your personalized content is delivered to clients through their preferred method of communication. By using both personalized content and multiple communication vehicles, you increase the likelihood of your messages being opened and engaged with.​

Find the platform that matches your needs

Marketing automation will help your boost client engagement and, in turn, customer loyalty. Most marketing automation platforms offer a free trial. Take advantage of these trials and see how marketing automation can benefit your dealership.

Since dealers have vehicles coming in for routine maintenance they are also doing inspections on each and every vehicle that enters the shop, with the customerspermission - we are doing that, right?

WIth that being said, not every customer can or will do the recommended fixes to their vehicle while it is in the shop, we know that as well.

Dealers track the declined services and know customers will leave, perhaps think about the item(s) that were recommended but they most likely aren’t going to be proactive to contact the dealership and book an appointment to visit again.

With the data of declined services - it can allow for building custom engagement to customers based on their very specific requirements on their vehicle, while building trust at the same time.

What if 24 hours after a friendly reminder was sent from the service manager to thank them for their business and includes a little additional information on the recommendation? A link to the web site, a YouTube video or other information.

Based on that send an additional campaign can be sent out to build trust with the customer. If the customer opens the email, then 12 hours after perhaps send a savings for having the work done at the dealership and build loyalty in the process. If they don’t open the email perhaps set up a text message that goes to the customer with a thank you and coupon code to offer a savings, or email them to a specific landing page with personalized messaging and savings offered.

There can be a full blown process of follow up based on the declined service and how the customer interacts (or doesn’t) with the messaging provided. However, using automation the key is that it is “set” and “forget” features. NOW, this doesn’t mean don’t adjust message or monitor but as we know the easier the better and building out a process that can run itself can certainly benefit the service department at the dealership. It can be sent from the service manager (or advisors) and build the communication to the customer on their behalf.

Every service customer needs a good follow up process on declined service - how well does your dealership do with building trust and providing benefits to getting the work done at your location?

Announcing: Dealer Engage Sonar

Dealer Engage 360 is an automated solution that allows dealers to reach their clients on different modes of communication with highly personalized services campaigns and targeted promotional messages.

Dealers can sign up for a managed service, which allows them to save time and reach customers more effectively without hiring extra staff. Dealer Engage 360 makes it possible for dealers to nurture new leads and online leads into loyal customers while also helping to attract return business and build current customer engagement.

Sackville, Nova Scotia, July 16, 2014 – Dealer Engage (http://www.dealerengage.com) is excited to announce the launch of Sonar, a powerful lead tracking tool that provides complete behavior and activity tracking to enable businesses to create highly effective targeted campaigns. 

Sonar is highly customizable and allows businesses to track almost any online interaction. Dealers will know exactly where each lead comes from and which pages the lead visits on their website. Dealers can also assign an automated lead score based on each page visited by the lead, in order to help identify qualified leads. Leads can also be tagged based on their activity. This process helps learn about leads’ preferences and personalize each campaign, making messages more effective and shortening the sales cycle. 

It connects with our email sending platform, sends an automotive email, then contacts visit your web site and you easily know who they are, what they look at on the site and in turn build a profile that can be used for contacting them with relevant information. Sonar is highly effective when used with Dealer Engage 360. Collected lead information dynamically feeds into automated campaigns, making it possible for small teams to run complex personally targeted campaigns with maximum efficiency. 

We are now offering complimentary accounts of Sonar - please contact me if interested in learning more about the leads that visit your dealership web site. 

About Dealer Engage

Dealer Engage (http://www.dealerengage.com) is the dealership engine for easy and efficient automotive communication. The platform responds to the constantly growing need for integration among the many different communication methods of today’s online environment. Actions performed by customers trigger relevant and timely reactions from the marketing automation manager through the entire life cycle of a client.

For More Information Contact

Shawn Ryder
shawn@shawnryder.com
902-488-4107
www.dealerengage.com

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Lots of automotive shops and car dealerships use email marketing to run special promotions, increase repeat customers and advertise new vehicles. But when everyone else also uses email marketing, and uses the same old email techniques, how do you make your messages stand out?

Marketing automation is one very effective way to make your emails the best ones in your customers' inboxes. Marketing automation enables you to personalize email campaigns for each customer based on their own needs and interests. It allows you to save time, build customer loyalty and increase revenue.

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your shop and vehicles, and it also has one of the highest potentials for ROI. If your emails are deleted before they are even read, however, it is pointless to send them out. Let's examine the benefits of marketing automation.

Email Marketing is Impersonal

Mass email is about as appealing to customers as any other form of mass advertising. It will appeal to some customers, but many will simply overlook it as irrelevant to their needs. If you continue sending customers mass emails that simply push all your vehicles and seasonal sales, over time you will notice that many email subscribers drop off. Many will unsubscribe and some may even report your emails as spam. If you're not personalizing, it's almost impossible to build a lasting connection with your customers.

Marketing Automation is Highly Personal

A marketing automation solution tracks each customer based on which emails they open, which links they click, which website pages they visit and more. This builds up a detailed customer profile with each customer's interests, activity, personal information and other relevant data. Using this information, you can create automatically personalized automotive campaigns for your customers. Personally targeted emails get much higher open rates and response rates. They also build customer loyalty and generate consistently higher ROI than mass emails.

Using marketing automation, you can also provide personalized customer service. Your solution will send emails to customers for maintenance notifications, appointment reminders, birthday automotive service specials and more.

Email Marketing Takes Up a Lot of Time

With automotive email marketing, if you want to send ongoing automotive campaigns you have to manually organize each mass mailing. Your email solution will send the messages and will then stop. If you want to send more emails to each customer, you must create and organize another campaign. This takes time, and by the time you send the messages the customer may not even be interested any more.

Marketing Automation is Very Efficient

With marketing automation, you can create a whole automated ongoing email process that you can set and forget. Customers will receive additional personally relevant emails based on which links they click, which actions they take and which emails they open. This functionality enables you to save the time of organizing new emails to be sent. Emails are selected and sent automatically based on each customer's unique interaction with your automotive marketing campaigns.

Email Marketing Doesn't Necessarily Show You the Best Leads

Automotive Email Marketing will show you reports of who has opened your emails, who has clicked through and so on. But not all email subscribers who interact with emails are good leads. Not all these subscribers purchase vehicles and accessories or download your automotive resources. You don't know which email subscribers are leads that you should focus on and which ones are just curious window shoppers.

Marketing Automation Helps You Find Qualified Leads

A marketing automation solution not only tracks email subscribers' opens and clickthroughs. It also tracks every interaction they have with you and your website so you can build up a detailed personal profile. This helps you learn exactly what services your customers are looking for, what vehicles they are interested in, whether or not they are truly thinking about making a purchase and so on. You can then focus your attention on these hot leads. Make a personal connection with them through an email or phone call to provide them with more information and answer questions.

Email Marketing Only Includes One Communication Channel

Some customers don't use email. How can you connect with these customers through messages, advertisements, promotions and service specials? If you only use email for your automotive marketing, you are missing out on communicating with a lot of your clients. Even if they do use email, this may not be the most convenient way to reach them.

Marketing Automation Includes Multiple Communication Channels

Many marketing automation solutions include a wide variety of communication channels such as text messaging, voicemail, surveys, Twitter and Facebook. This enables you to connect with customers who prefer to communicate through other ways besides email. Text messages, in particular, are an extremely effective way to send out your automotive promotions. Unlike emails, text messages are likely to be opened within five minutes of being received.

Try Automotive Marketing Automation for Free

Most marketing automation solutions offer a limited time free trial. Try as many as you can! Testing a variety of solutions enables you to learn which one is right for your needs. Make a list of tasks you want to be able to accomplish and don't hesitate to contact customer service representatives and ask questions. If you find the ideal marketing automation solution for you, it will save your staff hours of time every day. It will also enable you to connect with your customers on a more personalized level, leading to higher revenue and less customer churn.

In tough times, it is natural to make an effort to bolster your service department in an attempt to maximize cash flow. As consumers are putting money into what they’ve got, rather than buying new, there are many dealers marketing their service departments to take maximize every available repair dollar.

Involve the team in marketing and promotions to ensure that you don’t promote something that is difficult or impossible to deliver. Promotions may involve more staff, hours or parts, and these needs should be run past the departments responsible for providing the service. We have seen some great ideas that come from involving the team, such as using the car shows to hand out discount cards for new service customers that do work with you during the slow season, or launching education clinics on the effects of key items and what services can be done to prevent future issues.

Remember the old Queen song, “We Are the Champions,” and apply it to your service department. The people who work in service and parts tend to be very motivated by recognition for their ability to “get’r done” when times are tough. Let them know they are your champions, and they are likely to pull harder for you.

Customer communication is vital. If you stay in touch, you can charge $2,000, and the customer will be happy; but if that same customer doesn’t hear from you, you could knock $500 off the bill and they will still be mad. So much money can be made by staying in touch and offering additional work to the tickets you currently have open.

The work we do tweaking our service and parts efficiency and attracting new customers to our service department can really help us to gain market share when things turn around. No matter what the market is doing, it is always beneficial to have a service and parts department that you can count on.

Staying in touch with each customer throughout the year can help you increase business, by keeping your dealership in customers‘ minds and by providing them relevant information when they need it. It could take many hours each day to do this manually, but if you have an automated marketing and communication solution it can take as little time as a few hours at the beginning of every month.

With automation, once you create the basic messages and decide how you want them to be sent that’s really all you need to do. Your customers receive messages that are relevant to their needs and also you are able to maintain consistent contact with hundreds, even thousands, of customers easily. So what types of messages should you create?

Promotional Offers
You knew this had to be the first one. Seasonal sales and special promotions help drive business more than almost any other kind of message. Customers love a good deal, especially if it’s exclusive. You can offer special deals to customers who choose to sign up for your email newsletters, as an incentive. Your promotional messages can go out to all your customers or you can have personalized promo messages sent to each customer based on their type of vehicle and maintenance and purchase history.

Maintenance Notification
Whether it’s an oil change, tire rotation or just overall maintenance, often customers need a friendly reminder. Auto maintenance is not the first thing people think of, and they will be much more likely to book an appointment on time if they receive a message letting them know that their vehicle is due for maintenance. These notifications are sent out automatically to each customer based on the vehicle history and data that is stored in your DMS. Each customer receives a message exactly when they need it.

Appointment Reminder
Once they book the appointment, you still need to ensure that they don’t forget about it. Too often, dealerships lose time and money due to customers not showing up for their appointments. Rather than taking the time to contact each customer manually, let automation take care of all the tedious details to ensure that each customer knows exactly when to show up.

Customer Survey
A survey is a great way to find out what customers really think of your dealership and see if there are any areas that could be improved in order to grow your business. Surveys can be sent out automatically after customers come in for service or to make a purchase. With the click of a button, customers can submit valuable feedback that is automatically organized for you to review.

Safety and Maintenance Tips
Automotive marketing that focuses solely on promoting new vehicles and upcoming sales is becoming a thing of the past. More and more, customers want educational resources that they can actually use. Sending out tips that can help customers learn about their vehicles and how to take care of them builds credibility in your dealership, and increases customer loyalty. Customers learn that your dealership cares not only about selling them vehicles and parts but also wants to help them maintain their vehicles for a long time. A friendly text message or email now and then providing you with helpful information that you can use every day cements the belief that the dealership is focused on you as a long-term customer.

At the year’s end everyone needs to look back on their email marketing efforts to see how successful their email marketing program was and if it wasn’t as successful as they were expecting, then what steps should be taken in order to make the program successful. 

The main points to be looked upon are:

Key performance metrics
The first step in the process of annual review is to note down the newsletter or campaign’s annual result in a spreadsheet. All important statistics such as clicks, referrals, complains, unsubscribe, bounces, spam, etc., should be included. After assembling the results must be used to calculate the overall averages. The best and the worst performing messages can be calculated for every metric. Beyond standard metrics like click through, open, and bounce rates, dealerships must also look at metrics which are more appropriate for achieving the company’s objectives and goals. The major metrics which should be looked upon based on objectives are open rate, click to open rate, click through rate, deliver rate, bounce rate, referral rate, unsubscribe rate, spam complaints, net subscribers, subscriber retention, unique clicks, unique clicks on certain recurring links (inventory, specials, service, etc.), website interactions, transactions, total revenue, conversion rate and average investment per email. 

Content
The content of the actual messages should be analyzed. Every aspect should be relevant and should also involve creativity. The style, tone and the length of the subject line should be reviewed. It is very important to include the dealerships’s or group’s name in the subject line or easy recognition by the reader, otherwise the email may land in the spam folder. If the format of the emails is being changed constantly, the samples must be compared to see which one is more effective. If personalized emails have been sent, observe the results to see whether the attempt was successful or not.  

Recipient feedbacks, web site analytics and surveys
An email account can be created to receive feedbacks containing both negative and positive comments, which can be reviewed upon at the end of the year. If the number of feedbacks received isn’t adequate, the feedback procedure must be made easier. Another problem could be of not creating a motivating personality which could make the subscribers to respond. Reader surveying helps in finding keys which can be worked upon in the next year. Analyzing the website statistics also helps a lot. If there are articles present on the website, figure out which ones interest the readers the most. Check out for the vehicle categories which are visited the most and produce the most revenue and orders. Also ponder upon the offers which draw the most attention from the subscribers.

And finally comparison between internal and external benchmarks
Marketers can share information in an organization that produces more than one campaign or newsletter. This helps in benchmarking the key metrics. The dealership’s performance can be compared to the industry averages to see whether the program is going according to the plan or if it needs attention immediately.

An automated solution is the ideal tool to help you build customer loyalty and offer a highly personalized level of customer service. You want to look for an automated solution that is easy to use and allows you to communicate with your  customers using multiple channels, such as email, text messages and voicemail. You should also select a solution that can be easily integrated with your  current dealer management system so you canbe highly efficient.

All you need to do is integrate the solution with your current DMS and create some basic messages. These touchpoints can easily be set up in advance with an automated communication solution.

Customers enjoy being recognized and appreciated. An automated solution stores each customer’s purchase and maintenance history, important dates, vehicle information and contact information so almost all messages can be automatically sent based on a customer’s stored profile.

This detailed information means that each customer will receive a highly personalized communication campaign, based on their own needs and vehicle. Targeted personalized messages outperform messages that are sent out to every customer on a list. They enjoy higher open and response rates and are more engaging to customers.

Maintaining meaningful contact with your customers through regular automated messages also helps your dealership to build trust and brand consistency. Customers will come to recognize your brand and will associate it with strong, personalized customer service and follow up.

As a dealership, you’ve probably heard of marketing automation. I am going to bet though, that 90 percent of you have no clue what the term means. But don’t blame you — ‘marketing automation’ is a mouthful to say, and they're probably should be a better way to describe the concept from an automotive industry perspective. 

As a dealer grows it’s impossible to maintain 1 to 1 relationship with everybody. At this point, it’s time to hire a marketing director who can build performance-driven, conversion-centric programs at scale.

Eventually, the dealership marketing program will get so big that you can’t manage all electronic marketing via Outlook, Word, and Excel spreadsheets. You could always hire a team of marketing, but eventually, you’re going to start wasting cash on redundant tasks like emailing new leads and customers, setting up social media-to-email programs, and emailing your users every time you post dealership blog content on a specific model or service offering. 

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration, and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes that would have otherwise been performed manually much more efficiently and makes new processes possible. Marketing automation is an integral component of customer relationship management.

Automated Automotive Communication combines customer acquisition and retention channels to conform to your dealership's conversion funnel.

It’s common for dealership internet managers to talk about marketing automation and email marketing interchangeably. The fact is that email marketing is a component of marketing automation, but the two are far from the same thing - communication also includes text, voice, and social channels.

Dealership conversion paths are unique. Imagine trying to chase down hundreds of them – it’s impossible. That’s where marketing automation comes in.

Fact:
Marketing automation connects multiple touchpoints and marketing channels including social media, email marketing, and content marketing. One of the core goals of automotive marketing automation is to nurture prospects for the long-term, which means focusing on goals beyond direct sales.

Myth:
Marketing automation is cold, inhuman, and impersonal. “Automation” is just another way of saying that we’re spamming customers.

Fact:
Marketing automation makes it easier to send personalized, 1:1 targeted messages. In other words, marketing automation makes communication stronger. When you automate your marketing, you can focus more heavily on the quality of your campaigns and messaging. Marketing automation gives your team the ability to add more personal touches to your campaign – by collecting data on a prospect’s interests and goals, you can custom-tailor future offers so that they are more relevant.

In fact, marketing automation will empower your organization to do the following:

• Add dynamic content based on an individual’s specific user profile. For instance, you can send targeted offers based on website patterns or email open interaction. 
   
•  
• Categorize customers and prospects by common behaviors, interests, and demographic details. These will be great for segmenting your customers.
   
• Develop optimal marketing patterns. Marketing automation can help your dealership test different variables like email send times, subject headings, and ideas for specific personalization.
   
• Integrate marketing channels to deliver a comprehensive, cross-platform user experience. Make sure that every touchpoint is carefully planned for optimal conversion and unified messages.

Myth:
Marketing automation is spam.

Fact:
Marketing automation is one of the most user-friendly marketing channels out there because it’s tailored around personalized automotive customer experiences. You’re not blasting audiences with a general advertising message. Imagine instead that you’re nurturing leads and guiding prospects through the vehicle and service sales conversion funnel on a personalized basis.

A vehicle sale isn’t the end of a dealership / consumer relationship. Marketing automation, social media, and service-driven calls to action are crucial to this stage of customer retention. 

Make sure that you’re maintaining your relationships with all customers for the long haul. Focus on more than just acquisition – embrace the art of service loyalty. It’s always easy to feel like vehicle sales are the low hanging-fruit. Keep in mind that growth from within is just as — perhaps even more — important to your automotive marketing process.

We all know that the Service Department is key to growth of business - both on the maintenance and repair, but also on future sales by doing a great job with service customers when the visit the dealership.

All manufacturers provide inspections to dealers for ensure the vehicle is reviewed by the technicians for many points of the safety, focused on the customer and having the vehicle in the shop at that point.

However as we know - not every customer is going to purchase at the time of recommendations that day. So often there needs to be a follow up process in place to contact customers who were in the Yellow or Red on the inspection. 

What does this mean for marketing opportunities? Well.... it is a HUGE way to send out custom content to customers based on the inspections. 

Some thought starters may include:

• Yellow tires - automate email based on the importance of new tires, should they open the email send one based on a savings offering after a couple of days. Include links to YouTube videos with information on the tire options.
• Windshield wipers - looking a little worn on the customer vehicle? automate a text message to the customer with a coupon of savings the next day and offer an incentive to come in for new wipers.
• Belts in yellow - after a couple weeks send out a email with the importance of the belt and engine functionality

Using collected customer information is always best for growing engagement, so now use it to customize messaging for the customer.