Email marketing continues to be one of the most effective online marketing strategies that dealerships can conduct. In fact, nearly 75% of adults say that email is their preferred method of communication (Apogee Results).
According to research by Naked Lime, emails yields about 39% of dealership leads and fetch more than three times as many leads as direct mail (12%), paid search (11%) and organic search (9%). Traditional media, such as TV and radio, account for 4% and social media 2%. Additional statistics gathered from automotive dealerships nationwide show that those who use email marketing are seeing tangible results – increased ROI, sales and customer bases. According to the research, “Email campaigns have on average a 9%-to-12% open rate, and of those, as much as a 14% click through.”
As a dealership, you need to make sure your email marketing strategies are paying off. Here are some tips to creating successful email campaigns to drive new and repeat car consumers into your dealership.
1. Start with a quality list
First and foremost, you need to make sure your list is up to date with accurate and relevant customer and prospect details. According to Kevin Root of Dealer Marketing Magazine, “the average dealership has less than ten percent accurate email addresses for their total customer base.” Email lists need to be maintained on an on-going basis. Emails quickly become outdated, with data decaying by about 22.5% every year as people move, switch email providers, abandon old email addresses, or opt out of your email lists.
In order to comply with CAN SPAM laws, reduce spam complaints, increase deliverability, and ultimately get more customers and prospects engaging with your dealership, you need to maintain a healthy email database.
Unfortunately, not all email providers or list brokers are created equally. Numerous email lists are available for purchase but be sure to do your due diligence before you spend your marketing dollars on bad data. A third -party email provider should use strict quality controls to maintain high quality email addresses, use sourcing strategies to aggregate and compile data from multiple sources, and use validation process to identify addresses known to be associated with spam traps, invalid emails and domains, complainers, known hard-bounces, and more.
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