How To Successfully Send Dealership and Service Center Promotional Emails
Having a good email list is only effective if your emails actually land in inboxes instead of spam or bulk email boxes. This is an issue a lot of dealerships and vehicle service centers experience when they attempt to send out their own email marketing messages. The problem could simply be the email server you are mailing from.
Sending Emails To Customers vs Cold Email Marketing
Generally, automotive campaigns sent to existing customers will produce more open and click-through rates than emails send to rented email lists. While both lists types are good for marketing, email subscribers who recognize your business name are more likely to open emails from you versus people who are receiving a marketing message from your company for the very first time.
To ensure people who have done business with you, a retention email marketing campaign is one of the best ways to get customers to return to your dealership or service center. Email lists used for automotive retention emails are compiled using customer data which allows dealers to send highly targeted marketing and promotional messages.
An example of cold email marketing consists of using a conquest email strategy. Automotive conquest emails are a great way to lure customers from competing dealerships and auto shops. These highly targeted campaigns can produce great results when emails are sent according to CAN-SPAM Act. If not, you could find your business in legal trouble for sending email campaigns to people who didn’t subscribe.
Tips For Sending Automotive Email Marketing Messages
We provide some tips for getting your automotive campaigns to deliver into subscriber inboxes.
Email List Scrubbing Service
Using an email authentication service to scrub your email list will help improve delivery rates. Cleaning an email list to remove accounts that no longer exist or are full and can’t accept any more emails, should be removed. If the email system you are using doesn’t include a list cleaning feature, there are several online services available to remove these unwanted emails from your list.
Email Mailing Systems
There are a lot of options for dealerships and service centers to use for sending automotive email campaigns. You can choose an email system like Mailchimp to run your campaigns or you can go with system like Infusionsoft that offers more features.
Using a 3rd Party Email Sender
The easiest and more effective way to send email marketing messages is to use an agency that specializes in deploying bulk emails. When you hire a company who can verify emails are on their white-list, a much higher number of emails will land in the subscribers inbox. Email marketing and data list companies are able to scrub dealership and auto shop email lists against their own to ensure emails are sent to active accounts.
Choosing The Right Email Sending Service or Provider
Most automotive dealers and service centers require both, their own email marketing platform and also the help of a 3rd party automotive expert. Using both resources allows dealerships and auto shops to create effective email marketing campaigns. While in-house marketing teams focus on retention email campaigns, outside marketing agencies are better suited to provide conquest email marketing services.
The best way to figure out what works best for your automotive business is to keep trying different email marketing tactics. Adjust your strategy until you find the best source for leads.