Why Should Your Dealership Still Use Email Marketing?

With the explosion of social media, does it make sense for your dealership to still use email marketing? Yes, it makes a lot of sense.

Sending emails to potential customers seems almost as old school as writing letters. In today’s world, it seems the only people you need to write letters to are those that refuse to embrace technology. That said, emails are still an effective way to communicate with your potential customer base. In addition to being effective, using emails to promote your products and services is one of the most affordable ways to share your message.

Here are ten reasons your dealership should continue to use email marketing.

1. Personalize your message to your audience

Instead of sending the exact same message to every email in your database, your list should be segmented. This allows you to promote specific vehicles and deals to your email list in a way that personalizes the experience for them. When you have customers that recently purchased a vehicle, they want to know about service and maintenance deals, not new car deals. On the other hand, customers who haven’t made a buying decision could benefit from emails containing discounts and rebates.

2. The recipients already show interest in your dealership

Even if the email recipient was only kicking the tires when they connected with your dealership, they showed interest in what you’ve got to sell. This makes email marketing an effective tool for your car dealership. Send content that offers them great deals, shows vehicles they’re interested in buying, and could become the right choice for them. The interest shown could turn into a lead through emails.

3. You’ll reach more people through email

As much as we want to think that everyone in the world is on social media, that’s simply not the case. Your customer base may include many people that don’t ever use social media but do use email every day. Sending emails allows your company to reach those online users that skip over the social media ads or don’t participate in social media at all. Most people check their emails regularly because it’s still the most direct, personal, and useful means of communication.

4. Emails have a low cost and high return

If you’re looking for an affordable place to spend advertising money, your dealership needs to utilize email marketing. Emails have an incredible ROI in various industries, sometimes reaching as high as 3600%. That means for every $1 you spend, your company makes $36. Very few marketing campaigns can boast such an incredible ROI. Emails are still one of the most affordable and effective means of communication with your potential customers. If you’re not using email to reach your audience, something isn’t going well at all.

5. You’ll build credibility through email

Your email list must be a permission-based list that includes a checkbox for users to opt-in. This opt-in tells you that this person is willing to receive promotional emails from your dealership. With this permission, you can send emails that can show your story, offer deals, promote community efforts, and bring the customer into the fold. This builds the credibility you need. It’s important to receive the opt-in permission before sending an email to avoid your message ending up in the spam folder and never being read.

6. Email helps increase customer engagement and retention

When your dealership uses email marketing to reach customers, your message can include various content that can resonate with your customers. This could be links to your blogs, videos, infographics, and questions. Don’t send emails that are only sales messages. This is a surefire way to turn customers away. Instead, send messages that talk about your dealership, community efforts, helpful advice, and some deals that might benefit current customers, such as service deals. Use email as an engagement tool.

7. Email can help boost your word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing has changed from neighbors talking to each other and sharing stories to online connections through smartphones and mobile devices. Every email can include a “refer a friend” button at the bottom that allows your customers to refer their friends, neighbors, and family members to your dealership. By offering a monetary incentive or gift for successful referrals, you’ll find some customers excited to help promote your dealership for you. This is the most effective form of marketing you could ask for.

8. Email and SEO go hand in hand

The more people click on your blog posts and visit your website, the higher you’ll rank with search engines. How can you reach the most people? The most effective connection your dealership has with customers could be through email marketing. If your emails include your recent blog posts, it gives your customer base a chance to click on the post, and that click can help increase your SEO ranking. Email and SEO work hand in hand when done properly.

9. You’ll receive faster results through email marketing

Email campaigns are easily trackable and offer the desired results much faster than most social media marketing efforts. When your email goes out to your customer base, recipients receive a notification that an email has landed in their folders. This is much more direct than most social media platforms which require users to scroll before ads are shown. Also, the emails in your list belong to users that have already shown interest in your company, which could mean a faster process to go from potential lead to actual customer.

10. Email is highly scalable

Even if you’re a new car dealership, it’s easy to build a customer base by using email marketing. You don’t need to be a well-established household name for your email to reach your audience and grow your business. This form of marketing is scalable and makes perfect sense when you’re looking for a great way to engage with more customers in a short period of time. Most of your targeted audience uses email as their primary form of communication; use this to your advantage.

Does your dealership use email marketing? Is this the primary form of online marketing for your team? It’s still one of the most effective ways to communicate with your current and potential customer base.