Five Key Ways To Engage Customers in Early Summer
Drivers are heading into all directions of the digital compass after Memorial Day weekend. See our suggestions for spiking customer engagement in early summer.
Summer road trips put customers and prospects into the right frame of mind for purchasing vehicles and getting their existing cars into shape.
How do you connect with their interest to get on the road safely and comfortably? The following suggestions are taken from results of millions of email campaigns sent through the Sensible Driver program.
Each of the suggestions are proven effective for your Quick Lane business and Ford sales department:
1. Send a custom email adblast.
These types of email campaigns have a narrow focus on service offers or new vehicle promotions. They typically engage 25-40% of your customers.
Moreover, adblast email campaigns have a high “engagement rate"--time on site, page views and form submissions. Google Analytics shows that a well-designed adblast delivers an engagement rate of more than 50%.
Consider the following three items when sending a sales or service adblast:
- Make it relevant to the time of year. Early summer graphics should display an early summer theme. Focus on vehicles or service specials popular for summer adventure.
- Use large, creative graphics. Large photos are impressive. Make sure to have a graphic that works well on either desktop or mobile versions of the email campaign. Most of your customers will view the adblast from their mobile devices.
- Include an offer. Too many offers dilutes the larger message be it service offers, selling a new model of vehicles, a financing offer.
- Avoid email list fatigue and opt outs. Some dealerships habitually send out emails weekly or even several times a week. That especially holds true for CRMs left on autopilot–a problem that leads to declining open rates and increased unsubscribes.
2. Distribute a dealership email newsletter. Combine offers with brand-related news to increase customer engagement and dramatically lowers unsubscribes.
For best engagement include the following items in your summer email newsletter:
- Summer-related vehicle articles and vehicle ad promos. These types of content boost VDP engagement for new and used inventory. Recent data shows some 40 percent of clicks from customers are related to vehicle promotional offers and vehicle-related articles. For summer email newsletters highlight those larger, powerful ford trucks and SUVs vehicles popular for hauling and camping.
- Tout your service specials. Service specials rank as one of the top two items viewed in Ford email newsletters. They also generate appointments and influence service repair orders.
- Talk up car care. Ford customers place a high value on ways to keep their vehicles looking sharp, especially in summer. Articles about car care rank in the top two or three features clicked by Ford owners, along with information about Ford vehicles and Ford monthly service suggestions.
- Remarket to interested customers. Your Ford email newsletter helps identify potential vehicle and service buyers. Now move those customers down the sales funnel. Send them a follow-up campaign about their area of interest, be it vehicle or tires and the like.
3.Use a local conquest email. Reach thousands of in-market prospects from your service area. Be cautious when selecting a conquest vendor since they vary significantly.
Three things to consider when getting conquest email lists:
- How is the list collected?.Find out about data sources and if they contain opt-in emails.
- What kind of analytics are provided? Ask for specifics about open rates, click through rates, bounces and opt outs to review how well the list performed.
- How do you follow-up on opens and click-throughs? Create some remarketing campaigns as a follow-up to the initial email conquest campaign.
4. Dovetail summer email campaigns with posts on your Google Business profile. This helps increase Google relevance and, as a result, organic traffic. Post pre-summer VDP specials, service offers and road trip driving tips.
5. Use Google UTM codes on all email campaigns to track traffic to your website. The tag allows you to know which of the offers in your adblast campaign or email newsletter were most attractive to your customers and prospects.
Google Analytics who Ford email newsletters rank among the top traffic sources and garner a Google relevancy score of more than 50%. .
Deployment of dealership email newsletter tends to offer one of the most affordable digital marketing tools available. Ford dealers can reach customers and prospects for about six to 10 cents per email depending on list size.
For more information contact Sensible Driver at (888) 699-6963.
