Reach Customers In Your Backyard Through Targeted Conquest Programs

Thousands of prospects live within reach of your Quick Lane–drivers who need your services.

How do you reach out to them?

Consider using a conquest email campaign, an affordable way to find and attract new customers in your own backyard. Conquest email campaigns target specific zip code areas and demographics to reach the most likely customers around your Quick Lane location.

“There are plenty of potential customers in your Designated Market Area (DMA),” said Debbie Fisher, an expert in conquest email marketing who has more than 15 years of experience with auto industry campaigns. “Email campaigns are a personal way to establish and maintain a direct connection with them.” 

Conquest email marketing may be considered “top-of-the-funnel” marketing, Fisher said. That is, it takes in a wide variety of potential customers who are in the early stages of their purchase decision.

How does it stack up against other forms of digital marketing and advertising?

“Conquest email typically costs pennies per email,” Fisher said. “You are reaching people within a well-defined geographical area around your Quick Lane and can apply demographics to reach the best prospects.”

In comparison, pay-per-click programs (PPC) are designed for buyers further down the purchase funnel. That is, a driver interested in brake repair must be searching on Google or Bing to see your ad. And those ads cost upwards of $4 per click.

The key is “searching.’ If they are not actively searching for a service you offer, your potential customers will never know about you. And it might be too late to make a difference once the customer chooses a different shop through on-line ads. 

Also, PPC ads are highly sensitive to price. The offer must be particularly strong to get customers through the door. 

Google or Bing key-words cost several dollars per click. There is no way to limit geotargeting to within three miles of your Quick Lane location. As a result, you may be spending thousands of dollars on clicks that are outside your service area and not good prospects.

All of this is not to dismiss PPC. On-line ads can and should play a role in your Quick Lane marketing strategy. 

A better way to view conquest marketing involves using a different approach, however. 

You may need a new tack to handle the headwinds in your DMA. Reach out to prospective customers before they pick up that cell phone and see all the PPC offers from your competitors.

“Plant the seeds of your success by building trust,” Fisher said. “Go beyond generic messages. Make it personal.”

Fisher offered the following benefits and suggestions for launching a successful conquest email campaign:

1. Identify specific locations (city, county, state, zip code and DMA)

Most service customers drive up to 10 or 15 minutes to their auto repair shop. Your conquest email campaign should start by gathering customers within a three- to five-mile radius around your Quick Lane.

2. Choose personal attributes (age, gender, income, education, age of vehicle, make,model)

Take some samples of your customer database. What kind of drivers visit your shop? Perhaps you can define them by age group or gender. If so, make sure to include them in your target list.

3. Look for areas of interest (sports, travel, leisure activities)

The more you know about your audience, the better your results. For instance, if you know your customers are baseball fans or travel enthusiasts, make sure to include those demographics in your target list. And include something about their area of interest in your campaign. 

“The better you can target your customer the better results you will get from your conquest email campaigns,” Fisher said. 

4. Avoid the inclination to limit potential targets.

Put on your virtual goggles when working with databases. English terms don’t work the same when spoken to a database.

Take the search words “and” and “or.” How you use those words greatly affects the number of prospects pulled from the database. 

For example, if you search for vehicles that are “SUVs and domestically” made, then the search eliminates all foreign made vehicles. 

If you search for “SUVs or domestically made,” you will get any SUV foreign or domestic. You also all domestically made vehicles including ones that are not SUVs (sports cars, sedans, trucks).

Consider an example for Quick Lane prospecting.

Say you select “All Ford Owners” and “More than 70,000 miles driven” and “Households making more than $70,000 per year.”  Every record in the list must meet every condition. 

Instead, if you use “or” as a modifier, your resulting list will be larger. It will include prospects who meet any one of those criteria.

5. Add auto intenders.

A good list company can offer prospects who are actively seeking the services you provide. These prospects are known as “auto intenders.” Not all list companies offer this kind of prospect, but the ones that do have a better return on their conquest investment.

6. Look for a vendor who updates its database at least monthly.

Old data is as good as yesterday’s news–it may make for interesting history but information changes daily. You may find yourself sending campaigns to the wrong audience. 

7. Get tracking reports in real time. 

Do you want to know how your campaign is performing once the list provider presses the “send” button? Most people are anxious to see “live” results. 

Reporting on conquest email should begin within 24 hours and offer daily updates.

8. Insist on data transparency. 

Knowing email open rate and click through rate is not sufficient. You should be able to download a report showing specific zip codes, type of vehicle owned car or other demographics. 

“The more information you retrieve the better you can target your audience in the future,” Fisher said.

9. Ask about deliverability. 

The goal is 100 percent when it comes to reaching the inbox. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the very good. Anything over 90% is excellent. Be wary of vendors who can’t promise good deliverability. 

What sorts of things affect deliverability? Reaching high deliverability percentages is a stew that includes among other things: 

1. CANSPAM compliance by including a way to unsubscribe.
2. Vendor is “white listed,” or approved, by major email service providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and others).
3. Subject lines do not contain words that trigger spam filters. Email service providers treat email subject lines like airport security checkpoints, where your luggage may get flagged because it contains a bottle of water.
4. Recipient email addresses were “opted-in.” That is, the email recipient gave prior approval to receive campaigns.

10. Ask about matchbacks to determine return on investment. 

Sometimes you may want to go the extra mile to match customers to campaign emails, Other times not. A good list provider offers that choice.

Matchbacks help you understand what part of your campaign performed the best and give you insights on how to target future campaigns.

11. Use can you personalize subject lines and body text.

Wouldn’t you prefer getting an email addressed to you specifically than one that looked and felt generic? Find out of your conquest campaigns can include wildcard fields such as “firstname” or the make of the recipient’s vehicle.

According to Fisher, email campaigns that contain personalized fields or emoji are more likely to be opened and acted upon.

12. Ask your vendor the best day or time to send your conquest email campaign. 

Considerations are based on your demographic choices. How quickly they open your email campaign may depend on the type of job they have, when they leave or return from the office, if they work at home, their holiday schedule and whether the campaign is going to a work or home email address.

“You might be surprised to see when recipients are reading email,” Fisher said. “Habits have changed since the COVID crisis, and people are looking at their inbox all hours of day and night.”

13. Keep your email message simple email 

Overly complicated email campaigns–ones littered with lots of graphics or hard to find offers–can result in low click through rates.

“As long as the message is clear and you’re sending it to the right audience, then you’ll have success,” Fisher said.

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