January 27th, 2012 | Written By: Chuck Patton
There’s a new trend on what philosophies dealership’s should use to drive customer retention for service departments so they can maximize service profit and ultimately retain customers. The trend is a so-called smarter marketing that is based on an data algorithm. The theory basically professes that advanced data logic will be used to market to the customers with the right message, at the right time and to the right person in order to drive in service traffic for less cost. You are essentially only marketing to the customer when their vehicle is due for service.
This strategy sounds great, but it’s an important trend to monitor before making the jump. Many manufacturers’ service programs are heavily promoting this “right-time” strategy and if you are on one of those programs or if you are being pushed towards one, it is important that you understand the pro’s and con’s.
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Posted in: Branding, Direct Mail, E-mail Marketing, Marketing Plan, Segmented Marketing
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June 22nd, 2011 | Written By: Regina Green
While it’s far from being an exact science, there are a few unbreakable rules for successful and effective marketing. And while many of them are common sense, there are a few that seem to have been forgotten by many of the marketing programs being offered by automotive manufacturers. These programs often ignore these rules in order to increase their revenue by cutting corners—all in the name of “targeting the right customers at the right time.” But breaking common rules of marketing can lead to disastrous results for a dealership’s service department.
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Posted in: Best Practices, Customer Retention, Direct Mail, E-mail Marketing, Segmented Marketing
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October 6th, 2010 | Written By: Melissa Hans
Coming from, and living in, a family of attention-deficient loved ones can give you a distinct advantage. After hearing the oft-used phrase, “Think outside the box,” you immediately think, “What box?” It allows you to be open to all possibilities and can help prevent falling into a rut.
Marketing and advertising people are often “what box” type personalities. Even the craziest commercials on television can be given points for creativity and originality. And if you remember the name of the company or the product in one of those commercials, the ad has reached some level of success.
However, you may feel as if you don’t have time for creativity and originality. Maybe you work in a setting where “that’s the way it’s always been” means “that’s the way it’ll always be.” The prevailing attitude is definitively planted firmly inside the proverbial box.
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Posted in: Best Practices, E-mail Marketing
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June 3rd, 2010 | Written By: Chuck Patton
It’s time for a mid-year review. Remember the automotive service marketing objectives you put into place at the beginning of the year? How are they working for you? Are you on-track to meeting your goals? Are you ahead or behind where you wanted to be?
Depending on the answers to these questions, you may want to consider making adjustments to your marketing plan for the second half of the year. As you take stock and plan your next six months, consider the following areas of opportunity upon which you can capitalize.
Retention—The retention measurement that makes the most sense is the one that measures the share of your customers’ business within a year. Start by separating your customers into the following categories:
- Number of times your customers have come in during the past 12 months
- Number of customers doing all their service with you
- Number of customers added in the last 12 months
What are you doing to retain your customers? Are you providing the best service in the market and going the extra mile to keep your customers happy? Consider loyalty programs and perks to show your commitment to a long-term relationship.
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Posted in: Best Practices, Customer Retention, Direct Mail, E-mail Marketing, Marketing Plan
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February 18th, 2010 | Written By: Chuck Patton
Several years ago I attended NADA’s digital dealer conference and found it to be wildly informative. It was the best of the latest and greatest all under one roof to introduce the capabilities of technology in today’s automotive marketing. Every business owner needs to stay on the cusp of technology to explore how it can improve the way they do business and that is why I was there.
My real passion was to learn more about the specifics of automotive e-mail marketing and how it can affect a dealership’s approach to gaining and retaining clients for their service departments. I knew it would fill a niche but I was looking to see how huge this “wave of the future” was projected to grow. E-mail is targeted, able to be tracked, interactive, dynamic and variable. Based on the conference, l left with the impression that it could do almost anything but service the vehicle itself. The big question was did it work?
Can we associate a specific e-mail message with specific repair orders (ROs) generated? The purpose of this column is to show how to make e-mail marketing work for your service department, how to effectively cut costs without jeopardizing return on investment and how you can measure the results with confidence.
How do you determine if it will work at your store?
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Posted in: Best Practices, E-mail Marketing
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February 9th, 2010 | Written By: Chuck Patton
Thinking about the future while dealing with the everyday pressures of your job can be daunting. I was consulting a large Nissan dealer in the Midwest about 10 years ago, whose core base of service customers who had purchased their vehicles from his dealership, was steadily eroding every month. The year before this dealer and I met, Nissan and his dealership were doing very well. However, he could see trouble coming because they had seen record lows in vehicle sales over the past three years and he knew that meant fewer units to service as time went on.
Perhaps that Nissan dealer’s situation is the same as what you may be experiencing. In the short term, you really can’t feel the impact, but after about a year, you realize something is wrong. At the end of the second year and into the beginning of the third, you really feel the problem. By that time, it may be too late for the dealership to turn around quickly, and your income, or your job, could be impacted.
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Posted in: Best Practices, Branding, E-mail Marketing, Lost Customers
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January 15th, 2010 | Written By: Chuck Patton
Tapping into technological strategies has become an essential part of standard marketing models that provide dependable means of income. However, evaluating the most effective technology (and its level of success) for your service department will be more of a journey than a destination. Creating a new technology strategy requires research and a mastery of terms that can seem like a foreign language. Moreover, you can’t ask for help from your general manager because what works for sales may not work for service. Sales and service are two completely different business models. So, let’s start with one of the best examples of technology integrated with standard business practices—e-mail marketing.
It is essential to know what e-mail is and what it can and cannot do. Be cautious when evaluating the seemingly attractive value of e-mail without also considering its return on investment as well as where it can be most effective. This is challenging because e-mail marketing comes with so many new bells and whistles that can have value to certain segments of your market. You must take three things into consideration when looking to e-mail to drive customers into your service department: What percentage of your customers is likely to directly interact and respond to an e-mail? How much return, in hard dollars, can you expect using e-mail, and how do you integrate e-mail into your current automotive marketing plan?
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Posted in: E-mail Marketing
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February 3rd, 2009 | Written By: Chuck Patton
Before we address the question, let me ask you another. Did you know that Traffic Builders has an e-mail program? We absolutely do. We made this move three years ago, because we knew that your dealership would be coming to this crossroads. We would need to be your complete communications experts and not just a direct mail company. We have been executing both e-mail and direct mail and are prepared to show you how to make the best out of both.
It comes down to making sure that results drive your marketing. The dollars up front should NEVER be figured without the return in the back end. If consumers thought that way, we would rush out and tell our financial advisers to buy only the cheapest stock they could find, and not necessarily the stocks that would yield the best return. So what is the best way to utilize e-mail, and how can its cost efficiency help me in today’s market?
E-mail yields a strong rate of return for three reasons: It serves a part of the market that shops and communicates heavily through the digital world; it can be a very inexpensive up-front investment and therefore can yield a strong return on investment; and if you do it right, much like direct mail, it can be tracked.
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Posted in: E-mail Marketing
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