Automotive Email Marketing: Tips & Everything You Need to Know

People send nearly 300 billion emails every day. But did you know that over 70% of dealerships don’t use email campaigns as a part of their marketing strategies? This means that many car dealers like you are missing out on a powerful opportunity to connect with customers. 

Fortunately, effective automotive email marketing allows dealerships to send personalized offers to open up new possibilities with customers. Not sure how to get started with an email marketing initiative? Read on to learn how you can use email to establish powerful connections with customers that drive more traffic to your dealership—and more sales too. 

Why is Email Marketing Important for the Automotive Industry?

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and is a particularly valuable marketing channel for the dealership and automotive industry.

1. Boosts conversions.

With the right platform, dealerships can send highly relevant and personalized emails that capitalize on data and customer history (via CRM), increasing convenience for customers and earning you their business. 

2. Improves brand awareness and trust.

A well designed email can tip the scales in terms of getting a customer to purchase from you or recommend you to a friend. Over time, well-crafted and helpful emails can go a long way in making it so that customers turn to you whenever they are in need and recommend you to the people closest to them. 

3. Reaches new audiences.

Email marketing isn’t just for the old folks. With its professional framing and expansive reach, you can use it to gain access to multiple new markets and keep their attention long enough to set the grounds for conversion. Pro Tip: it really helps if you embrace features such as personalized quizzes, links, videos, images, and GIFs. 

Types of Automotive Email Marketing Campaigns & Strategies

The first step for success in automotive email marketing is knowing the different types of email marketing campaigns and strategies to choose from. These include emails that invite you to connect, acquisition emails, and newsletters, as well as emails that welcome, promote, and retain.

Welcome Emails

Once you’ve acquired a new customer, welcome emails help them feel like part of the family. In these emails, you always want to focus on all the benefits that they are receiving now that they’re part of your in-group including exclusive updates, discounts, promotions, free consultations, etc. 

Promotional Emails

These customer emails help you make good on the promises you made in your welcome emails. Remember: you always want to promise and over-deliver. Be honest about your offerings and use your customer data to only send promotions and campaigns that are relevant to each individual customer. 

Retention Emails

Relationships take work. And work relationships are no exception. Formulate these emails to continue building relationships with your customers. The aim of these emails is typically to persuade customers to purchase another vehicle or come in for a service using a captivating subject line and an irresistible call-to-action with an image or link. 

How to Create an Automotive Email Marketing Strategy in Five Steps

Yes, with the right tools, it only takes five. Read on for five steps to create a killer email marketing strategy that will elevate your car dealership’s digital marketing and exceed your subscribers’ expectations.  

Step 1: Maintain a quality email list.

How long has it been since you contacted your customer base? It’s possible some of your leads changed emails since your last contact—rendering your new campaigns undeliverable. You may also have added to your email list but forgotten to add those leads to your CSV on file. Each scenario leads to a missed opportunity to connect with people who have shown interest in your business.

In short, you absolutely need to maintain a quality email list to get the best results. Look at your email data to help you find red flags. Keep a close eye on the rate of bounced emails in particular. Email services often mark lists with high bounce rates as spam which severely impacts delivery rates. Always do your best to contact active email addresses to avoid triggering spam filters. Continue to hone your email list by deleting old email addresses and importing fresh leads.

Step 2: Segment your list into customer groups.

Personalization does wonders for your ROI. According to research, personalized campaigns tout an ROI of 44:1, compared to an ROI of 36:1 for those that only distribute static campaigns. You can achieve this personalization by segmenting your list into like-minded audiences.

For instance, you can use segmentation to split your list into categories like purchase history, vehicle value, lifestyle or car preference. You can also divide your audience by engagement history like active leads, lapsed customers, and those who haven’t yet done business with your dealership. By splitting customers into different groups, you can personalize your message to speak to them, their mental state, and needs.

Here are some quick segmented email ideas for your dealership:

• Have a hot deal on new van models? Use segmentation to easily send a tailored email to customers interested in family-size cars
• Looking to increase your trade-ins? Create customer segments based on length of ownership so you only contact those most likely ready for a new vehicle. 

Segmentation is a powerful way to create tailored offers that truly speak to the needs of your customers. It also ensures that when you do reach out, you have something relevant and interesting to say to each customer—decreasing your rate of unsubscribes.

Step 3: Create a “Thank You” email that sells.

The automatic “thank you for subscribing” or “welcome to our list” email is an incredibly important communication in your email marketing strategy. This email is the first point of digital contact you establish with a new email lead and a really important place to make a great impression or close a sale. 

You should play around with segmented audiences for your welcome emails. If you have new leads who sign up for email on your website, you may go for a generic welcome offer and message—or an invitation to a dealership event. You can add a lead after they visit your dealership to test drive a specific car. Then, you can use this information to send tailored communication with offers on select vehicles they expressed interest in. Whatever you do, use your thank you email to provide tailored information based on where the customer is on their buying journey. 

Step 4: Set up triggered emails.

Triggered emails, or email drip campaigns, automatically deploy based on a customer’s behavior or a specific set of circumstances via automation. Triggered emails also have a 71% higher open rate than regular e-blasts. So what are some creative ways auto dealerships can use automated emails?

Set up your email system to automatically contact customers on their birthdays or after a certain length of ownership. For example, you can send triggered email reminders as a customer nears the end of his or her lease term. Drive customers into your dealership by sending automatic maintenance or service suggestions. Send oil change reminders every three months or prompt customers to come in for a discounted tire rotation or transmission check. The best thing about triggered emails is that once you set them up, they run themselves with little oversight.  

Step 5: Be prepared for customer service follow-ups.

Customers expect businesses to reply to their emails within one hour. Once you start using emails to increase foot traffic, you’re bound to receive inventory questions and urgent scheduling requests. If you wait too long to reply to these messages, your customer is likely to seek out one of your competitors. Is your customer service team set up to answer emails within an hour? Streamline your internal processes to make sure you’re ready to capture new business by answering questions quickly.

Email is a must-have for your dealership to build customer relationships. Ignoring this marketing channel leaves many new business opportunities on the table. With these five steps, you can cater to the needs of your customers, and bring more foot traffic into your dealership. 

Want to give your customer communication an even more personal touch? Podium Webchat + Messaging gives customers an easy, convenient way to reach you through your website or social media platforms without having to open a new email window. Podium ties every customer question to a phone number so you can freely exchange text-based communication with ease. 

Plus, Podium’s platform offers a centralized, bird’s-eye view of conversations submitted across all of your web platforms on both desktop and mobile. No matter where you are at your dealership, you’ll be able to answer questions at the speed your customers expect. 

Dealership & Automotive Email Marketing Tips & Best Practices

How do you get the most out of your email marketing? Here are some of our favorite tips and best practices. 

1. Personalize your emails.

Every email you send should address customers by name and take into account their history with you and all other relevant data (geographic and demographic: age, birthday, interests, behavior, etc.). If your email isn’t relevant, it’s a waste of your customer’s time.

2. Consider feedback campaigns.

Sometimes, you need to ask questions in order to make the improvements your customers want. Keep feedback quizzes short and simple, five questions or less (if you can manage). It often helps if you incentivize feedback-giving. 

3. Optimize your emails for mobile devices.

In all likelihood, many of your customers will be reading your emails on their phones. Optimize your emails for mobile devices by using high-quality images that load quickly and designing a framework that looks good in narrow and wide set formats. 

4. Make your emails short.

That’s right, never make your customers work too hard. Emails become obnoxious when they look like essays, significantly lowering your reading and response rates. If you can, keep your emails to less than 200 words. Instead of wordy marketing, use GIFs, images, and videos to seal the deal. 

5. Include clear call-to-actions (CTAs).

And make them punchy. Irresistible. Your CTAs should ideally always have links attached so that customers can get started right away. 

3 Inspiring Automotive Email Marketing Examples

What does good email marketing look like? Here are three real automotive email marketing examples we love. 

Honda

In their email campaigns, Honda immediately and effectively appeals to personalization with “Personalized offers” on the first page and “Frances, start something special” on the second. 

By emphasizing its personalization through direct promotions and addressing customers by name, Honda distinguishes itself as a dealership that cares about having personal relationships with its customers. This is a powerful move, even more powerful because it’s consistent across campaigns–and customers respond in kind. 

Tesla

With this email campaign, Tesla pushes their referral program alongside a CTA to “design your model x/s,” appealing to the creativity of their customers and showing them exactly what they will receive as a reward if they refer. This strategy taps into the goal-oriented nature of their customers, activating an inner drive with a clever program that makes more money for them. 

Subaru

From this image, customers know exactly what they’re supposed to look at and what they’re excited about. Subaru also does a great job including a clear and simple CTA “LEARN MORE” with a button that customers can click. 

“The Wait is Over” creates a clear sense of exciting anticipation for Subaru-lovers, making them feel like they really have been waiting for this vehicle, even if they didn’t know it was coming out. 

Take Automotive Marketing to The Next Level

Automotive email marketing can help you engage your customers in a whole new way. Ready to level up? We’re here to help. 

Podium has helped thousands of automotive businesses get more customers and raise their bottom line. With Podium’s text and email marketing tools and the addition of powerful solutions such as Reviews, Webchat, and Payments, you can build long-lasting, fruitful relationships with your customers and offer them a consistently outstanding customer experience. Get started for free today.