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As we get started into the new year many dealerships will keep their focus solely on unit sales and profitability (like they did last year and the one before). That said, for many dealers, a new year represents the opportunity to streamline and modernize their communications with customers. By implementing the trends below dealerships will reduce their opt-out rates, improve sales, and reduce the overall volume of communications they are sending:
- Platform Consolidation: Are you communicating with your customers through a single platform (CRM)? Or are you communicating through a text tool, an OEM service portal, a third party email system, and via CRM? By having multiple platforms it's easy to oversaturate a consumer, send an irrelevant message, or to expose yourself legally by not standardizing the opt-out procedures. Consolidating all of your communications to within your CRM system will allow you to more easily follow #2.
- Communication Calendar: Have you ever laid out or sat down to consider how many communications a customer is receiving? Here's a list, but I bet you can think of more:
- Monthly Sales Specials (12)
- Monthly Service Specials (12)
- Emails from OEM Credit Services (12)
- Emails from OEM (12)
- Follow-Up Emails from Sales (4)
- Follow-Up Emails from Advisor (4)
- Doubled-Up Promotional Emails (6)That's 62 communications a year, just counting email! How many of those are really necessary?
- Greater Relevance: As you work to plan out your calendar and reduce unnecessary emails, placing a focus on relevance will be your greatest ally. Will you target a service special to all owners, or just those that have missed their normal interval? Will you focus a sales promotion to your whole database, or just to customers who have an equity position in their vehicle? By making your campaigns more targeted, you'll be able to reduce the overall number of customers, while increasing the relevance of the ones who you do contact.
- Helpfulness: Ask yourself: Would I want to receive this call/email/text? Does it add value to the customer's ownership experience? Chances are that the answer is no in a lot of cases. By making sure that helpful content is included amongst the action-driving information, you can improve how your communications overall are received by your customer.
By streamlining our communications, reducing overall volume, and focusing on relevancy, we can both improve the customer ownership experience as well as the success of our campaigns.
Something I missed? Drop a line in the comments below: