E-mail: Marketing of the Future
By Grant Dunning
What is the definition of marketing? I have heard many different answers to this question. A CEO of a large marketing consulting firm out of Georgia gave the best answer I've heard yet. He stated that marketing could be described simply as "creating more selling situations." If you are not creating more selling situations, then you are not being effective at marketing. Simple but true.
Using the above definition, marketing is setting up your dealership with more opportunities to sell. Obviously, advertising is a marketing tool that is a mainstay in the automotive industry. Using a combination of radio, television, outdoor and print advertising, auto manufacturers, dealer associations and dealers continually strive to create more selling situations. In addition to these traditional media, car dealers also use direct mail and special events to create more selling situations.
Creating these selling situations is not cheap. One of the challenges car dealers always have faced is how to deploy their advertising dollar to generate the largest return on investment. Complicating the decision is the growth of the Internet and the opportunity it presents to reach your customer in new ways. The good news is that the Internet offers alternative methods of marketing for a fraction of the cost of traditional approaches. We are very fortunate to be living in a period of history where technology will advance our society at light speed.
The Power of E-mail
A large but shrinking number of businesses underestimate the impact of e-mail. Imagine, trying to contact thousands of people with one message in a matter of seconds. Several years ago, the only way this was possible was to send a "blast" fax. While most businesses have fax machines, this method of communicating is not effective at the consumer level. E-mail, however, opens up the lines of communication with consumers throughout the world. The list of opportunities is endless.
Imagine being able to contact all of your past and current customers with a customer appreciation message and special offer via e-mail. Imagine being able to build your service department traffic with a special e-mail campaign targeting your best service department prospects. How about targeting prospects who are interested in buying a new vehicle?
Today, e-mail is not being leveraged to its full potential. At best, it is being used only to respond to customer inquiries. Unfortunately, even that is being implemented marginally. As stated by John Holt, CEO of The Cobalt Group, a recent research study discovered that "19% of dealers never responded to shoppers' inquiries at all."
The biggest attraction of e-mail marketing is the cost. Compared with the traditional channels of marketing, using the Internet and e-mail to communicate your message with your prospects and customers is extremely cost effective.
Start Building a Database of E-mail Addresses Now
The first step to creating a marketing program via the Internet is to start collecting the e-mail addresses of your customers and prospects. They are your best potential source of future revenue. The number of consumers who have e-mail addresses will pleasantly surprise you. E-mail is not limited to the stereotypical young, computer savvy individual. For example, my 90-year-old great aunt sends an e-mail message to my mother every week from her retirement home in Arizona.
You need to create various methods of collecting e-mail addresses. Once you start to create a database of e-mail addresses you can develop different campaigns to communicate with both your prospects and your customers. Look into the future. Five years from now you will have the e-mail addresses of virtually every person who has ever visited your dealership. Imagine the power of that database. The marketing potential is endless and the cost is next to nothing!.You don't need to spend thousands of dollars for mailing lists. It's all right there in your own database! You couldn't buy a more valuable database if you tried. Don't wait-start collecting those e-mail addresses now!!
Grant Dunning is the president and CEO of the OCT Group-a relationship marketing company working with over 1,000 dealerships in all 50 states and Canada since 1986. For the past decade, Dunning has been designing sales follow-up programs that help dealerships improve their customer retention and loyalty. Dunning is an active member of TEC (The Executive Committee), an international organization of CEOs, and graduated from the University of Southern California. gdunning@dealeronline.com
