Automated Email Marketing: What It Is & What It Does for You
Are you struggling to identify and engage the ready buyers among the passive browsers on your website? Even if a lead isn't ready to buy when they visit your website, an automated email tool can gauge their level of interest and nurture the lead until they're ready to make a purchase.
In a previous article, we recommended creating a process to follow up with “hot” leads while buyer interest is high, and this is where automated email marketing can benefit your dealership.
What is Automated Email Marketing?
Automated email marketing, or email automation, uses software to track your leads’ website actions and sends the right message to the right person at the right time. You don’t have to spend time figuring out who to email, what to send them or when is the best time to reach out because the technology takes care of it for you.
Why would your dealership need such a tool? Well, 71% of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal, but brands can’t read their minds. Without knowing exactly what each website visitor is looking at or what their interests are, it’s impossible to personalize their journey.
Automated email marketing track every website lead, recording their interests along the way, to create personalized marketing emails that only send when shoppers indicate a clear intent to buy. And all this occurs without constantly requiring input from your team!
To better understand automated email marketing, review the key characteristics that set it apart from traditional marketing emails.
Traditional vs. Automated Email Marketing
What sets automated email marketing apart from its manual counterpart? The overall objective is the same – to facilitate buyer interest – but the process and results show stark differences.
Traditional Email Marketing
In traditional email marketing, dealers will “batch n’ blast” their customer base, creating mass email campaigns with the intent to raise brand awareness or offer a discount. The appeal of traditional email marketing is that it’s quick, easy and can be tailored to any season or reason.
These emails may generate some interest from a few customers, but the overall conversion rate is pretty low. Here are some reasons why:
- Lack of personalization: Mass emails can’t deliver the level of personalization that shoppers look for from brands. They are likely to delete any email content that does not relate to their interests.
- Manual operation: If a customer responds to a marketing email, it’s up to the sales team to reach out and track the interaction. Busy teams often don’t have enough hours in the day to follow up on every email campaign.
- Low customer data: Traditional emails leave you with little to no knowledge of which messages resonate with your audience. It’s difficult to track the ROI of your marketing emails, leaving you wondering if your marketing emails are having any impact at all.
- Missing call to action: Oftentimes, these emails lack a clear call to action – there’s no next step to keep the shopper moving through the sales funnel.
- Inability to foster leads: Traditional emails are static, singular sends. If a lead isn’t ready to buy at that moment, there’s not much you can do to foster their interest.
Let’s see how automated email marketing compares….
Automated Email Marketing
Automated emails communicate relevant information to your audience based on their actions and interests. The technology starts tracking the customer’s interests and actions once they submit a lead form and generates a personalized message based on that customer’s interests. Examples include:
- “Come back and complete your purchase!”
- “Here are some similar units you might like.”
- “Thanks for your business! Enjoy a coupon for parts upgrades.”
The biggest characteristic of automated email marketing is that it facilitates lead nurturing. Even if a lead isn’t ready to buy yet, automated emails will continue to engage them until they’re ready to make a purchase. As shoppers’ behavior and interests evolve, so will their email messages – which means your dealership regularly connects with shoppers as they progress to a new stage of the buying journey.
Automated emails drive 180% higher conversion rates than batch emails
- VentureBeat
Automation keeps your dealership in touch with shoppers beyond the purchase of a new unit – long past the point that the customer relationship typically goes cold. Here’s an example of how automated emails can frame the customer journey:
- “Come back and finish your purchase or check out these other units.”
- “Thanks for buying! Enjoy 20% off at your next visit.”
- “Schedule your next tune-up.”
- “Need new parts or accessories? Here’s a discount!”
- “Ready to upgrade to a newer unit? We’ll buy it back!”
- “We haven’t heard from you in a while – let’s reconnect!”
- “Check out our newsletter for the hottest new inventory.”
Instead of manually planning out and sending these emails repeatedly, the software manages these email sends and leaves your team free to focus on the purchase-ready leads that emerge from these campaigns.
Now that you know the key characteristics of automated email marketing, let’s look at the benefits of using it.
Benefits of Email Automation
The whole purpose of sending automated emails is to create optimal timelines for customer engagement, improve the quality of your interactions and create a smooth journey that converts leads into long-time buyers.
Here’s how email automation can help you do all of that:
Maximize Your Digital Marketing Spend
Automated emails re-engage visitors who landed on your site after clicking on a paid ad, organic search listing or social media link. In other words, your dealership has already paid for those leads through your SEO, SEM or social media marketing. Automated email marketing maximizes the results of your digital marketing spend by re-engaging your leads right after their website visit and keeping their interest high throughout their buying journey.
Whether a lead is visiting your website for the first time or the twentieth, once they submit their contact information, they're entered into an automated nurture campaign. This makes automated email marketing a full-funnel strategy that reaches shoppers at any stage of their journey - regardless of how they arrived on your website - and pulls them deeper into the funnel.
Influence the Customer Journey
Pre-written automated emails let you drive the customer journey instead of reacting to it. Leads move quickly, which means dealerships that proactively target shopper interests are the ones who get to facilitate the customer journey. Without automation, you can’t see which webpages each lead looked at before they submitted a lead form. Instead of staying in the dark about their interests, email automation identifies what prospects are looking for. Use this information to set them on their own personal path through the buying journey.
Rather than waiting for shoppers to reach out to you each time they want something, you can show them what their next move should be – keeping them inside your sales funnel. Nurture customers from their first lead form submission through the rest of time (or until they move away), instead of contacting them sporadically throughout their journey.
After a customer purchases a unit, they may not expect to hear from your dealership again. Automated email marketing reconnects you with a customer as often as you want, whether that’s a few days, six months, one year or eighteen months down the road.
Preserve Your Team’s Time & Energy
Automated emails are timely, relevant and intuitive, so even small, busy teams can set up a highly successful email campaign. Because these emails are automated, the number of sends isn’t restricted to the size of your team. Automated emails are triggered by customers’ actions, so you don’t need to manually create each marketing message.
Give your team back hours of their schedule by sparing them the task of repetitive email sends. This can be a real game-changer if you’re short on staff or in the midst of a busy sales season and are struggling to follow up with every potential customer.
Bottom line: Automation means you spend less time sending repetitive emails and more time closing deals.
Drive More Revenue
Email marketing already has a high ROI, with an average return of $42 dollars for every $1 spent, and automated emails only improves that number. Automated emails are more cost-effective than traditional emails because your email spend focuses on leads who are likely to buy and fosters them into a loyal customer. As a result, automated emails create 320% more revenue than non-automated emails.
Improve Your Lead Retention
Automated emails improve both your email lists and your customer base:
- Email list retention: Customers can become fatigued by impersonal or irrelevant emails cluttering up their inboxes, possibly resulting in them unsubscribing from your content. Sending emails that are personalized and action-based will make customers want to read your content.
- Buyer retention: Each email encourages the customer to take a specific action, keeping them in your sales funnel. You can win back leads who have gone stale and tip them into the appropriate email list to re-engage their interest.
Build Brand Equity
The biggest reason customers leave a business isn't because they had a negative experience; it's because they feel apathetic about the brand. A customer base that isn't regularly re-engaged can go stale over time and lose interest. To keep your shoppers primed for a future purchase, you need to keep your audience list "warm" by reconnecting with them regularly through timely, information-rich messaging.
Automated emails build brand equity through ongoing engagement. You’re reaching the right customer at the right time and delivering the right message, directly to their mobile email inbox. Shoppers won’t forget you because your next email will always reach them right when they need it.
When consumers receive helpful, relevant messaging that aligns with their recent actions, they will naturally develop a greater interest in your brand. And when the time comes to make their purchase decision, your perfectly timed emails will entice them to choose your business over a competitor.
Cultivate Lasting Relationships
As we mentioned earlier, automated emails connect you with buyers well beyond the first purchase and build trust between your audience and brand. Each email reflects a shopper’s individual interests back to them and proves they’re more than a sales number in your system. This is especially significant considering that 66% of customers feel brands treat them as a number instead of as a person. Personalized messaging shows customers that you “see” them – even if you have never interacted with them in person.
So, how can you apply these email automation benefits to growing your business?
How to Grow Your Business with Email Automation
First, make sure your email automation software is a good fit for your business. Choose a tool that delivers the following:
- Personalized messaging for your shoppers
- Real-time email campaign analytics for you
- Easy to install and use (don’t worry if you don’t have a marketing expert)
- Allows you to set the key qualifiers for who will receive an email and when
Capitalize on Buyer Interest
Get in front of leads while their interest is high. Instantly connect with a shopper who submits a lead form on a listing and create a connection before they move on to the next dealership.
Increase Brand Affinity
When customers feel like you “get” them (their interests, needs and values), they’ll build an emotional connection with your brand. When customers feel connected, they’ll choose you over other dealerships, even if those dealers may have a closer location or lower pricing.
Diversify Your Messages
Marketing emails don't always need to be sales-based to capture your customers' attention and earn more of their business. Consider what you know about the majority of your audience: Are they community-oriented and interested in attending public events? Are most of them do-it-yourself-ers when it comes to unit maintenance, or do they own units that require annual winterization?
Show your audience that you're tuned into their interests by sending monthly newsletter-style emails announcing your upcoming Independence Day BBQ n' Bikes event, or link to an educational blog on your website listing three steps to winterize a boat. These informative emails create top-of-mind awareness for your customers and keep them interested in your brand, so that when they're ready to make another purchase, they think of you first.
Make Shoppers Feel Valued
Following a purchase, buyers receive a personalized post-sale email on behalf of the sales manager, thanking them for their business. Automated emails can then follow up at timely intervals to offer service reminders and discounts on parts, accessories and repairs. A year or two after purchase, automatically offer to buy back the unit (it’s been a year, but you haven’t forgotten them!).
Email automation also makes it easy to surprise and delight your audience at any time with a special message. Send birthday wishes, anniversary-of-purchase check-ins and “just because” discounts to remind customers you’re still thinking of them.
Gather Customer Feedback
Following a purchase, buyers can receive an email inviting them to rate their experience at the dealership. Sending review requests while the buying experience is still fresh will help you gain reliable feedback on how shoppers feel about your brand. It also shows your customers that you value their input and are ready to take action.
Analyze Your Email Data
Review the analytics from your automated email campaigns to know which email(s) drove the most conversions and use that insight to optimize your digital marketing as a whole. Are your buy-back offers getting a lot of traction? Consider creating a website banner or launching a paid ad campaign with the same message.
If you're a Dealer Spike customer using our Automated Email Marketing (AEM) tool, you will receive monthly reports of your email campaign performance to view the number of re-engaged shoppers being driven back to your website through each type of marketing email. Click here to learn more about your monthly AEM reports.
Leverage Post-Sale Lead Nurturing
Even after a customer makes a purchase, the probability of future business with your dealership is not definite. Customers need to be tipped into a customer loyalty loop that tracks their interactions with your dealership so that you can identify when they’re primed for their next purchase.
This could be sending a post-sale offer for parts and accessories, and then a few months later, a reminder to bring their unit back for a tune-up. A year or so later, you can invite them to sell back their unit or trade it in for the latest model. A successful customer loop always provides your customers with a clear next step – a natural encouragement to keep them moving forward with your dealership.
Claim Your Free Automated Email Marketing Guide
We’re inviting you to explore the power of hands-free automated email marketing with our eBook “What Can Automated Email Marketing Do for Your Dealership. Within these pages, you'll find the following insights:
- How automated email marketing streamlines your lead engagement
- Automating your retargeting strategies to convert qualified leads
- Best practices to improve your business operations through automation
As you’ve now seen, automated email marketing is a rich and comprehensive resource. We can’t adequately sum it up in a single blog, but we can provide you with additional resources to continue your learning. Explore our digital marketing guide and see how automated email marketing operates alongside other marketing tools.
If you have specific questions about automated email marketing, feel free to contact Dealer Spike today and connect with our industry experts.