The Risk You Take Without Marketing Automation

In the past few weeks we’ve talked a lot about why Marketing Automation is important and  how effective it can be for your business. Today we’re going to look at Marketing Automation from a different perspective – what happens when you don’t have it? What are the risks you take for your dealership’s bottom line without Marketing Automation in place?

The first step in the lead nurturing journey that Marketing Automation provides is the ability to identify website visitors (aka leads). Without this ability, there’s a good chance you could lose the opportunity for a sale before you’ve even had a chance to begin. Not only does Marketing Automation allow you to identify those leads, but once you know who they are you can continue to keep track of every action they take on your website.

Being able to see what actions an individual lead takes on your site is hugely beneficial. These leads are showing you what they are interested in, and therefore how to follow up with them in a way that matches their interests and fulfills their needs. Without Marketing Automation, your attempt at starting a conversation with an online lead is likely to be weak. While lead forms can be helpful to collect a lead’s name, contact information, and some basic information about what they are looking for, they can’t show you the full picture. Lead tracking gives you eyes to see exactly what a lead has clicked on or shown interest in. It allows you to collect all the information you need before putting together the perfect follow-up message for the lead.  

Email marketing is a highly effective strategy for nurturing leads and driving sales conversions, but not when it’s done the wrong way. Without Marketing Automation, marketing emails are often generic. Businesses take a one-size-fits-all approach because they simply don’t have the capability to get personal and specific for each email recipient. Because Marketing Automation tracks leads’ actions and behaviors, it’s possible to send leads only communications that are catered to their interests. For obvious reasons, people are much more likely to engage and respond to emails that are relevant to them – increasing your dealership’s chances of converting that lead to a sale. The fact that this entire process is fully automated takes the complication out of reaching out to customers on an individual basis. It’s streamlined, hands-free, and stress-free to enable proper follow-up.

For all these reasons and more, it’s clear to see that implementing Marketing Automation could easily be the difference between earning or losing a sale. When a prospect feels seen and understood, there’s a much better chance that they will become a customer. Take Marketing Automation out of the equation and you can only imagine all the opportunities for sales that could easily slip through the cracks.