Email marketing for
car dealerships
A quick guide to planning
your email campaign
Contents Why email marketing?
01 Why email marketing? With lifestyles getting increasingly hectic, buyers are spending
more and more time hunting for cars online.
02 Setting a plan
Customers are always searching for the best deal and you want
03 Growing your list your dealership to be the first port-of-call when the time comes to
make that purchase.
04 Structure, design and content ideas
Email marketing is perfect for car dealerships because it is low
05 Deliverability tips cost, can be neatly integrated into your other sales tactics and can
provide tangible results; such as a list of email addresses of people
06 Example layout explained who have clicked on a specific model or offer.
08 Testing and improving According to the Direct Marketing Association, for every £1 you
spend you will receive £42 in return.
09 Evaluating success
Many dealers focus on the initial sale and not the lifetime value of a
10 The legals customer. Permission-based email marketing can work wonders in
helping you build customer relationships, retain buyers for the
11 The 10 email marketing commandments long-haul and cross sell your stock and services.
For more information about using email marketing for your car
dealership, please contact the little green plane team at
info@littlegreenplane.com or call 0845 862 0144.
01
Setting a plan Growing your list
You’ve decided to embark on a programme of email marketing but You may already have a list of email addresses of subscribers or
where do you start? may be starting from scratch. Either way, you’ll probably be striving
to grow your database in order to increase sales opportunities.
We would advise looking at your dealership’s targets to assess
what you are trying to achieve over the next 12 months. Data is king in email marketing. To get the best out of your
How can email marketing help along the way? campaigns, ensure you are using email addresses of people who
have opted-in to receive your information in the first place and
Try using some of the questions below to create an email keep your list up-to-date.
marketing strategy:
You can grow your list in several ways:
• How regularly are you planning to send your email campaigns?
• Who will be responsible for your e-shots? • Put an email sign-up form on the home page of your website
• Can you segment your audience? (and a tick box under any data capture form)
• What tone will you use? • Also create a specific sign-up form page and put a link to this
• What content and incentives will you offer in your emails on your email signature
• How will you grow your database? • Include a Forward to a Friend link on your email campaigns
• Include a section for customers to sign-up when completing
Over the next few pages, this guide will provide some ideas on all paperwork or forms in your office
of the points above to help you get your email marketing for your • When networking and using social media, ask “can I add you to
car dealership underway. our mailing list?”
• Circulate a sign-up form at any trade or customer event
02 03
Structure, design and content Deliverability tips
What are you going to put into your email marketing campaigns? So you’ve grown your data list and carefully crafted the content of
your email marketing campaign. Now all you’ve got to do is make
Why not try: sure it hits the inbox of your recipient and not the spam folder.
• A weekly or monthly e-newsletter of your latest stock You can do this by:
• Video tours of your vehicles
• Guides: buying tips, car values • Creating good content and using clean data
• Vouchers or offers for recipients’ birthdays and car • Using the pre-send spam tests provided by your email
purchase anniversaries marketing provider
• Warranty or MOT extension reminders • Making sure you include an unsubscribe mechanism
• Book a service, call back request or appointment confirmations • Reviewing your delivery stats on a regular basis
• Offer the right cars and options by using email surveys in the
first place Avoid:
The main tips in terms of content are to keep it simple, keep it • Repeatedly using phrases like “click here!” or “once in
short, use the most important news snippet first and make sure you a lifetime opportunity!”
have a strong call to action. • Exclamation marks!!!!!!
• USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE YELLING IN EMAIL
The idea of email marketing is to drive traffic to your website where • Colouring fonts bright red, or green
you can convert enquiries into sales. • Sloppy HTML coding
• Using one big image, with little or no text
• Using a noreply@ email address
04 05
1
2
3
Email layout explained
4
5
1 From: a real person
2 To: only one recipient
3 Subject: direct and below 49 characters
4 Prominent contact information
6
5 Branded
6 Strong promotional area with primary call to action
7 7 Neatly organised body text
8 Additional call to action
8
9 Secondary promotion area
10 Cross selling zone
11 Social media integration
9 12 Unsubscribe mechanism
10 11
12
07
Testing and improving Evaluating success
If you’ve been sending email marketing campaigns for your car You can evaluate success looking at the reports of each campaign
dealership for a while and are not getting the best open or click and by benchmarking your original objectives as you go. There are
through rates, they may have become stagnant. many Key Performance Indicators you can set and monitor. Here
are just a few examples:
Why not try testing and varying the following to see if it makes
a difference on your sales and enquiries: By campaign
• How you are targeting your demographics (by age, • Number of opens
sex, location) • Number of click-throughs
• The time you are sending your campaigns (hour, day, month, • Number of bounces
seasons, holidays) • Number of complaints/unsubscribes
• Personalisation: do your campaigns work better with or without? • Number of opens vs clicks
• The subject line; from questions, facts, to commands • Link popularity
• Tweak the length, layout and call to action location of • Geographical opens
your design • Forward to a Friend numbers
• The offer from money off, cashback to a percentage off a car
or service By objectives
• Try changing the name and email address of the sender (sex,
seniority, info@ versus real person) • Total number of hits to your dealership website over the
campaign period
• Number of vouchers or offers downloaded (and
subsequently used)
• Number of car enquiry forms completed (and
subsequently sold)
• Number of new subscribers obtained month-on-month
08 09
The 10 email marketing
The legals commandments
Email marketing is governed by the Privacy and Electronic That’s it! You should now be well on your way to creating effective
Communications Regulations of the Data Protection Act 1998. email marketing campaigns for your car dealership.
This states…
Please find below our 10 email marketing commandments to
• Any commercial motives must not be hidden ensure you are practising email marketing best practice at all
• You must provide a valid unsubscribe mechanism times, and receiving the best possible results:
• You must list your company details on your emails
• You must not use competitions to gather email lists unless 1. Thou shalt refine your subject line
participants have also said they are happy to receive updates
2. Thou shalt use a prominent call to action
• If you are collecting data you must explain how you will handle
it AND provide user access, ideally in a Privacy Policy 3. Thou shalt give value to your subscribers
(see blog) 4. Thou shalt use an opt-in approach
5. Thou shalt grow organic data
You must also be aware that by using the Forward to a Friend
feature, you may be liable if this is forwarded to someone who 6. Thou shalt segment your data
complains. 7. Thou shalt set objectives
8. Thou shalt test
Due to the Data Protection Act, no email provider will be able to
9. Thou shalt not spam
give you specific data on Forward to a Friend apart from the
number of people it has been circulated to. 10. Thou shalt be legal
10 11
0845 8620 144
info@littlegreenplane.com
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