[Note: My original intent on posting this blog post was to preserve this article. It was originally published in June of 2008 in an industry publication. They restructured their website so that the URL to this article no longer works so I wanted to have an easy place to find it. While reading it again, keeping in mind that this article is 2 years old, the only piece of advice contained within this article that should be changed is that providing a quote to the customer is imperative. I’ve edited the article in bold with updates.]
Every Internet sales department involves e-mails either to the customer or from the customer. Having a strategy in place for the e-mails you send to customers is necessary. Many of your customers will be receiving automated e-mails from your CRM but do you have a strategy in place to maximize the results from those e-mails? You cannot sell a car without establishing a dialogue with the customer first, whether through a phone contact or an e-mail response. Reality is that you’ll have many customers who choose not to respond to you and/or respond at their leisure. The lack of response and inability to get a hold of customers is frustrating to many Internet managers and many choose to stop following up with these leads. A well thought out e-mail strategy can increase your responses, thus creating more dialogue with customers, which will translate into more sales.
Many Internet CRMs come with “canned” auto-responders and e-mail templates that most Internet departments alter with bare minimum changes (typically the addition of the customer’s name and contact information). You should scrutinize these e-mails and tailor them to your dealership’s Internet sales strategies whether you are focusing on price or value. These are really the only two things you have to sell at this point. You can sell customers on the fact that they should buy from you because you have the lowest price. Or you can sell customers on why they should do business with your dealership (value) avoiding price as much as possible. If you can get customers into your dealership without quoting them a price, you will increase your grosses in your Internet department. There are conflicting mindsets towards the best sales strategy to use with an Internet customer – quoting versus not quoting – and the research shows that neither method works better than another. Of course, this is a generalized statement and depending on what your competition is doing, you maybe forced to use one strategy over the other.
[In today’s market, providing a quote to your customer is mandatory. If you’re not providing quotes, you are losing business. The information available to consumers today is such that they can get pretty much any information they want, if they look. By not “helping” them, you are only alienating them from your dealership. They will get the information. Do you want to be the dealership they remember as “helpful” or the one they remember as “typical”?]
Most Internet managers are concentrating on selling a car way too early in the process. You cannot sell a car to someone you have no dialogue with. What Internet managers need to realize is that your first goal in your process should be to sell the customer on an appointment, not a car. Without contact with the customer and/or getting the customer to come into your store, you’ll be hard pressed to sell them anything.
Internet customers tend to be more educated and less spontaneous. Some of them go on the Internet because they are intimidated by the typical sales process and/or have had a bad experience in the past. Some simply don’t have the time to shop several dealers looking for the best deal. Internet customers should be treated with a soft approach at first. Once contact is established, you can tailor future follow-up and/or your approach on an individual basis, but until you figure out why your customer went on the Internet in the first place, why do anything that would hurt your prospects of establishing contact?
An effective e-mail strategy will include some, if not all, of the following elements:
• Always be polite and courteous in your e-mail’s tone.
• Make sure your e-mails look professional and do not have grammar or structural errors.
• Always give more to the customer than they’ve asked for. If you’re a quoting store,give them quotes on more than just the vehicle they’ve asked for a quote on. Show them a model up and, perhaps, a similar pre-owned vehicle with low mileage.
• Ask how you can be of service in every e-mail. Always over-deliver. You need to stand out from your competition.
• Never be aggressive in your e-mails! You’ll turn off your customers, reinforce that you are no different than any other salesperson and you’ll only hurt your chances of getting a response from an uncontacted customer.
• Do not bombard your customers with e-mails. The more and more frequently you send e-mails, the more likely your e-mails will end up in trash folders unread and/or get tagged as spam.
• Use standard e-mail etiquette in all your emails (no all caps, etc.).
In my opinion, an effective e-mail campaign strategy should look like this:
1. You should have an auto-responder acknowledging your receipt of their information request that promises only what you can deliver. If you can respond within five minutes consistently, then tell the customer that. If you cannot, do not promise them that, as you’ll only accomplish instilling a first impression that you cannot deliver on your promises.
2. Your second e-mail to a customer should be personalized and sell your Internet department and why they should do business with you. Why should the customer come and see you and/or the Internet department versus the normal sales department. You should be selling an experience at this point and be telling the customers how doing business with the Internet department will make their buying experience hassle-free and convenient.
3. Your third e-mail should be selling the customer on why they should do business with your dealership. What benefit would the customer get from buying from your dealership rather then your competition?
4. The preceding three e-mails should be within the first 48 hours of the receipt of the lead. After that, you should have different e-mails being sent on days four and six, with follow-up e-mails twice on week two and once per week every week thereafter.
Keep in mind – your dealership can tailor the messages in each of these e-mails. Just like you have a consistent sales process for your salespeople (meet, greet, needs/wants, etc), you should have a consistent process within your Internet departments.
Keep in mind that I’m mainly talking about uncontacted leads although I feel that the elements I mentioned above should always be used. These e-mails are the only impression an uncontacted customer has of your dealership. You wouldn’t want a dirty car on your showroom floor so why have a “dirty” e-mail?
Perception is reality. What perception are you giving your customers?
