Do you ever sit at your desk on a slow sales day watching the cars drive down the road, wondering how to get more customers?
How can you tell interested buyers about your dealership, and most importantly, how do you do so without breaking the bank?
Why is Top of Funnel Marketing Important?
The marketing funnel describes the journey a buyer takes from the moment they become aware of your brand, right through to the moment of purchase.
More specifically, top-of-funnel marketing refers to activities and campaigns that introduce and expose customers to your brand. This is often to a completely new or “cold” audience. Marketing tactics and strategies will then advance them along a journey to become a customer.
Automotive consumer behavior research shows customers are in-market for a vehicle for anywhere between 60-100 days. Your job is to introduce yourself to customers before they begin the consideration phase. This will help you be top-of-mind when car shoppers are ready to purchase.
Over time, as you continue marketing to top-of-funnel leads, some will move down the funnel to the “consideration” and “conversion” stages.
In other words, your dealership can get quick wins with more expensive campaigns and tactics that target low and mid-funnel leads. But, to build long-term success, a healthy pipeline, and a lower cost per sale, you need top-of-funnel leads as well.
But, what’s the best way to do this?
There are dozens of options, from traditional advertising on television, radio, and billboards to direct mail. But, what is the most cost-effective way to fill the funnel? The answer: digital marketing.
And more specifically, when it comes to filling the top of the funnel, one of the best channels is email marketing.
Why Email Marketing is the Most Cost-Effective Way to Fill the Top of Your Funnel
You’ve got options when it comes to digital marketing tactics that raise awareness.
You could run paid Facebook ads or optimize your Google search, but to get the most bang for your buck and let customers know you exist, email marketing is a very effective, highly affordable way to fill your funnel.
Plus, a conquest email campaign has benefits that traditional media could never offer:
- Cast a wide net while eliminating current customers
- Target ideal leads
- Measure open rates and click-throughs
- Calculate overall ROI by tracking sales back to your campaign
One dealer AutoSweet partnered with has achieved a 1200% ROI on conquest email marketing!
Targeting with Conquest Email Campaigns
With Automotive Email Marketing from AutoSweet, we not only target ideal leads, but we can also tie that back to a dealer’s DMS, to further measure offline attribution.
How AutoSweet Improves Conquest Email Lists Using DMS Data
We start by creating a list of ideal car shoppers in a dealer’s local area.
Since conquest email is designed to fill the top-of-funnel with completely new leads, we use DMS data to remove anyone who is already being marketed to by the dealership.
This typically includes current customers who dealers are already targeting with loyalty campaigns. These removals are then replaced with new potential shoppers.
After this process, a dealer is left with a fresh list of car shoppers, and the dealer can create messaging that introduces the dealership and communicates your differentiators.
As an added bonus, we can use that DMS to target lookalike audiences to find new customers with similar attributes and interests as your past buyers.
Measure Offline Car Sales Associated With Your Email Marketing
Besides having qualified leads to pursue, once you fill the funnel, with AutoSweet’s email solution you’ll also be able to track back to see which sales correlated to your campaign, on a daily basis.
We not only measure email sends, opens, and clicks but with our certified DMS connection, we also measure authenticated offline sales in real-time.
And, you can check it out anytime with our transparent dashboard. Seeing your investment pay off in real-time is almost as fun as watching another satisfied customer drive off the lot.
Interested in talking to an AutoSweet consultant about filling your funnel with a conquest email campaign? Reach out to us today!
