We always tell dealerships, the most important question you can ask customers is… “What is your email address?”
This is because email is one of the most effective ways to reach consumers and is also integral to examining marketing success.
Why? Because, when you sell a vehicle and collect emails at the point of sale, you can match back whether that email was targeted in other digital advertising campaigns. For example, ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Google.
If you’re not currently doing a great job at asking customers for their email addresses, don’t worry! This article will help you discover how to get more emails for your dealership today.
Why Should Your Dealership Get Better at Collecting Emails?
In the world of digital marketing, email is gold. But, why exactly?
1) Customer Emails are the Backbone of Digital Marketing
Your email list is the key to strengthening your relationship with your customers and building loyalty over time.
Email marketing is also one of the best and most cost-effective ways to convert potential customers into sales. If you’re not using email marketing to sell more cars already, consider this dealership that achieved an ROI of 1200% from their email marketing efforts!
2) Email Can Verify Offline Sales
Secondly, when your CRM integrates with your dealer management system (DMS) you can verify offline sales from your online advertising.
This is done by matching back the email addresses you collect from new customers with your ad audience(s).
3) Amplify Your Exposure on Facebook or Google
Did you know you can easily retarget your email list with ads on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram, or on Google’s Display Network which is comprised of 3 million of the web’s most popular websites?
You can also find new customers by creating a “lookalike audience” of your past buyers, targeting demographics like age, gender, language, interests, location, and more.
Three Easy Steps To Collect More Customer Emails
If your customer email list isn’t being added to every day, you’re missing lots of opportunities to grow sales and build loyalty.
Now that you know how important email is, keep reading for three easy steps to collect more emails from customers.
1) Examine Your Current Email List
If you notice an increase in the number of new customers visiting your dealership, but your email numbers are stagnant, it’s time to make a change.
Not only is it important to collect emails, it’s also important to collect them timely and ask for them whenever possible, not just after a sale.
Now think about your team’s behavior…
- Are sales associates asking for a customer’s email when making a sale?
- Does sales ask for an email address when a customer comes in to browse?
- Does your service department require email on their intake forms?
- Check your customer paperwork – does every form you use have an email line?
- Does your website include an email collection form for requested vehicle information?
If you know that email collection is not built into your dealership’s systems, process, and behaviors, and if you believe you could be doing a better job, read on.
2) Define All Touchpoints Where You Can Ask for Emails
The next step is to consider all the touchpoints and paths you can use to collect customer emails. This could include:
- Your website
- Your service department
- Your sales team
- Your F&I team
- And potentially other paths
The sooner in the sales process you collect emails, the sooner you’ll be able to directly market to shoppers via email and determine which of your digital advertising efforts are most effective.
Ask Your Team
Poll your team about where they believe there are opportunities to improve email collection. Chances are, others will identify moments you’re not thinking about.
Build-In Prompts
Is there a prompt for your employees at each step, to ensure they’re asking customers for their email? Or are you leaving it up to employees to remember to ask? Build it into your processes if you want to be sure it’s done.
Incentivize Your Team
First, make sure your team buys into the reason for email collection. It’s important that they understand the importance before they’ll change their behavior.
Then, consider incentivizing your team on this metric. Hold a contest to reward the employee who collects the most emails in a month and reward them. Recognize and reward the behavior you want to see more of.
3) Routinely Measure Email Collection Efforts
Finally, one of the most simple steps you can take might be the most effective. Start measuring and reporting on your email collection efforts.
Start by measuring more frequently (i.e. daily or weekly depending on your dealership size). This will ensure email collecting remains a top-of-mind goal for your entire dealership and eventually becomes a habit.
We recommend measuring the following:
- Number of emails you get through each email collection touchpoint
- Overall email collection growth over time
- Most effective email collection source(s)
As collecting emails more often gets ingrained into your dealership’s processes, you can look at growth less frequently (monthly or quarterly).
Once you take stock of where you are, set up a strong process, and review it regularly, you’ll see your list begin to grow. Your sales will surely follow.
Need Help Building Your Email List? AutoSweet Can Help…
Want AutoSweet to review your email list and determine some ways to improve it? Contact us for a free five-minute strategy session to see how we can get you more traffic to your website and generate more leads and sales.
