e-mail communication with our customers

[TC]

The ironic part of this discussion is that dealers are not ready to do business over the Internet. I sell several products (no plugs) one is an e-mail appending solution that updates your database with opt-in e-mail addresses. Great idea but its not selling because that would force the dealership to have a plan and then execute against that plan. The problem is that dealers have wished the Internet would go away since it hit the industry a few years back. I have e-mailed over 50 dealers asking for information from several different departments only to get an automatic response that looks like every other dealers automatic response if I get a response at all. I even had a discussion with a Sales Manager that gets his e-mail on his home computer. If you dont finance the department and or have a plan it will fail.

Before you jump into one of the many e-CRM software or services ask yourself this question, do I have the resources and the commitment from upper management to do business over the Internet.

I feel the Internet, if used properly will help reduce marketing expenses and maybe, just maybe conquest a customer or two. If the standard or expectation for your business plan is in creating a huge profit center using the Internet, you have a good chance of your plan failing.

TC

[puredealer]

TC,

You are correct that no dealer will succeed on the Internet by accident, however there are many that are on their way to mastering their own territory, as well as dipping into competing territories by utilizing the tools available to them. Many dealers are resistant to new processes or technology, but as long as the new procedures are not too burdensome, or actually more efficient than many dealers will support that. In addition, face to face training is quite an underemphasized part of success on the web. How many of these dealers that you received autoresponders from actually brush up on their skills on even a monthly basis? Most likely very few.

To make it easier on dealers, it's important to automate things in order to make them more effective. Although it's not that fun to be on the receiving end of an autoresponder email, they are a big step up from a dealer trying to email each customer with a personal email. (We all know that will not happen)

Regarding mass emailing customers, we've seen some response rate %'s to messages in the teens. It all depends on the message and the freshness of the list of course. More dealers are looking at mass email as an effective medium, but once again it needs to be simple on the dealer for it to work at all. Check out some of the posts on "Site Usability" under the Travers board for more related to this topic.

-Michael



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www.puredealer.com

[Results]

MH Your questions was formatted perfectly for anyone with an email contact manager as a product to jump in there and offer you the perfect solution. Some of the responses were directly from the reps themselves. I dont represent any of them but I work with most of the ones that have been mentioned They all have their merits and will be able to take care of the issues.
The thing that makes this forum worthwhile is the valuable information you pick up from everybody. Here is my valued information.
Before you commit to a product or system try the concept out and be sure your store is ready for it. You can target email communication from Eudora or even Outlook if you set up your data collection correctly. You can handle your newsletters via these systems. You can archive your newsletters on your web site. A simple Front Page response form will handle newsletter sign ups. Work with your DMS support people and they can even share that information of data that you can transfer painlessly to your contact data.
The reason that I am showing you the cheapest most inexpensive way to do it is not because it is the most efficient but it is to show that you already have the basic tools. If you are maximizing them and leads and customers are falling through the cracks then you better invest in a more efficient method.
There is a lot of good advice with this string. I hope you sort it all out. Dont you wish all of these products had to be certified?


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Results
Mike Stinson
results@rintuit.com
www.rintuit.com

[HK]

It is good to hear that you are looking into a CRM tool that can be linked up through e-mailing your custoemrs. Why not give each of your customers a presonalized web page that is fully integrated within your website? I use CustomerCenter which is a cars.com product. The system is linked to our DMS and sends out an invitation to all of our customers automatically. The cool thing is that is all our dealerhsip's branding...no other advertising is on those pages. Check out www.dealers.cars.com.

[machado]

Im with Mike...

I have been doing this for a long time and Ive used a lot of theses tool too.

You have a lot of choices out there, but first you need to make sure you are moving in the right direction.

I am about to make a selection soon but here is what I have been doing with what I consider to be some great results.

You be the Judge

I am the E-commerce Director at a stand alone Jeep store in South Texas. The Dealer just built a beautiful new facility just off the IH-35 we are in a small town about half way between San Antonio and Austin of less than 20,000 people. Currently we dont have a whole lot of E-traffic I get about 35-45 Autobytel leads a month and about 9-13 leads off of a so-so website. We also have the folks from Dealer Specialties snapping photos and making window stickers for us they are good for about 3-5 used car leads a month. This store has 6 floor sales people and we are selling 130-140 N&U/month. I personally handel my guest sales process I great them do the demo and close them on figures and I do my own deliveries.

This is my third month at the store:
The first month I delivered 14 and took 1 order without taking a single UP or phone-pop.
The second month I delivered 19 and got deposits on 5 Order units.
We are half way through my third month and we have 16 burning gas Right Now and we have about 6 more orders!

You might ask yourself why our numbers are increasing so quickly if our traffic is not?

Here are the few secrets that are what I feel are a major reason of our continued growing success.

Please bear in mind I have none of the toys mentioned earlier in this string. I do have an okay Dell PC with 128ram and a cable Internet and for peripherals a $109.00 Digital camera from Wall-mart and a $49.00 Scanner Okay $19.00 after the mail-in rebate.

The only tool I am using for managing my mail is MS Outlook. The key to why things are working is that of the 166 people that have emailed me a request that have still not purchased a car from me or one of my competitors gets an email from me at least twice a week. With this tool I can keep a data base and file my entire "e-guest list to the appropriate distribution file(s)

And the people that did buy a car from me hear from me 3 to 4 times a month by email also.

Here is what I do:
(Here is my process if they do not respond)
*All of the tools like Autobytel and our website have an HTML auto responder.
*Then as soon as I receive the PR on my PC I mail out another template that is called DETAILS asking for a bit more information about there request and it also includes helpful links to industry sites.
*One hour after that I send out a letter from my F&I person that is a solicitation to allow us to do their financing; sort of like an F&I Turn.
*About 3 hours later I send out another template that explains all of the rebate programs and sub-vented financing programs.
*The next email they get from me is a sort of news letter that explains specials department goals, my schedule and attached is the PDF of our newspaper ad. Im sure to include instructions on how to down load an Adobe Acrobat Reader in the event that they do not have one yet.
*The I send out a letter called Would you consider??? and links to some of my new or used inventory.
*Lastly I email a few pics of the car that is closest to what they are looking for.

At that point if I have not heard from them they go into my regular Follow-up Data Base and they will continue to receive the ad weekly and any other tidbits of information that might prove to be pertinent to their initial request. After one week I put them in my Telephone Follow up data base too.

If new rebates are announced I pass it on to them and I will continue to email them until they ask me to stop Im always sure that I ask them to pass it on to their friends if they might know someone who is interested.
We sold 3 of those so far this month.

To date I have had only 11 people asked to be removed from the list. Today I sold 2 people that have been in the data base since the first week

The bottom line is it cost vary little to do this and the results can be hugeMy first Benchmark was going to be 20 deals in a month I guess Ill hit that tomorrow.

Now that the processes are in place and I feel that I am proving to this Dealer Group that this can be a very viable source of revenue its time to start buying a few toys. I think Ill start with Web Control. Next moth I might build us a new Web Site and perhaps even bring on another aggregator. Just think about it Im tracking to do 31 cars on fewer than 60 fresh leads a month just imagine what I could do with 100 leads???


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Greg Machado
E-Commerce Director &
Independant Consultant
gMACgroup.com
machado@gmacgroup.com
210.710.8456

[This message has been edited by machado (edited 10-20-2001).]