Help we need traffic builder ideas

[drapp]

Our area of the country seems to be slower in picking up to economic resurgence that is constantly spoken about on the evening news. I hear/see where it is necessary to raise the interest rate to curb inflation due to such a robust economy.

Where we are the economy doesn't seem to be so great. As our local economy struggles so do we. Service traffic is down somewhat and we have been trying to come up with something we haven't tried before.

I guess what I am asking is what has worked for you?

What have you tried that didn't work?

Appreciate the feedback.

[Jeff Chartier]

Drapp, we recently did a case study for one of our clients and were surprised by the results. A Toyota dealership in Ohio hired us to do eNewsletters for them. The target audience was anybody for whom they had an email address. This consisted of both current customers as well as prospects who had submitted leads to them via the internet. The newsletters go out once per month.

Historically, we had really geared these pieces to the sales departments. Upcoming models, incentives, etc.. We also included service coupons as well as links to schedule an appointment for service on the dealership web site.

This dealership has about 5000 email addresses and, on average, about 1% click through and schedule a service appointment within the first few days after the newsletter goes out. This equates to about 50 appointments that carry a 90% appointment-kept rate. At 1.8 hours per RO, it provided an additional 75-80 hours of labor sales plus the associated parts.

There are a number of companies out there who can provide serviceable newsletters and, time permitting, you can do them yourself as well. Just commit yourself that once you start, you need to keep up with it because your customers come to expect it in their inbox. There are some pitfalls to avoid but some careful planning can get you some very cost-effective results.

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Respectfully,

Jeff

[rob000711]

The best way to build traffic is to use open recall lists phoning customers with concern they have a no cost recall that needs taken care of. The best practice is to have advisors each make 10 calls a day verified my management. This will bring in quality customers concerned about saftey. Start today and you will see almost instant results! Rob Gehring

[This message has been edited by rob000711 (edited 09-21-2005).]

[mbrandon]

The cost of gaining a new customer is about 5 times greater than the cost of selling more to an exsiting customer. Have you explored ways to increase the revenue for every customer the does come through drive? This could be a lot more cost effective than a shot gun marketing campaign.

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The cheese has moved. Time to go find new cheese.