Automotive Retail BDC and Internet Departments - CRM Alone is Not Enough
We have found that by using the various tools at our disposal, we can make the process of acquiring customers much simpler than just relying on email marketing alone. But even with a great CRM in place, there is still a lot more work you need to do to put yourself in front of your target audience.
The most common misconception that businesses have is that because they have a CRM, everything is fine and dandy. They start to let their leads pile up in the CRM, so that every time they get bored, they can just call them up and spend hours trying to sell them on whatever product or service they would like to sell.
Based on the stats from various studies, there are about 67% of small businesses owners who feel that their email marketing campaigns are about 10% more effective than a direct mail campaign. This is why I don't particularly like calling it email marketing , because I want to get away from the whole idea of sending out blasts of newsletters and advertisements. There is a great way to use email marketing for your business, and that's what I'm here to talk about.
I'll start by saying that although we use ActiveCampaign , which is our preferred tool for email marketing, there are some other tools out there such as HubSpot Sales and Marketing Grader , which gives you an overall score of your digital marketing efforts, including CRM and email tools.
I've used Salesforce and Infusionsoft , both of which are great tools as well. But, they were clunky and always caused me issues, so I would never recommend them to anyone. If you currently have a CRM and email marketing tool that you're using, then I'd say don't switch just for my advice. The only reason why people switch is because it's not working for them, or they feel like they can do better with a different tool. Personally, I would go with a CRM with an email marketing tool built-in so that you don't have to worry about keeping track of all the information.
Not only did we use ActiveCampaign as our main auto dealer email marketing tool , but we also used it as our primary contact database through the use of Salesforce integration .
The best part about using ActiveCampaign as your primary email marketing tool is that it's free for up to 2,500 contacts. So, if you have a small sales team or a single rep or are just starting out, this is the way to go. You can always pay a monthly fee after that once your contacts start to grow. I will say that it does make it much easier for you to manage your sales team and campaigns when you're not spending hours trying to keep track of everything on an excel spreadsheet.
If you want some more information on how we implemented this, check out my post , " How We Set Up Our Email Marketing Automation ".
Now, the main point I want to make is that you shouldn't rely just on your CRM for your customers. You need more tools at your disposal. The best way to acquire new leads is through content marketing .
One of the things that you should always be doing is looking out for previous customers and prospects who have purchased products and services similar to yours. You have a customer who bought a Toyota? Well, ask him if he knows anyone who needs one. If they don't need one, then see if they know someone who does, even if they don't own the dealership. The more you reach out to these people, the more doors you'll open.
Now, how do you capture all these names? I don't recommend using auto dealer mailing lists (or any other service that has a large number of one-time buyers.) Instead, the best way is to use a lead generation agency (such as lead box ).
Once you get your leads from the agency, if they have no existing dealership then send them over to ActiveCampaign . The reason why we're sending them to ActiveCampaign is because it's free for up to 2,500 contacts. It would be too much work for us with just 1,000 or so leads.
It's a lot easier to keep track of everything when you're not opening up a separate software every time you want to check something. Once you get your leads from ActiveCampaign, then you can go back and manually add them to your CRM as well. But first, let's talk about how we ran our ActiveCampaign campaigns.
ActiveCampaign has some really nice functionality built in that allows us to automatically send out emails based on customers' purchase history. The best part is that it saves all the data into Salesforce , so we have complete records of what they've purchased, where they purchased it from, and their contact information if they need us again.
Now, what you need to know is that it's important to have a lot of variety in your emails. Just sending out the same messages over and over again won't get people who don't know you. So, try and send helpful information when people ask questions about their dealership or the products that they currently have.
For example, let's say we have a customer who has purchased a new BMW. If they call in after you've sent them an email asking about how long it will take for the car to be delivered, then you can respond with "I'm sorry that it's taking so long for your new BMW . You will want to make sure that there are no problems with the car before we ship it out. Please provide me with your VIN number and I'll check on the status."
Hopefully, this helps you figure out how you can use your CRM in conjunction with an email marketing tool to bring more leads into your dealership. Now, let's talk about how we run our Facebook and Twitter campaigns.
We use a service called Social Report that gives us valuable information such as what time people are most active on Facebook and Twitter, who is talking about our brand, and so on. I would recommend checking it out if you're interested in growing your business.
Once we have a list of prospects from our content marketing efforts and lead generation agency, then we start to reach out to them either through Facebook or Twitter .
Conclusion
The key to continuing to grow your business and generate new leads is by following every method that you think works and finding new avenues to utilize. The fact that you may have noticed, I've only discussed two different ways of bringing customers in. I actually have another post that talks about how we use all 7 different ways of lead generation, including content marketing, referral marketing and online advertising . So, if you want more information on how we're able to generate thousands of leads a month, then check it out.
Anyway, thanks for reading this article and let me know if you have any questions below in the comments. If you haven't yet read my article on how we run our email marketing automation , then check it out here .