Do you use e-mail to connect with your customers and prospects? If so, you’re not alone. A September 24, 2007 article in eMarketer.com entitled, “E-mail Top Digital Marketing Tool,” quoted a study by Penton Media, stating: “more than seven in 10 U.S. marketers said that e-mail was one of their online tactics.” Just shy of 61 percent stated they use e-mail newsletters to communicate news and specials to their target audience.

E-mail marketing is a cost effective and fast way to promote awareness of your brand and generate leads, and the e-newsletter is a perfect vehicle. Why? First, with an e-newsletter packed with product and lifestyle articles, dealership news and special offers, you know that even if your recipients are not in the market for a new vehicle or service, they will still find plenty of interesting information and hot topics in your e-newsletter.

Secondly, your audience becomes conditioned to expecting this type of information from you, so they look forward to seeing your letter pop up in their inbox and read it month after month. And finally, your e-newsletter analytic reports are a goldmine of information about your audience, perfect for mining for follow-up targeted marketing campaigns. 

E-newsletter analytic reports
Your dealership’s e-newsletter program should come equipped with reports that break down delivery statistics for you. ‘Send’ reports detail how many e-mails you sent, how many were received and how many bounced back. ‘Response’ reports give you a monthly tally of unique click-throughs and opens, total hits, total clicks and total opened e-mails. Most importantly, ‘content popularity’ reports tell you which subscribers opened which articles and offers.

These reports are your entry point into perfectly targeted marketing. For example, let’s say you send a winter e-newsletter with an article detailing seasonal family activities in your area. These could include picturesque snowshoe trails, kid-friendly cultural events made for whiling away long winter days, and where to find that perfect cup of hot chocolate. Next to the article you place a photo of one of your vehicle models that is amenable to families and out-of-the-city excursions. When clicked, the photo links to a full description of the vehicle and a full-motion video. With content popularity reports, you know how many people clicked on that photo link and watched the video. Immediately you’ve got a list of potential customers who are primed for more information about this vehicle.

In another scenario, you can use your e-newsletter to create a demand for a particular service. For example, an e-newsletter sent in the winter can prime your recipients for a spring vehicle tune-up, with articles about seasonal activities like hiking and a list of essential services to ensure vehicles are primed for upcoming road conditions. With content popularity reports you will know who clicked on these articles, giving you a perfect opportunity for a follow-up promotion.

Attention-grabbing incentives
Once you have a batch of prospects or customers with an interest in a particular vehicle or service, it’s time to send a follow-up targeted incentive or promotion. Your e-newsletter program should allow you to easily and quickly create professional, compelling coupons to drive customer response. Some programs even provide templates for numerous different offers that you can modify or edit to fit the offer you want to extend to your customers. For example, create a ‘Save on Your Next New or Pre-Owned Vehicle’ coupon and insert an image of the vehicle for which your targeted group expressed interest and the sales promotion. For e-newsletter readers who clicked on the article about preparing a vehicle for winter, create a maintenance coupon offering a special on a ‘Winter Tune-Up.’ You can even add a link to every coupon that when clicked will send that customer’s contact information directly to your sales department for immediate follow-up.

Sending an e-newsletter should only be the first step in your e-mail marketing campaign. Use the comprehensive analytic reports generated from each e-newsletter to segment recipients by interest, and then take the time to send targeted follow-up vehicle and service offers.  When you take the time to match interest with offers, you will see a greater return on your investment in the form of increased leads and sales.

Brian Epro is the director of the Automotive Services Group at IMN (iMakeNews, Inc.), a leading e-communications service provider that delivers e-communications solutions to Fortune 500 companies, boosting business performance by using e-newsletters, HTML e-mail, micro-sites, and blogs, with robust tracking and analytics.