Don’t Discount Email Marketing

For as long as email has been around, you’d think that it might be considered an “old-school” or outdated method to reach customers. Not the case! The popularity of email and the effectiveness of email marketing hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, with so many people having access to smartphones 24/7 and therefore having the ability to check their email inbox at any time, it has become an even more valuable strategy than ever before.

Keeping in mind that a huge number of your email recipients will open your emails on a mobile device, it’s important to be sure that your marketing emails are designed on a responsive platform. It would be highly unfortunate to lose the attention of an email recipient due to an inability to read your email on a smartphone or tablet. Additionally, consider what your email will look like on a mobile device as you design it. Best practices call for smaller images and video that load easily, as well as shorter content that won’t overwhelm your readers.

Email marketing efforts can be personalized, which is not only important to consumers but also an expectation in today’s digital age. Marketing Automation works to collect information about your website visitors, who become your email recipients as well as prospects for your dealership. This information helps you do more than use the recipient’s first name in the email greeting – it also allows you to send different segments of your audience relevant content that they are most likely to enjoy. For example, a customer who has bought several BMW street bikes from a powersports dealership might receive a customer loyalty discount on BMW merchandise. In the meantime, a prospect who has never visited the dealership before but has browsed ATVs on the website might receive an email to test drive new in-stock ATV units.

One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is that the process can be automated. Workflows, or email campaigns that move a prospect from initial interest through nurturing and ultimately to purchase, are set up based on your dealership’s goals and needs. Then, based on the actions that people take on your site and the information that Marketing Automation collects about them, automated emails take those website visitors through workflows that fit their interests and are most likely to lead them to purchase. This eliminates work for your sales team and helps set them up to close more sales – email marketing workflows through Marketing Automation can do much of the work.   

Finally, email marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing strategies like TV or print and it’s highly measurable. There is no guesswork with email marketing analytics – it’s easy to see how many people opened and interacted with your email. This gives you the opportunity to update and tweak your strategy as you go so that you don’t waste time & money – something that definitely cannot be said about traditional advertising methods.

There is no downplaying the influence that email marketing can have on customers and prospects for your business. Ninety-two percent of adults in the U.S. use email, and 61% of email users check and send emails every single day¹. Email presents an incredibly effective platform to reach your dealership’s target audience. Marketing Automation enables email marketing to perform at its peak, creating the best opportunity for your business to increase leads and sales.

¹Pew Research