8 Ways Email Marketing Benefits Automotive Holiday Sales

As a dealership, you are looking for ways to reach the consumer and raise awareness of your promotion and inventory. It seems simple enough and there are literally dozens of ways to get traffic to your site. However, what is really going to get people on your lot and looking at your cars? If you’ve tried television, social media, and other advertising avenues and you are still struggling to separate yourself from the competition, it’s time to take a look at email marketing and here are 8 reasons why you should:

1. Brand introduction: One of the hardest things to do these days is introducing your brand to a consumer. The reason is that you have so little time to get your promotion in front of them and trying to focus on your brand may use up too much of that time. However, if you can send them an email, they will see who the content is from, even if they do not open the message or respond to it. This ensures that your brand is introduced to the consumer.
2. Targeting: There is no such thing as a random audience. Each campaign is sent to a highly-targeted audience selected by the automotive client. The audience can be selected based on age, gender, location down to the zip code they live in, the type of vehicle they drive, income and more. Imagine being able to target an audience based on men, between the ages of 25-45 who drive trucks and make over $50,000 a year? Can television offer that kind of targeting?
3. Budget-friendly: Speaking of television, email is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing as you are reaching an existing audience at pennies on the dollar of what other campaigns may cost. It is an option that fits any budget.
4. Enhances other campaigns: If you are doing something else like social media, SEO, PPC or other internet marketing campaigns, email will enhance those efforts as it will drive immediate traffic to your site and generate interest in your brand. You can even have the addresses uploaded to social media and make sure that the same consumers who received an email are also seeing your ads on their social media profiles.
5. Awareness of your promotion: One of the frustrating things about running an ad or commercial is that people have the opportunity to ignore it. With email, they have to view the person who sent it and the subject line. Even if they do not open it, you are still making an impression and getting your message out there.
6. Update of inventory: Sometimes it’s not a sale that you want to promote but rather an update of the cars and trucks you have in stock. This is something that every dealership needs to do more often. As new options become available you want to make sure that your desired consumer is aware of your newly updated inventory.
7. Faster engagement: Rather than waiting weeks or months to see if the campaign generated any interest, you will start to see traffic on the same day the campaign is launched. This is a big advantage for anyone who is trying to get fast traffic before a major holiday shopping date like Black Friday and hasn’t been preparing months or weeks in advance.
8. Better tracking: It’s nearly impossible to know who you are targeting with television and radio and it’s even harder to know if you are getting a return on that investment. Email offers in-depth tracking, so you know how many people received the message, how many opened it and even how many clicked on it.

Email marketing will help automotive businesses to improve their holiday advertising campaigns, especially at times when interest in buying and leasing new cars are at their peak. While your competitors are spending money running radio and television ads, you can reach a targeted audience, on any device and know whether they received the message and if they interacted with it. It’s time to take your automotive marketing to the next level and email is the way to go.