Gone are the days of print media marketing with flyers and brochures mailed directly to the door of car owners. These outdated forms of media have been replaced by email and text marketing, both of which yield a substantial return on investment.
Email marketing boasts a 122 percent ROI, making it an obvious first choice for auto shops who want to drum up business. Text messaging boasts equal marketing prowess with a whopping 95 percent of all messages read and responded to within the first three minutes.
These statistics shed light on the idea that auto shop sales can be substantially improved with the implementation of a strong email and text marketing strategy. How can you levy these strategies for great success? Take a look at some of these ways to integrate text and email marketing into a robust strategy.
Set Up Automation
If you have to manage each individual text and email that goes out from your business, you will be spending hours stuck at your desk. Instead, marketing should be automated to add consistency to your approach. Marketing efforts are much stronger when there is a hands-off system that will take care of all your customer needs and help you collect more leads.
Not to mention, automation can help improve your bottom line by saving your team the time and energy that they used to spend on marketing. They can focus on other areas where their time has a greater impact on the business.
Add Personalization
In a similar vein to automation, you should also strive to personalize the messages that you send to your customers. Leveraging dynamic tokens to customize your messages with small touches like the name and vehicle of your customers can have a huge impact.
Think of it this way: are you more likely to bring your car into the shop if you hear there is a sale on tires or if that sale is somehow tied to you directly? Incorporating the customer’s name into the email or text is almost a given at this stage, but you can also include their make and model to convince them that this message is personalized just for them.
Set Up Email and Text Triggers
Email and text triggers are a more advanced version of personalization which is also tied into your automation strategy. With this in mind, you will set up an automated campaign based on the data or actions of the customer. These types of emails and texts are highly relevant and appealing to customers, ensuring that you get a better response rate.
What sort of email or text triggers could you set up for your customers?
One example is to set up an email to automatically send when it has been a set amount of time from the last service date. It could say something like “Your Toyota RAV4 is due for an oil change. Schedule an appointment today and get 10% off!”
Other trigger examples could include appointment reminders which reduce the number of no-shows on your schedule. You can also send out review requests after a customer receives service, which allows for stronger word of mouth marketing. Both of these will help boost your auto shop sales over time.
Segment Your List
Another strategy you can use to effectively manage your email and text marketing is to set up unique customer buckets based on interest and needs. In order to do this, you will need to get clear on who you serve and the customer personas that you see on a regular basis.
For example, some customers may only be interested in general maintenance while others are more interested in upgrades and accessories to enhance their vehicles. You might have separate buckets for commercial and consumer customers as well.
While you are working on your segmented lists, it is important to practice good list hygiene. Bounced emails can damage your deliverability. Instead of continuing to send messages to these people, it is better to segment them out and exclude them. It may mean that you have a smaller list, but you will reach customers who are more likely to schedule appointments.
Good list hygiene also provides you with more accurate data so that you can analyze the results of your marketing efforts.
Vary Your Content
Nobody has to tell you that your customers like promos and discounts, but think beyond this obvious metric when sending out content. A well-placed promo can yield sales, but so can other types of content such as automotive repair blogs, videos, podcasts, and other content that you create. This educates your audience and establishes your brand as a trusted authority in auto repair and maintenance.
This is also a great place to share updates about your business. If you have new services added to your offerings or are going to be participating in an upcoming community event, feel free to share it with your audience.
Test and Optimize
There is nothing more frustrating than wondering if your marketing efforts are making the splash that you want. For all of the tips above, you should keep a close eye on the data that comes back to you.
Compare the results of your varied efforts to determine what yields the best outcomes so that you know where to double down on your efforts. Over time, you’ll understand exactly what components make up the perfect email for your auto repair shop.
Boost Email and Text Performance with Professional Help
Automating your email and text message marketing can be simple with BayIQ on your side. We help you to automate scheduled maintenance and declined service reminders, send emails and texts, and advertise manufacturer rebates and promotions. BayIQ helps with everything from the automation of emails and texts to appointment reminders to review requests.
If you need a little help getting started with your text and email marketing, request a demo of our tools today to learn more about how to leverage these outlets!
