By: Neil Bibbins, Product Manager, Dominion Digital Email
Over 90% of adults send and receive emails daily — many before breakfast — and over 80% of adult consumers prefer to communicate with the companies they trust via email. Across the automotive sales funnel, there are massive opportunities for email marketing.
Email is a cornerstone of the today’s auto dealership. It is used by OEMs and the BDC team, within the CRM, or as standalone automotive email marketing. Nearly every dealership relies on more than one tool or platform when sending emails to their customers, which raises an important question: How do you know your email marketing is working? Here are a few points to think about:
Traditional Email Marketing Metrics
Open Rate: Since about 1995, the core metric has been the Open Rate: Opens are triggered when a tiny, invisible image loads from the top of an email. But open rates have been all over the map due to ISP decisions, tracking concerns, automatic opens, etc. Although we all discuss Open Rates, it’s a hard metric to depend on.
Click Rate: A more accurate metric is the number of clicks. Clicks are measured when recipients actually engage with an offer. Well designed email campaigns identify an opportunity in the Subject Line and display “the deal” without images, so not all customers click before calling or visiting the dealership’s website, showroom, or service drive. Thus, an email might have triggered the lead, but if the customer didn’t click the email you might not know it.
Click-to-Open Rate: This metric is good to watch because it reflects the “whole package.” The recipient received the email, opened it, viewed images, and clicked one of the calls to action. But this metric requires that opens and clicks “work,” which isn’t always the case.
Measuring Email Marketing ROI:
Beyond the email stats, measuring revenue is what really matters when it comes to email marketing. The goal of an email campaign is to drive business, so you should know when your email marketing campaigns generate dollars in the service bay or the showroom.
Not all email vendors use the same approach to measure ROI. Inside Dominion’s new Dynamic Reports Portal, our Campaign Detail Reports display service revenue or vehicle sales matched to campaign recipients and their VIN’s. We also show customer engagement stats and include the ability to export customer engagement figures.
Using one Campaign Detail Report as an example, we show “Total Revenue Generated” to reflect when a VIN or customer makes an appointment and appears in the service bay after being sent an email campaign. Appointments made before the campaign is sent or after the end of the campaign don’t count.
Our main goal is to provide the tools that allow our clients to view and measure their success in terms of stats and ROI. Are you in need of a better way to measure success with email? Contact Dominion Dealer Solutions today! Call 877.421.1040.
