Automated marketing is a huge industry (and growing) and it’s also a hot topic for businesses. Is it really necessary? Will it truly benefit my business? The only way to know for sure if marketing automation is the right choice for your dealership is to try it out, but before you invest the time and money there are some questions that can help you make that decision.

Do you send out personalized campaigns?

Automated Marketing messages are much more effective when they cater to each customer’s personal needs rather than vaguely appeal to a wide range of customers. If you do offer personalized campaigns to your customers based on information like vehicle history, location, date of purchase, seasonal promotions and more you know that these campaigns can bring in a lot of business. However, it can also be extremely time-consuming to organize the information and contact each customer.

If you do this type of targeted marketing or you want to do it in order to bring in more business, an automated marketing solution can save you hours each day and also enable you to connect with more customers than is possible manually. The automated solution can pull information from your DMS in order to provide a highly personalized message campaign for each one of your customers.

If you want to send out specific messages to groups of customers (for example, a different campaign for each different vehicle model), this is a quick and simple process as well with marketing automation.

Do you send out maintenance reminders?

This could include sending out notices to each customer based on their vehicle history such as when it’s time to change the oil, or it could be simply to remind customers of their appointment time once it’s scheduled, or both. Sending reminders to customers can consume a big part of your day.

With automated marketing, the automated solution tracks each customer’s vehicle: date of purchase, date of last appointment, any issues with the vehicle and so on. Automated messages go out to each customer letting them know that three months have passed since their last oil change, or their maintenance appointment should be booked soon, or they need to get their tires rotated.

Is a lot of your day taken up with contacting customers by phone, text message or email?

This is the one that will probably speak most immediately to you. Yes, it’s great that automated marketing can help bring in more business but will it reduce my daily workload? Automated marketing can take care of all the little tasks that eat away at your time and reduce productivity.

Making a personal connection with a customer over the phone or in an email is a great way to show customers that you care, but you don’t have to manually contact them for every little thing. There is no need to go through your database to find out who needs an oil change and call each customer. Automated marketing frees up your time and staff resources while also efficiently reaching out to more customers than would be possible manually.

Do you have an accurate way to survey your customers?

Gaining honest feedback from a wide range of customers is essential for improving your services. Do you regularly survey your customers? If so, collecting, organizing and analyzing the data can be complicated.

An automated survey tool sends out surveys based on triggers such as when a customer visits the dealership. It organizes all the data into easy to understand charts and graphs and keeps track of it for future reference.

Do your customers keep coming back to you for maintenance?

Often, customers will make their initial purchase at a dealership but take their car elsewhere for maintenance because it’s cheaper. This takes away a source of recurring revenue from the dealership. Studies have shown that customers will pay more for services if the services are better or more convenient. How can you capitalize on that?

The excellent service is your speciality, but automated marketing can help with the convenience. Also, how many shops do you know that keep in touch with their customers each month with messages that are based on their personal automotive needs? Now that’s customer service!

Automated marketing helps build customer loyalty by keeping your dealership in the forefront of customers’ minds and also making their days simpler by providing relevant messages, reminders and promotions. Automated messages help keep your customers on track by looking out for their vehicles’ needs right on time.

So, do you need automated marketing?

If you have a small dealership and you have enough staff to handle all your communication needs then you might not want to invest in automated marketing. But if you’re finding it difficult to connect with all your customers, if organizing data is a challenge, if your days are busy because you’re always trying to contact customers, you might want to look into automating certain processes.

And personalized campaigns are proven to bring in more business. Automated marketing makes it simple to create personalized campaigns for each unique customer. Imagine the possibilities!