91% of service customers defect once they are out of warranty, and those are a dealership’s most profitable customers. What can your dealership do to help retain these valuable customers?

Tire sales can easily distinguish your dealership from its competition and decrease defection, but only if they are promoted and sold differently than how most dealerships currently do it.

Tire sales should start right at the purchase of the vehicle. Have your salespeople inform the customer that your dealership is super competitive on tire prices. Then be sure to engage throughout the lifecycle of the customer with regular promotions via email blasts or text, whichever the customer prefers. By reinforcing that message throughout all of the dealership’s marketing, your customers will be more engaged, and you will be top-of-mind, with a better chance of capturing their business when they are in the market for tires.

The next promotion point is your website. Dealers on their game regularly add prominent tire service specials to their website. The problem is that, in most cases, those service specials only offer a “click to print” option and aren’t optimized for mobile devices.

These days, 60-70% of consumers use the internet via mobile devices, and this number is increasing. Why wouldn’t you provide your customers access to your specials on their cell phones? Get with your website provider and ensure that your tire specials are well displayed on your website and that these offers are mobile-friendly. If you require customers to present a coupon for a tire special, your website and those coupons must be accessible and redeemable in the way consumers access them – via their phones.

Customers can then save those coupons directly onto their mobile phones to present when they arrive as they can add it to their Apple Pay wallet or their Android device. This format is more relevant and perfectly targets and engages those low-funnel service customers.

I know several dealers who are beating out their local competition by doing this. In fact, when John Marazzi, Managing Partner at Sun Toyota, implemented mobile text coupons for service, he saw an incredible spike in overall tire sales of 60%. And William Finsilver at BMW of Bloomfield saw a 200+% increase in service leads.

Ultimately, the end goal is to get the service customer to continue to service their vehicle both during and outside of warranty. This retention in service also gives your dealership an increased opportunity to sell the customer their next vehicle once they get into an equity position.

It makes sense to adjust your sales and marketing strategies to today’s customers. This will increase the likelihood that those customers will stick around. If your customers continue to service at your dealership, they are that much more likely to buy their future vehicles from you, and refer their family and friends, too. This circular transactional pattern can only lead to increased profits, a busier sales and service department and, ultimately, happier customers.