As I deleted yet one more email from a dealer I signed up with to test them (4 years ago at their request) I wondered how many emails they had sent me. Gmail does a nice job of getting rid of old email, but a search for the last two years showed 68 emails. 

By looking at the dates, 2/3rd of these were timed emails sent by the crm, the rest look like a campaign to either buy my car, which apparently is still going up in value, or some sort of branding event by the dealer.

I understand dealers need to explore every marketing angle they can to drive traffic and feed their sales people who are the life blood of the industry, but is the marketing sustainable to your database or depleting? I would guess most dealers cannot answer these questions:

How many emails, mailers, and phone calls do each of your customers receive from you each year?

How many emails, mailers, and phone calls do your customers receive from vendors on your behalf each year?

How many emails, mailers, and phone calls do your customers receive from your Manufacturer on your behalf each year?

Data, who owns it, who manages it, and who accesses it has been the buzz for a few years now and still will be. Dealers have long been concerned about "their" data, and it is "their" data, not the DMS company or the vendor. But honestly, while we have all been told we need to protect this data at all costs for security and legal reasons, there may have been a handful of cases where this has even been a real issue. The real reasons everyone is telling you to be concerned about data is that it is a multi million, if not billion dollar business around distributing and selling it.

What dealers really should be concerned about isn't someone suing you because your data was accessed, you should be concerned about what you may be doing to your data and database with your marketing, or your vendors marketing. The first part to sustainable marketing is to answer the questions above, the second part is talk to your customers when they buy a car and ask them how often and what type of marketing they would like to see from you, and lastly, empower your reps to build relationships with your customers. Email, mailers, and phone calls for the sake of casting a wide net is not relationship building.

On average dealers have 3% of their database interested in buying a car every month, I would bet you are spending massive marketing dollars to way more then 3% of your database and I understand why, but shouldn't you be capturing this 3% first, before all else? Sales people are still important and needed, they are the key to the 3%, not your emails, mailers, and random phone calls. How are you utilizing your sales staff to identify, capture, and retain these 3% which you own already and shouldn't have to pay marketing dollars again for? I suppose that is the real question here.