- Sean Cassy
Selling More Cars Using Conquest Email Marketing Optin Lists
If you’re looking to sell cars this week but don’t want to “hit” your existing customers, you have to try conquest email marketing opt-in lists.
Now don’t freak out if I mentioned conquest and email in the same sentence because the tactic I’m about to share with you is 100% legal and CASL compliant in Canada, CAN-SPAM compliant in the US and GDPR compliant in Europe.
Here’s why:
Conquest email marketing lists are made of people who have opted-in the list and have agreed to receive marketing and promotional offers from advertising partners of the list owner.
In this case, that would be you!
The list owner never shares with you their subscriber's information, but simply sends on your behalf your email marketing message to a segment of his list.
I say segment because these lists are made of millions of contacts, so it’s important when planning your campaign to target prospects by geography and by interest.
I personally like to choose in-market vehicle shoppers and people in a 90-day window for lease or finance renewal and choose prospects living in a radius that correlates to the natural drive time prospects are ready to take to visit your dealership.
That’s the targeting that’s been producing the best results for our dealers.
Now be careful, not all conquest email marketing list providers are made equal.
Some are better than others.
I like to work with partners that will guarantee me exclusivity for the data I’ll be using.
Think about it: you don’t want to be working with somebody that will be emailing your competitor’s offer to the same prospects the week after you sent yours.
I also have a preference for reported data versus predictive data.
Reported data: contacts have reported they are in-market for a new vehicle and they are looking to buy brand X.
Predictive data: contacts have been purchasing brand X for their last two vehicles purchases, so we predict that they might be looking again for a vehicle from brand X.
I think you can see why I prefer reported data.
Now when you decide to move ahead with a conquest email marketing campaign, keep in mind that all the rules of traditional email marketing will apply:
You need a strong subject line that will create curiosity and will make people want to open the email. Remember: if they don’t open the email, they will never see your offer.
You need to have a compelling email body that will answer the questions every prospect has on their mind: What’s in it for me?
Make sure you include links pointing to a video or a landing page where the prospects can learn more about your offer. This will also allow you to measure click-through rates for your message.
Use an image in the body of your email to evoke even more curiosity and increase your click-throughs. If you have a video on the landing page, use a video thumbnail as the image. This will give the impression to prospects that they can watch the video from the body of the email and will increase your chance of getting people to click-through to your Website.
Use a lead capture form on the landing page to capture the information of people intrigued by your offer. Remember: once prospects opt-in through your form, you can market to these people without going through the conquest list partner, aka for FREE!
Frequency and consistency is key to any marketing tactic and conquest email marketing is no different. I like to send two broadcasts in a month. I usually like to send the first one on Thursday to give an uptick to the weekend and follow-up the next Tuesday to catch everybody interested but didn’t have time to act. I also like to do these campaigns for a minimum of three months to catch prospects at different stages of their shopping cycle.
Once you’re done with a 90-day campaign cycle, ask the conquest email marketing partner to do a match-back using the data from your sold vehicles and the segments that you have emailed offers to.
This will allow you to track all the deals that came from your efforts.
Finally, one last but very important thing to remember when launching your conquest email marketing campaign is to make sure everybody at the dealership is aware of the offers and the messaging.
Because this is a conquest effort, and most prospects you will be targeting don’t already know you, love you, and trust you; many will make their first point of contact with your dealership as phone ups.
If your staff is unaware of the offers and fumbles on the phone when intrigued prospects call for more information, you’re wasting your money.
But if everybody at the store is informed and ready, you will fall in love with this tactic and the results it generates.
If you would like help putting together your next conquest email marketing campaign, don’t hesitate to reach out to my team at Turbo Marketing Solutions.
We’ll help you choose the right targeting, the ideal segment, and help you create the perfect email to communicate your offer so you can sell more vehicles.
Let’s sell some cars!
Sean Cassy is the Digital Marketing Specialist and Co-Owner of Turbo Marketing Solutions. You can contact him by email here or reach him by phone every weekday at Turbo Marketing’s head office