Did you know that roughly four billion people check their email daily?

That alone should tell you how powerful email marketing can be.

Email marketing is one of the most profitable digital strategies, as proven by HubSpot’s 2021 report: Brands achieve an average $42 return on every dollar invested, which means email marketing delivers a 4200% ROI.

What makes email marketing so effective? For starters, it is based on creating personal connections with shoppers at any stage of the path to purchase, as emails arrive directly in their inbox with special offers and announcements. The personable nature and direct deliverability of email are the perfect combination for lead nurturing.

Build Your Customer Base Through Lead Nurturing
What does it mean to nurture leads? It means investing in customer and prospect relationships and maintaining a connection beyond the buying stage. In order to build meaningful connections with shoppers, you should focus on providing awareness and education for your audience. Email is an excellent platform to deliver lead nurturing content because it appeals to shoppers on an individual basis. Email marketing uses analytics to target compatible demographics and deliver content that appeals to their needs and encourages them to engage with your dealership.

The most effective way to ensure your emails foster lead nurturing is to create content that proactively addresses customer needs and moves leads farther down the path to purchase. At this point you may be thinking you don’t have the time to create such particular emails on a regular basis. The good news is that by automating your email marketing, you can generate top-tier email content in advance and set it up to arrive in your leads’ inboxes at key moments, without you needing to take further action.

The Benefits of Automated Email Marketing
The foremost benefit of automating your email marketing is that it saves your dealership an immense amount of effort and time because you don’t need to manually reach out to leads and track the interactions. A lesser-known benefit is that automation bases the email content on the unique behaviors and interests of each lead. When someone visits your website, your website analytics capture significant actions such as page visits, inventory browsing and form fills to create a comprehensive view of that person’s interests. For example, a website visitor looks at a particular piece of inventory but doesn’t make a purchase, and they later receive an email displaying that unit (and similar units) with an invitation to revisit the listing. That person is now much more likely to make a conversion.

Finally, making a purchase is not the end of automated email marketing – following a purchase, customers could be eligible to receive email notifications on upsells, replacement parts, maintenance reminders and buyback offers. Post-purchase offers turn one-time buyers into fulltime customers by convincing them to return to your dealership for future needs.

Types of Automated Email Marketing
The right email will motivate leads to progress from the consideration stage to making a decision (ie, purchase). I’m proposing three main email types that have proven effective in keeping your leads moving down the path to purchase and excited to receive more content from you:

Inventory features: Create a second chance with website visitors by showing them the units that first caught their interest. Similarly, retain current customers and first-time buyers by featuring your new inventory arrivals and driving audiences to visit your website.

Offers & promotions: We all love the idea of saving money, and we’re all inclined to jump on the offer of a limited-time deal. If a shopper is already in need of a unit, part or service, they are more likely to choose your dealership if you are running a seasonal sale or offering maintenance services at a reduced price.

Newsletters: Consistency is key when it comes to nurturing relationships with your customers. Newsletters are an easy and lowkey way to keep your audience up to date and build excitement for your brand. Invite website visitors to sign up for your newsletter to receive premier access to exclusive offers, industry news, incoming inventory and educational blog posts.

Email marketing gives your dealership the ability to intersect the path to purchase at any stage. To relieve your team of the burden of manual marketing, we recommend automating your email campaigns. Automated email marketing ensures that no matter where a lead is on their personal buying journey, they can be reached with compelling, personalized email copy that connects them with your dealership. The bottom line is that this level of automation means minimal input from you and maximum results for your ROI.

Interested in launching a a targeted email campaign? Connect with ARI today to speak with our digital specialists!