One of the hardest things to accomplish in automotive marketing is to have the consumer feel personally connected to the dealership through its marketing efforts. Traditionally, dealerships have used products such as direct mail with targeted lists to make it slightly more personal. Achieving saturation this way, though, was not possible. Then emails became a personal way to reach consumers; now most consumers are numb to mass email marketing. I will not argue with the necessity of these types of marketing. Each product has its place in a strong marketing plan. A new technology, however, has pumped life back into traditional marketing and created a personal touch for the masses.
Sending out a targeted direct mail piece to 10,000 consumers in a dealership’s marketing area with variable data seeding is about as personal as direct mail gets. This type of marketing has a certain demographic who will respond well to it. But what about the rest of the list? What about the consumers who just did not relate to this mailer?
What if you had the chance to reach out personally to the remainder of these 10,000 customers and invite them to read the mailer and come in? What if you could let them know your dealership values the opportunity to do business with them? This personal-touch call to action could be achieved by having the dealer, GM or sales director cold call 10,000 consumers, but that’s a lot of labor hours and risk of human error.
The technology of ringless voicemails, however, makes this possibility a reality. It’s being used today to accomplish this personal messaging without wasting labor hours and avoids the human error of cold calling.
The ringless voicemail is a way to put a one-to-one personal message in the voice mailbox of consumers who have received your target mailer with a simple personal message inviting them to take action. Automotive consumers are not used to receiving this one-to-one attention. Since it’s not a call, you’re not interrupting anyone’s day and you’ll avoid angry conversations and wasted labor. Instead, you can cut to the gold in the data and give consumers who are truly interested another chance to connect by calling back or coming in.
Coupling ringless voicemail with direct mailers is only one example of this technology. Any type of marketing where data is available for individual consumers can be constructed into an effective ringless campaign. Take emails, for example. There’s nothing like following up with thousands of consumers to make sure they got your email and invite them to come in. Even saturation mailers can be made personal.
With DMS data, service, branding, community events and more, the personal exposure of ringless voicemail has numerous applications. It provides a way to reach out to consumers on a one-to-one basis that’s not intrusive, not expensive and maximizes your labor. It’s a solution that every automotive dealer should take a look at implementing into their marketing strategy.
DJ Wehby
