Automobile Dealership Supercharges Direct Mail Campaign with Multimedia Event
Many automobile dealerships have had great success over the years with traditional direct mail campaigns and today many dealerships are finding ways to increase direct mail response rates by combing those campaigns with a new mixed media approach.
Planet Suzuki in Charlotte, North Carolina, is one of the top selling Suzuki dealerships in the country and has achieved that enviable status by utilizing creative marketing campaigns designed to get through the clutter of a very competitive local market.
Planet Suzuki’s General Manager, Helmi Felfel was looking for ways to increase the results he was getting with their direct mail campaigns. Although successful in the past, he was noticing that response ratios were slowly eroding and although still confident in the medium, he hoped to stem that slide.
“We were looking for a way to marry the success we’ve had with direct mail in the past with email and text messaging”, says Helmi. “We were anxious to develop a new formula for direct mail success”.
Firstly, Planet Suzuki went looking for prime targets for this campaign in their own DMS and CRM software by utilizing powerful data mining tools to identify customers and prospects likely to be in the market now for a new or pre-owned vehicle.
Secondly, a direct mail piece was developed that contained a powerful, time sensitive, offer to purchase the recipients’ present car as well as an attractive offer for the purchase of a new Suzuki. However, it also included a unique additional “call to action”.
“The first 100 people that pre-register by texting the letters PLANET to 3xxxx on their cell phone will receive an additional $250 off the purchase of a new vehicle and be automatically registered to win a 42” plasma TV.”
The direct mail piece was then sent to 10,000 customers and prospects in the Planet Suzuki database as well as emails messages to the same in house list, three days prior to the weekend event.
Thirdly, Planet Suzuki decided to send emails to a specific local opt in email database in order to increase the local market penetration. Planet Suzuki wanted to have as much local impact as possible and “the cost was well in line with our marketing budget”, says Helmi. That email was also sent three days prior to the weekend event.
Fourthly, a series of follow up text messages were sent to every customer and prospect in the Planet Suzuki database that had a cell phone number. These text messages were short, concise alerts reminding recipients not to forget the weekend sales event.
Finally, the weekend Multimedia Event arrived and the results were dramatic. “We had the most successful sales event in the history of Planet Suzuki”, reports Helmi. “I’m reluctant to give specific numbers because I don’t want our competitors learning our new Multimedia Event formula but I couldn’t be happier. We knocked it out of the park!”
What Planet Suzuki learned was that contrary to reports, direct mail is anything but dead provided you deliver your message through a mixture of media. By combing a traditional direct mail campaign with an inexpensive email and text message campaign, new life was breathed into an old medium, one that was becoming ever more costly with continual postal rate increases.
Planet Suzuki knows that direct mail can still work when combined with email and mobile marketing and this new multimedia event formula can work for your automobile dealership, as well.
How to Keep Email a Vital Marketing Medium
It’s true that spam email has created a global problem; however, email marketing is anything but dead provided it is done the right way. ExactTarget reports that 93% of people who regularly utilize the internet also subscribe to opt in, permission based email.
eMarketer, the digital analytics research firm, asserts that a critical best practice for email marketing can be summarized in one sentence, “get accurate and detailed data from people who want to hear from you, and then automate the numerous steps involved in sending them relevant messages.”
Marketers know that you should always endeavor to send the right message, at the right time to the right person. But how do you actually accomplish this?
One of the most effective ways to accomplish the critical first step in getting the detailed data from people who want to hear from you is to set up a consumer loyalty and rewards club. There is a very high interest by consumers today in loyalty clubs which is an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to gain insight into the consumers’ areas of interest by properly utilizing the loyalty club’s sign up process.
The sign up process is the best time to harvest the consumer’s data profile when their interest level and curiosity is highest. The consumer needs to be further motivated to complete a detailed profile with the reward of an immediate discount or bonus. The goal is to make that consumer’s profile the key to effectively marketing to that consumer.
As soon as the consumer opts into the loyalty program they need to be immediately sent an email with a brief, customized list confirming their preferences. The consumer must be able to easily and quickly complete their profile and know that by doing so they will only receive information that is of specific interest to them. Remember they also need to be motivated to do so with an immediate bonus or reward.
The advantage to a business is without precedent – a detailed consumer profile of the consumer’s specific interests, when, how often and how they want to be contacted. Any business, with the right technology, can now send marketing messages by email that are timely for the consumer and about products and services in which they have expressed an interest.
In a new report, Experian Simmons, a leading market research firm, states that US internet users said they are more likely to click on links in marketing emails than on competing marketing formats like banners or online video ads. It is also interesting that consumers also believe that email messaging is complimentary to the newest social and mobile marketing mediums.
Today’s consumers are connected to the Internet like never before. They are either at their computers and never leave home without their cell phones. Consumers of all demographics are constantly checking their email and text messages.
Marketers have a great opportunity to make sure they are sending highly targeted messages to consumers when they have the necessary profile data to create those messages. With the right technology, any business, large or small, can capitalize on this marketing opportunity.
How to Breathe New Life into Your Direct Mail Campaigns
American businesses have proven time and again to be incredibly resilient and capable of changing with the times. Embracing new technologies such as email and mobile marketing is one of the reasons for this resiliency.
Many businesses have had great success over the years with traditional direct mail but are looking for ways to increase the results they are getting with their campaigns. Response ratios have been slowly eroding and although still confident in the medium, marketers want to stem that slide. Today those same businesses are finding ways to increase direct mail response rates by combing direct mail with a new mixed media marketing approach.
Consumers today have access to computers at home and work and are never without their cell phones. They constantly check their text and email messages throughout the day. That is the basis for a new formula for direct mail success.
Like all successful campaigns, a direct mail piece must be developed that contains a powerful, time sensitive offer. However, it also needs to include a unique additional “call to action”, such as:
“The first 100 people that text “Special Offer” to 3xxxx on their cell phone will receive an additional $100 off their purchase and be automatically registered to win a 42” plasma TV.”
The direct mail piece is then sent to the appropriate database as well as emails messages whenever available to the same list. Additionally, emails can be sent to a specific local opt in email database supplied by an email list vendor in order to increase the local market penetration.
A series of follow up text messages can also be then sent to every customer and prospect in the business’s database that has a cell phone number. These text messages must be short, concise alerts reminding recipients not to forget the direct mail offer.
What businesses who have implemented this approach have learned is that contrary to reports, direct mail is anything but dead provided you deliver your message through a mixture of media. By combing a traditional direct mail campaign with an inexpensive email and text message campaign, new life can breathed into an old medium, one that is becoming ever more costly with continual postal rate increases.
By developing the right creative and using the right technology, direct mail can still work when combined with email and mobile marketing and this new multimedia event formula can work for your business too.
You Still Have Time to Launch Mobile Coupon Marketing Campaigns for the Holiday Season
The crucial holiday shopping season is upon us and uncertainly continues to restrain American consumers. Notwithstanding, marketers are incorporating mobile strategies into their initiatives at a fast pace as smartphones grow increasingly in popularity and will dominate the U.S. market by the end of 2011.
We also know that Americans of all age groups are addicted to their cell phones and most are now subscribing to text message services. Text messages are also opened at a very high rate and actually read because they are short, concise and to the point. These factors combine to provide opportunities for businesses to develop mobile coupon campaigns to grow their businesses in ways that can be easily measured to determine their effectiveness and ROI.
By utilizing some of the very latest mobile marketing solutions, there is still time to develop and execute successful mobile coupon campaigns to drive consumers to your business between Black Friday and the post-Christmas sales.
Mobile text message coupons are an almost perfect marketing channel but to be successful there are seven things you absolutely must do to be successful.
- Your text message coupon must be relevant to the recipient. Since the very best of the new mobile marketing software enables the creation of a database of consumer preferences and interests, your messaging can be and must be, reflecting the consumers’ areas of interest.
- Text message coupons must be timely and appropriate to the recipient. Imagine the possibilities of being able to send out notifications everyday of that day’s lunch and dinner specials providing the recipient a coupon for a free salad, drink or desert and all they have to do is present their text message coupon when they sit down for their meal. Restaurants who are already doing this on a regular basis report consistent spikes in their business.
- Your text message coupon must be “short and sweet”. In other words your coupon offer must be very easy to understand. People like text messages because they don’t have to read them twice to get the point.
- Don’t make mobile text coupon marketing complicated by thinking you need to build expensive mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, Web OS and so on. With the universal protocols of SMS text messaging, you can be platform agnostic and with today’s latest mobile marketing software, you can get all the features you need at a very affordable cost.
- Be aggressive in building a database of mobile phone numbers for existing and prospective customers. However important that database is for the success of your long term mobile strategy, don’t be content with just the phone number. Today’s mobile solutions allow you to add vital information about your customers’ preferences and interests, thereby building a data rich consumer profile. With that information, you can easily tailor your mobile coupon marketing to reflect these preferences resulting in significantly higher coupon redemption which means more business revenue.
- Make sure you can easily manage coupon redemption for both the consumer and your business. The consumer should be able to redeem the text coupon by texting back, going online to a website or by presentation at the business facility. Since widespread adoption of optical scanners is probably years away, the business should be able to go to a web portal to check on redemption activity and each text coupon needs a unique identifying code.
- You must incorporate your mobile marketing initiatives into all other aspects of your marketing strategy. Make it easy for customers and prospects to sign up to receive your mobile text coupons and notifications by simply texting to your unique number such as, “ABC Café” and be sure to reward them with an instantly redeemable incentive coupon. Promote your new mobile services with a loyalty club, on your website, Facebook page, Twitter, blog, print advertising, Yellow Pages, print coupons, billboard, is-stores – everywhere you possibly can.
Mobile text coupons are in fact incredibly inexpensive compared to other advertising mediums and are proving to be incredibly effective. Start your mobile marketing campaigns today and begin to immediately see the results that will increase your sales for the critical holiday season.
How Local Restaurants Can Effectively and Inexpensively Market to Mobile Users
eMarketer reports that mobile users have increased their searching for local restaurants, based on the mobile user’s location, by up to 40%. This growing demand for local information is a tremendous opportunity for the restaurant industry to utilize the latest in mobile marketing technology to turn this demand for information into sales revenue.
The typical mobile phone user’s behavior is to quickly respond to text messaging. Mobile users open and actually read text messages at a significantly higher ratio than email messages and even voice messages. For local restaurants this is a recipe for marketing success.
Restaurants can easily execute this recipe for success by building a database of customers and prospective customers’ mobile phone numbers. This can be done by offering the restaurant’s website visitors with a discount coupon to become a member of its mobile loyalty club and provide their specific dining preferences to ensure they only receive information of interest to them. Promotional signage can be placed at checkout or as a menu insert but the most important factor is to immediately reward the new member for joining the loyalty club with a discount coupon.
With some basic training, restaurant servers can be the front line of promoting the restaurant’s mobile loyalty club as easily as they tell every customer that day’s lunch and dinner specials. It can be made to be fun and an instant benefit for the customer by simply having the customer text to join the loyalty club on the spot and receive a discount coupon, free desert or similar reward for immediately signing up.
A regular lunch customer can then receive automated but personalized text messages of that day’s lunch specials as well as notifications of special events, birthday greetings, and reminders for Valentine’s Day and so on. Additional promotional opportunities to build your restaurant’s loyalty club and database of mobile phone numbers are many. From your restaurant’s Facebook page, print, radio and television advertising to billboards, you need to promote your restaurant’s mobile loyalty club in every medium possible.
The latest mobile marketing technology also allows restaurants to deliver promotional coupons by text message, track the response rates and measure the ROI for each promotion. All of these functions can also be fully automated and detailed reports delivered to management by email on a daily basis.
By making your customers feel special, by providing them with the information they want, when they want it and in the medium they want to receive it, you are building a long term relationship with your customers. Your mobile database will soon become one of your most important marketing assets. And the best news of all is that in short order your mobile marketing initiatives will become your least expensive, highest ROI marketing medium.
