Communication with your customers is key to building meaningful, lasting relationships. However, over communicating will cause your message to become marketing noise and potentially get lost in the chaos. OneCommand is the leader in Customer Marketing and Loyalty Automation™ for auto dealers and through our years of experience, we’ve developed several best practices to help our customers refrain from over communicating. In today’s one-to-one marketing world, it is more important than ever to make your marketing stand out; don’t lose your message by over communicating.
Deliver the Right Kind of Communication
Relevant and timely messaging is essential when communicating with customers. Without these factors your messaging can seem impersonal, causing consumers to think, “Was this message intended for me?” Before sending a communication to customers, put yourself in their shoes and see if it makes sense and is relevant to their current ownership lifecycle. For example, you wouldn’t want to deliver a great new vehicle incentive on your 2013 lineup to someone who just purchased a vehicle from your store. Likewise, if a service customer was in your service drive today, you wouldn’t want to contact them with a great service offer tomorrow. These types of communications will upset a customer and make them feel like they are missing out.
Divide and Conquer
It’s time to start thinking about your most precious asset, your customers. They want to hear from you, but they don’t need to hear every message from you. Use your database and its information to create segments of your customers. By doing this, you should be able to determine who is most likely to purchase a new vehicle or who should be ready for their next vehicle maintenance.
Don’t share every incentive with every customer
Typically dealerships have several promotions going on at the same time. For example, they may have a national, regional, dealer-specific, and seasonal incentive that customers can capitalize on. This type of messaging can be overwhelming for consumers, which could cause them to either discredit the communications or ignore them completely. So really think about the messaging you will deliver to your customers. Chances are your consumers have already seen the national OEM incentives while browsing the web, watching TV, and listening to the radio. You may want to cut out any additional communication to them about the same incentives. Really think about the messaging you will deliver to your customers. It is wise to limit yourself to one monthly incentive communication, otherwise your marketing may get lost in the chaos.
Your customers are being bombarded by marketing messages, and by communicating with them regularly, you will stay top-of-mind and drive more traffic to your dealership. However, if your communications become part of the marketing noise, then your message will never be heard.