Every business needs customers, right? Keeping customers loyal to your business and ensuring they come back to you for future purchases involves a retention marketing strategy. Although this type of strategy is incredibly important and needed for a successful business, today we are going to focus on developing a conquest marketing strategy.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “You tell us all the time - it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.” This is a very true statement; however, there comes a time for every business when you have to look outside of your current database and acquire new business to grow your current customer pool and increase revenue. What if I told you that acquiring new business doesn’t have to be so costly? In fact, dealers who use OneCommand’s conquest email solution have seen a $15 return on investment for every one dollar spent. Today I’ll share a cost effective conquest marketing strategy that brings additional sales and service customers to your store.
Go with Email
First things first - let’s take a look at how you can simply reduce marketing costs. We all know that material cost can be a big money pit, by leveraging email you can reduce this quickly. Let’s compare an email with a direct mail conquest campaign. Typically, email costs about a fraction of a penny to deliver, whereas a direct mail campaign can cost up to a couple dollars per piece. If all other costs are equal (purchase price to acquire a list, creative design cost, etc.), a delivery channel like email can save you a lot of money.
Present Clear Offers, Calls to Action, and Dealer Info
No matter who you are, everybody loves a good deal. Check out Groupon or Living Social if you don’t believe me. This is the very reason you’ll want to design your conquest email accordingly. Think about having big bold call outs for pricing and to get noticed. You’ll also want to make sure you have clear calls to action in your email piece. This will help drive recipients to your website to increase web traffic, but also get them thinking about how they would customize their ride of choice or schedule their appointment. Along those same lines, be sure your dealership information is clearly presented on your email piece. Lastly, you’ll want to make sure you have your offers, calls to action, and dealer info arranged in an aesthetically pleasing design with striking visual components to grab a reader’s attention.
In-Market Data
This step can be a little difficult to achieve on your own simply because you may not be able to query in-market conquest databases. However, if you work with a company that provides email data to you, ask if they have a way to target in-market buyers in your area. There are also a handful of companies out there who are able to provide this data to you, or contact us, OneCommand, and we can help. Once you have the in-market data, be sure to bounce it against your database to exclude any current customers. By doing this, you’ll ensure you aren’t spending money on marketing to the customers you already have.
Test and Try Again
One of the best things about utilizing email marketing is being able to test a particular element and if it doesn’t produce the desired results, change the element and try again. Think about testing different subject lines to achieve better open rates, or change up your calls-to-action or placement of links to increase click-through rates. If you are seeing a lot of spam complaints, bounce rates, or unsubscribes, think about changing up creative and ensure your emails are SPAM compliant. At the end of the day, email is a great medium to get outside the box and really see if what you are doing is working and achieving the desired results.
Check Campaign Effectiveness
Like all marketing, it’s only as good as its results, and the same is true for conquest marketing. Don’t be alarmed, however, if your results aren’t up to par with your typical customer email results. You have to remember these are conquest customers - they don’t know you or have a relationship with you, so the results will always be lower. A benchmark to go by for conquest open rate is 5%, where as a click-through rate is typically 3%.
But an open rate and click-through rate are only as good as the revenue they drive to your dealership. To really determine your conquest email’s effectiveness you’ll want to wait about 30 days, then take your initial data and bounce against your purchase and service records from that time period. Be sure to match against name, email, phone, and any other information you have available and then you will know not only the success of your creative and content, but also your marketing efforts as a whole.
Start Your Conquest Email Marketing
If you’re looking for a cost effective way to attract new buyers in your market area and influence them to purchase their next vehicle or service their current vehicle with you, then conquest email marketing is for you. You’ll lower your current conquest marketing budget by leveraging a cheaper delivery channel, you’ll increase your dealership’s brand awareness, and you’ll drive additional sales and service revenue to your door.