Email imperatives for the automotive industry

Email offers the automotive industry a fantastic channel through which to build loyalty with consumers and add value to the car-ownership and brand experience. And in these tough economic times, with consumer spending dropping and marketers’ budgets being cut, it’s more important than ever to acknowledge the importance and effectiveness of the email channel and how it fits within the organization’s overall marketing efforts. It’s also a good time for marketers to take a step back and refocus on their email program and the value this high-return channel brings to the organization and its customers. Many marketers today, across numerous industries, are still guilty of running simplistic email programs that do not capitalize on the strengths of the channel, leading to consumer irrelevance and loss of interest.

The following eight strategic and tactical initiatives are intended to help marketers in the automotive industry improve the performance of their email programs and communications.

1. Create and implement a comprehensive segmentation strategy
The single most important thing that a marketer can do to improve performance is to gain a comprehensive understanding of customers’ wants, needs, behaviors, lifecycles and demographics, to name a few, and craft a segmentation strategy that is actively employed and refined. For the automotive industry, key elements of this strategy include: income and ownership needs, family size and makeup, lifestage considerations (such as age), interests, current ownership and brand affinity, to name a few. This segmentation should be created at the consumer level first, with marketing-channel-specific massaging strategies developed afterward. Engaging in intelligent, segmentation-based messaging is more critical to marketing success than ever.

2. Improve homepage placement of email-subscription options
In reviewing a sample of approximately 15 automotive brand homepages, only about half include any mention of signing up for product updates and news by email. For those with email-subscription areas on their homepages, most were hard to find and the average viewer would not readily see that area. Honda’s U.S. brand site features one of the better email signup modules (see above), but even that placement could be improved. The homepage, as well as model-specific and all other heavily trafficked pages, should have a prominent email subscription area that draws the user’s eyes and quickly conveys the ease of signup.

3. Make the email-registration process simple and intuitive, while still collecting enough pertinent data
Subaru does a great job of leveraging a simple signup form (see below), which includes model-specific content selection as well as purchase timeline and current ownership status.  Ideally, the items collected should be: name, email, ZIP code (for geo-targeting), current ownership status (with year and model), timeline until next expected purchase, model interest and lifestyle-related items. Collecting as much information as possible at the outset of registration is critical, as many subscribers will not update their profiles or give additional information later.

Subaru’s email-signup form asks consumers to indicate model of interest, purchasing time frame and current ownership status.

4. Make it easy for subscribers to identify where they are in the vehicle-ownership lifecycle — and then market to them accordingly
One of the most critical considerations for marketers is the identification of whether an email subscriber is a prospect or a current owner, as these two groups have very different marketing-communication needs. Ideally, the prospect and owner paths will be identified on the home page and there will be a unique owners’ site. Barring that, collection of current ownership status via the email signup process, as mentioned previously, can be used as a proxy. Once owner/prospect has been identified, it’s critical to market to the two groups appropriately. Prospects need more information around consideration factors, such as vehicle information, prices and offers. The timeline to purchase that a prospect indicates needs to be taken into account as well. Owners require more information around service needs, potentially community-related emails and value-added content related to their specific vehicle (for example, “Great drives” for convertible owners, “Great trails” for off-road SUV owners, etc.).

5. Leverage triggered messaging at key lifecycle stages and points in time
One of the true benefits of email is its ability to leverage data in real time to send messages tied to key points in a subscriber’s lifecycle. This not only increases the relevance of communications, but also reduces the need to manually target and deploy campaigns, resulting in a more efficient email program. Here are some examples of how triggered messages can be incorporated:

• Prospects who indicate a time window for their next purchase are natural candidates for date-based triggered messages. Utilize the registration date and logic-based statements to time messages and increase the frequency of these messages as the desired window gets closer. For example, if a user indicates he or she is looking to purchase in six to nine months, marketing messages should be sent every few months initially, then monthly and, finally, weekly toward the end of the specified period. Topics could be related not just to vehicle information, but test-drives, cold/hot leads, expected value of sale, etc. It’s also a good idea to occasionally ask prospects if their purchase time frame has changed, in order to avoid irrelevancy.
• Information submitted by those requesting online price quotes should also be included in triggered conversion efforts. Because this subset of prospects is further along the acquisition path, they need to be treated slightly differently. Specifically, they should receive an accelerated frequency of communications, with more emphasis on getting them into the dealership. Messaging should be more focused on current offers, local dealerships and a greater sense of urgency. With this audience, there is also a greater need to receive manually conducted marketing campaigns from local dealerships.
• Owners offer a plethora of triggered-message possibilities, including: expected service dates, warranty-related coverage end dates, consideration periods of next vehicle purchase, end-of-lease options and model-specific news and content.
• All recipients should receive a triggered welcome series upon subscription, tailored to their specific situation or user-specified data (for example, prospects could receive a four-part series on vehicle and brand information). Very few automotive marketers do this. In fact, a sizable percentage does not even send messages acknowledging an email subscription. Given that email engagement diminishes substantially after just 60 days, it is absolutely critical to quickly engage a subscriber and generate affinity.

6. Give consumers what they requested
This applies to email subscriptions and customer-specified preferences, as well as auto-generated messages sent to consumers who submit an online price quote request form. In many cases, there is a disconnect between what the customer expects (i.e. an online price quote, not a phone call from a salesperson) and what they actually get. It is not unusual for online customers to receive an email listing the MSRP, if a price is included at all, and a pitch to come to the dealership and see what’s in stock. This message is frequently followed up by a phone call from the salesperson. Giving customers the type of communication and information they’ve requested is a cornerstone of marketing relevancy and enhanced customer loyalty.

7. Present a unified brand experience
One of the great challenges for automotive marketers is the presentation of a singular brand experience for the customer across communications coming from several channels, most notably the core brand itself and the dealers. This distributed messaging and brand experience can easily cause confusion to the customer. Brand managers should do their utmost to make sure that, at the very least, a common look, feel and tone is presented within email communications, even if it is something as simple as a common header. Guidelines must be established to govern which communications are owned by the brand and which are owned by the dealership, or else marketers risk messages with disparate looks and information, or redundant messages. At a minimum, email-marketing guidelines and practices should be conveyed to dealers, and training given. A corollary to the notion of consistent email messages is the idea that brands should strive for unified subscription lists, so that customers are not on two or more lists, again raising the concern of redundant, confusing email messaging flows from multiple sources.

8. Integrate email into your overall digital marketing strategy
Email is just one aspect of the interactive marketing world, and has the capability to have huge synergies with channels such as search, online media and website optimization. These are often seen as disparate, disconnected channels (and budgets) within marketing organizations, to the detriment of overall marketing success. Yet there are some great examples of effective integration of paid search and online banners with email acquisition, email supporting viral marketing efforts, and website optimization leading to improved lifecycle marketing through email, just to name a few. There needs to be more of this sort of comprehensive digital integration to truly optimize marketing efforts, especially given that the consumer sees only a single brand, and doesn’t necessarily care about the different channels through which messaging is received.

The takeaway
While these initiatives do not encompass every aspect of an email-marketing program, they do at least offer a starting point for marketers as they consider optimization areas.  Now more than ever, automotive marketers need to closely examine their overall customer segmentation and marketing strategies, and find ways to ensure that email remains a critical, relevant and successful part of their efforts.