In the past two weeks we’ve covered what Marketing Automation is and why your dealership needs it. As you’ve seen, email marketing with specific and personalized messaging is a major element of Marketing Automation strategy. Today we’ll talk about email marketing workflows and why using them is so effective.
Through Marketing Automation, you can identify each website visitor and gain information about them, such as their email address. You can also track visitors’ actions on your website such as pages visited, frequency of visits, forms filled out, and more. Based on the actions they take, each lead can be assigned a score and added to a specified list of email contacts based on your dealership’s business goals.
Next, you can decide what kind of custom messaging you want to deliver to nurture your leads. For example, if a website visitor fills out a form to get more information about a specific unit, you may choose to assign them with a high lead score and set up a “trigger” email, immediately inviting them into the dealership for a test run. This custom email caters to the lead’s wants and needs – they have clearly expressed interest in this unit, so the natural next step is to see it in person and test it out.
Based on the actions that a lead takes, you may want to continue the conversation past just one email – that’s where the email marketing workflow comes in. As an example of a workflow, imagine that you’d like to send a series of emails to your highest-scoring leads as you approach your dealership’s end-of-summer sales event:
- The first email simply announces the sale.
- Those who do not RSVP or open the email are triggered to receive a second email providing more details about the event.
- A third email serves as a reminder when the sale is only a few days away.
- A fourth and final email sent on the day of the sale includes an incentive or special offer to come in, as a last effort to draw in contacts on the email list who have not engaged with the first three emails.
With Marketing Automation, a process like this can take place with little work required from you – but a big pay-off in reaching and encouraging leads to convert.
In an online environment where multiple platforms are competing for attention, the email inbox is a valuable place. It’s the ideal option, second only to a hand-delivered invitation, to get your prospect into the dealership. What’s even better is that Marketing Automation lets you leave a personal touch by using the lead’s name or other details that are unique to them – information that is accessed and stored through automation when the lead visits your site.
Marketing Automation takes a complicated idea – email marketing workflows – and makes it simple. With these automated tools, your sales team will save time and effort, and will likely see more qualified leads come in than ever before.