6 Steps to Coordinate Email & Search

marketingsherpa.com – Case Study #CS821: How Auto Dealer Tripled Leads – 6 Steps to Coordinate Email & Search

SUMMARY: When you need to get leads fast, an email campaign that is part of an integrated multichannel strategy is hard to beat.

A car dealership used triggered emails, search ads, a microsite and incentives to drive 276.7% more leads through the door. Online-generated purchases jumped more than six times.

CHALLENGE
With dozens of other Chevrolet dealers vying for the same customers in the saturated marketplace of northern New Jersey, Todd Smith, General Manager & Partner, D&C Chevrolet, knew he had to get a leg up on the competition. Not to mention the fact that the dealership was operating in the red, and getting it in the black wasn’t going to be easy.

“One of our main goals was to return the dealership to profitability and sell it back to General Motors, so we could begin selling a different line of cars with much-better margins on the same physical location,” Smith says. “There were 49 other Chevy dealers in my local area. It was an extremely fragmented marketplace. Since we couldn’t mass-advertise like some competitors, we had to find something with more of a direct marketing, grassroots touch.”

To find out what he was up against, Smith personally scouted out the competing dealerships. Nearly every one had either a better location or more vehicles to choose from. Next, he emailed his competitors. Half didn’t reply to his request for information, while those who did lagged in their response.

Smith realized he had found a potential edge: using an online lead generation strategy that hadn’t been tapped for the dealership. more…