Running a dealership can be a lot of hard work, and great dealers know that communicating with your customers is key to getting them to show up to your lot and increase the chance they become repeat buyers. That's where text messaging for automotive dealers comes in, as it is the best and most proven channel for reaching your customers.
Here are some of the best tips we’ve collected working with auto dealers in order to boost revenue using text messaging.
Take Care of Repetitive Tasks
Text messages allow you to easily take care of repetitive chores that may be stalling your excellent service. You can send reminders for scheduled test drives so that you don't have a gap in scheduling, as well as sending SMS appointment reminders for services and things like lease renewals or rental drop offs.
Quickly Communicate About Recalls
Car recalls are serious business. When they happen it can be a headache to get in touch with all of those vehicle’s owners. Emails are rarely opened, and even if they are it is not immediate enough if there is a safety risk, and manually calling all of them takes extensive manpower. Due to their 98% read rate, text messages are the best way that auto dealers can quickly get in touch with their customers to make sure that customers are aware of the recall and coordinate the best time for customers to bring their vehicles in for servicing.
Promote Sales Better
Got a holiday sale? Memorial day blowout? Text messaging is the best way to get the word out about your new sales and help you move overstock quickly. Text messaging allows you to easily message customers who are interested in information about new models or to get interested buyers to actually show up to the lot and test drive. All of this means you get cost effective advertising to customers that are most likely to convert, allowing you to get more people in the door and help you close more sales!
Make The Most Out of Your Service Bays
Dealers make their bread and butter off their service, so why not promote those services better? With text messaging you can easily send text reminders when customers are due for their next service appointment, and you can further entice them with things like coupons for oil changes. Also there’s no better way to keep customers updated about their repairs than a text, as phone calls can be time consuming and emails will never be read.
Get Better Feedback
Making sure your customers are happy with their salesman and their mechanic service is paramount. That’s where SMS surveys come in, as they are the best tool to gather feedback because they have a much higher response rate than email. Even better, since 98% of text messages get opened, that means you get far more responses than if you just used email or paper surveys.
Throw Better Auto Auctions
Auto auctions are spiking in popularity, but the traditional ways of email and newspaper advertising are not good enough. With SMS messaging, you can easily promote your auctions to your customers and feel secure that they are seeing your messages. You can go a step further and set up text keywords that customers can text in, allowing you to save their information based off of what kind of auction they are interested in. Then you can send a text message to those customers with relevant reminders depending on what auctions they have shown interest in.
New to SMS marketing? Take a look at our SMS marketing guide to discover how you can use SMS for your business!
