E-Squared Media

Calgary clients – claim your FREE $100 Google advertising coupon today! No purchase necessary.

E-Squared Media — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:21:26 +0000

Dear client,

E-squared Media Calgary is offering you a $100 gift coupon to advertise your business on Google AdWords.

It’s time to make sure potential clients can find you on Google! Google lets you publish text
ads next to Google search results whenever a user is searching for your products or services.

It’s a great way to reach thousands of potential clients, at exactly the right moment,
when they actively searching for your type of business!

We think AdWords advertising will benefit your business because of the following reasons:

o Quick and easy. Create your advertising campaign online within just minutes.

o Get targeted traffic.
Your ads appear next to search results when a user searches for words of your choice.
If you are a florist in NY you can choose to show an ad next to the search “NY flower delivery”.

o Pay only for clicks.
You pay only when someone shows interest in you by clicking on your ad.

o Control your costs.
You decide how much to pay per click, and determine your budget.

o Enjoy Powerful reporting – AdWords lets you know your results at all times.

To claim your personal voucher code please contact E-Squared Media Calgary by phone or email.

How to claim your $100 Google advertising voucher
1. Visit http://www.google.com/ads/ and get started with AdWords
2. Complete the sign-up process and create your first campaign.
3. When entering billing details you will be prompted to enter your code.

We wish you good luck and business success with your AdWords campaign!
We have 10 FREE certificates at this point and we’ll be giving them away on a first come first served basis. Certificates need to be used by January 31, 2012.

Sincerely,
E-Squared Media Calgary

Employee Engagement and Workplace Happiness

E-Squared Media — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:44:42 +0000

During the past few years in many industries (especially in the US and Canada), we’ve seen a shift towards a work environment where it’s requested (or to put it better “demanded”) by employees to show a positive attitude on all changes imposed to them by management. The employee has to be “engaged”, “supportive”, “excited” and above all “positive” about all the changes happening around them. It’s not surprising that a host of consultants and authors pushing “employee engagement” and “corporate happyism” have seen their bank accounts growing in the last few years.

Many senior managers have fallen prey to these unproven theories and have made “employee engagement” and “workplace happiness” a top priority in their agendas. Workplace happiness and employee engagement are terms now used in most medium to large size corporations in the US and Canada. The mantra is “engaged employees perform better”, and in the name of “engagement” and “corporate happiness” management is willing to bend over backwards to prove that “corporate happyism” is working.

Unfortunately, the science behind such a claim is at best shaky. At worst, there are several studies pointing to the opposite! Looking closely at some cases of “corporate happyism” it’s clear that it’s a form of political correctness where the employee has to conform or else they’ll find themselves locked outside the “groupthink”. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing well the job that you were hired for, if you don’t smile too at the same time or if you don’t show a positive attitude you’ll find yourself being an outsider and without a job soon.

As Chris Hedges puts it, corporate happyism “…it is not, at its core, about happiness. It’s about conformity.” 1 In this model and environment no corporate goal can be too risky or impossible to achieve. Scepticism and disagreement to the corporate goals are not to be tolerated. Groupthink puts immense pressure to individual ideas and employees are herded into conforming to the corporate “ideals”.

Is there any difference then between the “employee engagement” model and the “top down management” model? Looking at this from my personal experiences with several companies, the “top down management” model was by far the most productive at the end of the day, and surprisingly, the one where the employee retention was the highest as compared to my experience with companies using the “employee engagement” model. I believe that what made the difference at the end of the day was that in the one company that followed the “top down management” model the job expectations were clear at all times, as was the direction. Management roles and areas were also very clearly identified and all managers were qualified to perform the task at hand.

On the other hand, companies that follow the “employee engagement” mantra seem to overstate the value of feedback and dialogue. In most cases, as outlined above, management “promotes” open dialogue when in reality they “demand” their employees to conform to a predetermined accepted behaviour. At the end of the day, again from my experience, management in companies that heavily promote “employee engagement” end up spending more time trying to conform to the ideal of “corporate happiness” than to really serve their employees and stakeholders.

Creating trust in the workplace is not easy, but it can be achieved by just being honest and open to discuss the real problems. Pretending that problems don’t exist, or hiding the problems under a blanket of “corporate happyism” only makes the situation worse on the long run.

REFERENCES
¹Chris Hedges – “Happiness Consultants Won’t Stop a Depression”, Jul 29, 2009
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090726_happiness_consultants_wont_stop_a_depression/

IKEA’s Facebook showroom

E-Squared Media — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 05:42:31 +0000

Here’s an ingenious idea.

For the opening of the new IKEA Malmö store, the Forsman&Bodenfors agency (Sweden) created a Facebook campaign. The mission was to create something engaging that would have the potential of spreading by itself beyond the borders of the Malmö region, but at the same time staying relevant and focusing on IKEA’s offer, their products.

Here are the results:

Internet marketing and advertising – basic tools and best practices

E-Squared Media — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:16:15 +0000

When it comes to Internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) there are two things you need to know: your target audience and your existing and potential market. Starting with this and with some relevant content you can start building your very own Internet marketing campaign.

When working on your online advertising campaign it’s important to remember that you don’t just need to draw visitors to your website. You need to attract targeted traffic. The following basic Internet marketing tools will help you take your Internet marketing and advertising campaign to the next level:

1. Domain Name

Your domain name is your first Internet marketing tool. The right domain name can be the most effective marketing tool for your business.

For example, if a customer’s official business name is Jim Jones’ Fine Automobiles Inc. he would have a few different options when looking for a domain. Most customers choose the most obvious one: their full business name becomes their domain name. However, in most cases such a domain would mean very little to most consumers. In the above example it’s highly unlikely that anyone would use the term “fine automobiles” to search for a vehicle. Moreover, Mr. Jones’ operation may be very small and not widely known in his area so the name “Jim Jones’ Fine Automobiles” may not mean anything to most consumers in that specific area and will definitely not mean anything to consumers anywhere else in the world.

In this case a good practice is to pick a short memorable keyword-related domain name. For example, www.edmontoncars.com, it’s obviously easy to remember/spell and it tells you exactly what the site is about. Picking a domain directly related to the keyword or keywords of your site will help greatly in obtaining a high ranking for your site with the search engines. Not to mention, it will be a great marketing and promotional tool, telling your potential customers exactly what your site is promoting and displaying. In Mr. Jones’ case he could pick www.finecarsedmonton.com or www.exoticvehiclesedmonton.com or www.importvehiclesedmonton.com or even better he should reserve all 3 domains (if available).

Some marketers also suggest going for a short “jazzy” name that can be easily remembered by your visitors. Most obvious examples are giants like EBay, Google, Yahoo, Twitter etc.

Regardless of which way you’ll go with your domain, make sure you examine all the marketing potential before you pick a domain name. The right domain name can be one of your most effective Internet marketing tools.

2. Keywords

When an Internet user goes to a search engine and types in a word, this is called a keyword. Keywords are obviously very important since they are the building blocks of any Internet marketing campaign.

Using the right keywords on your website is both easy and tricky at the same time. Search engines read all the keywords in the code of your website, also called meta-tags, but they also read the keywords used in the actual text throughout your pages. Based on keyword relevance (and on some complicated algorithms…) they rank your pages.

For example, let’s say that your domain name is “importvehiclesedmonton.com”, you’ve used the keyword “import vehicles Edmonton” in your meta-tags, and you’ve also used the same term somewhere in the text of your pages. If someone goes to Google and types in “import vehicles in Edmonton” chances are that your page will show up in the first page of results.

Therefore it’s extremely important to choose the right keywords. Guesswork is definitely not the way to go when choosing your keywords. There are special software packages or online sites and services that can help you pick the right keywords. This is where you need the most help from a professional Internet marketer to help you narrow down your keyword choices and focus on the ones that will bring the most return to your business.

Targeted keywords draw targeted traffic (customers) to your website. Targeted traffic means more relevant customers who are actually interested in your products or services, and eventually more leads and a better return on your investment.

3. Organic SEO

The simplest method of organic SEO is writing and submitting keyword related articles around your products or services with links back to your site.

If we use Mr. Jones’ fine automobiles business mentioned above as an example, an effective and inexpensive way to promote his business would be for Mr. Jones to write and submit articles about import cars in the Edmonton area, or about servicing import cars, import car accessories in Edmonton etc. Then through this article he could link back to his website and improve his website ranking and traffic.

As other sites display your articles you gain valuable one-way links back to your site. Search engines then follow all of these links and rank your site highly for the keywords in these articles. For this reason the modest article may prove to be the single most important marketing tool you have in your arsenal.

Used properly organic SEO can help position your website in the search engines and bring in targeted traffic.

4. Pay per Click advertising

Pay per click (or PPC) advertising is a way to “buy” clicks directly from the search engines by displaying your website as the top search result for a specific keyword. If used effectively
PPC marketing can be an extremely useful and profitable marketing tool.

Again, if you want to use this PPC keyword advertising you’d most probably need to seek help from an Internet marketing professional. We have several examples of clients who only invested $100 or $200 on PPC keyword advertising and saw an excellent return on their investment. On the other hand we’ve also examples of clients who tried to use this tool on their own without any professional help and they went through thousands of dollars of PPC advertising and minimal return on their investment.

PPC keyword advertising needs a good coordination between your website’s keywords and the PPC keywords. It also needs a good understanding of your target audience, your market and your place in this market. It’s not an easy process to setup a good PPC advertising campaign but the benefits could be significant for your website and your business.

4. E-mail/Contacts Lists

The email or contacts list is a database of contacts, people (usually customers or prospective customers) who have given you permission to email or contact them. These could be subscribers who have opted-in to your online newsletter, or customers who have signed up to receive mailings from your company.

Newsletters are important Internet marketing tools that should be utilized by most online businesses. It is essential to keep an ongoing relationship with your customers (and your prospective customers) and build on it.

5. Blogs and RSS Feeds

Blogging has become a trend among many successful online ventures. More than that, search engines love blogs and RSS feeds because they provide continuous fresh content. Several newspaper articles and recent research has also shown that blogging is a very important tool for any online business.

Domain names, keywords, organic SEO, pay per click advertising, email and contact lists and blogging are effective online marketing tools that can help make your online business or your website extremely successful and profitable.

For more information about how we can help you utilize these tools in the best possible way, please contact us today.

e²media (e-squared media)

is an internet marketing and interactive advertising company based in Edmonton, AB offering affordable internet advertising, search engine optimization, web development and corporate identity services. Over the past 12 years we’ve worked with many organizations mainly in the Edmonton and Calgary area. We’re specialized in the automotive industry and in Internet marketing and web development in general, but we’ve also worked in several projects for small, medium and large size organizations ranging from website design, flash movies, databases, shopping carts, search engine optimization (SEO) to full Internet marketing campaigns and corporate identity design. For more information on any previous projects, or for client references, please click here to contact us.

What is gamification?

E-Squared Media — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:03:57 +0000

What is Gamification?

There’s a lot of talk around “gamification” lately so I thought to write a few words about it.

I tried to come up with a meaningful definition, but I found one in Wikipedia that does an excellent work explaining what gamificiation is in a very short paragraph:

“Gamification is the integration of game mechanics or game dynamics into a website, service, community, campaign, or application in order to drive participation and engagement. In particular, gamification is the application of game technology and game design outside traditional “gamespaces”, and the acceptance of games in non-gaming sectors.”

Here’s the premise behind bringing gamification in the work place:

If we can harness a fraction of the engagement and excitement most people exhibit while playing games and direct it towards our workforce we should be able to see a good increase in productivity and retention.

In short: Gamification drives participation. When employees actively participate in company activities this participation builds loyalty. Erasing the boundaries between work and play unlocks employees’ productivity and potential and makes the workplace a fun place to be.

Auto dealer conversion rates

E-Squared Media — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:53:39 +0000

Many dealers are asking, what’s the average conversion rate for a dealership?

This is the wrong question to ask as there are no global standards in order to compare the conversion rates of 2 different dealerships, therefore the conversion rates could vary significantly from dealer to dealer.

The conversion numbers depend on the dealer’s profile in the market (for example high profile dealers will generaly show higher conversion rates) or also the dealer’s position in the market (for example dealers that are known for aggresively competitive prices will most likely get higher conversion rates in their websites).

Having said that, you should still measure your conversion rates and monitor them closely as an internal measuring tool. For example, it’s important to know if in January you had 100 conversions and in February you had 60. You can then ask questions and investigate why this happened.

Auto dealers should put pressure to their web site providers to give them more information about their website traffic.

Web site traffic information

This should include all sources like organic searches, PPC (pay per click), OEM, referring sites, and direct traffic. It’s very easy to track this information using tools like Google’s web analytics (which is free to use!).

Search engine keywords

Tools like Google’s web analytics also let you know which keywords your visitors are using to find your website. This is important information to know and your web site provider should be able to provide this to you.

Variances in traffic and lead generation

This is something the auto dealer should be able to calculate based on the web traffic statistics provided by the web site provider and the lead generation information that the dealer should collect every month. In fact, the auto dealer should be able to collect such information daily and be able to answer questions such as “how many leads did we receive yesterday”, “how many lead conversions did we have last week”, “how many visitors used our service form last month” etc.

Check at your dealership. Is anyone keeping track of this information? If not then you should re-evaluate you Internet strategies.

The other side of conversion rates

There’s another side to the conversion rates story: Internet has allowed people to be able to avoid the face-to-face interaction, therefore a dealer may receive several requests from people who can’t really afford a specific vehicle yet they spend the time to send a form just for the shake of it.

Why do this? Well, the purchase of a car starts out as a fantasy for many people. Let’s say John Doe wants to buy a BMW X5 but he can really afford a Pontiac Cavalier. He would never visit a BMW dealership in person to ask questions about the X5 because the salesman would easily see through him and know to ignore him.

However, John Doe can easily send an email message to the local BMW dealership and ask about his dream BMW (which he can’t afford…) without risking to be ridiculed. Worse than that for the dealer, the salesman has no idea that he’s dealing with John Doe. For all he knows John Doe is a hot lead interested in a brand new BMW X5. Only a few emails or phone calls later a salesman will figure out that Mr. Doe can’t really afford the vehicle.

Therefore, it’s critical for the sales people to identify as quickly as possible the “valuable” leads. This is discussed in more detail in the “Auto dealers: qualifying internet leads” article.

e²media (e-squared media) is an internet marketing and interactive advertising company based in Edmonton, AB offering affordable internet advertising, search engine optimization, web development and corporate identity services. Over the past 12 years we’ve worked with many organizations mainly in the Edmonton and Calgary area. We’re specialized in the automotive industry and in Internet marketing and web development in general, but we’ve also worked in several projects for small, medium and large size organizations ranging from website design, flash movies, databases, shopping carts, search engine optimization (SEO) to full Internet marketing campaigns and corporate identity design. For more information on any previous projects, or for client references, please click here to contact us.

Auto dealers: Qualifying Internet leads, best practices.

E-Squared Media — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:22:55 +0000

Generating leads on the Internet is the relatively easiest part of an Internet marketing campaign for any auto dealer. The hard job is to properly qualify these leads as they’re coming in from different sources (portals, own website, banner ads etc.)

The first thing an auto dealer should do is to ensure that the leads are suitable. This will significantly reduce wasted time and resources. In order to determine whether a lead is suitable the auto dealer has to have in place a process called “lead qualification”.

Lead qualification

I discussed Internet leads and relevant research in a different article. At an average, an internet sales manager can work with a total of 75-100 leads per month. With an average conversion rate of 10% – 15% you’re looking to get around 10 finalized sales per month out of your incoming leads (and that’s if you’re getting 75-100 internet leads per month! An average automotive website has a conversion rate of roughly 3%, meaning that out fo 100 visitors only 3 will contact your dealership through your website. So in order to get at least 75 leads from your website you should get 2500 visitors monthly. This is not impossible, but it’s a large number of unique visitors for any website. Chances are that your automotive website doesn’t get this amount of traffic. )

At this point it’s important that the company will determine and outline to the sales reps a set of criteria for qualifying internet leads (or any kind of lead for that matter).

In general, a good prospect should have all or most of the following characteristics:

the financial resources to complete the vehicle purchase
credit pre-approval if necessary
plan to purchase a vehicle immediately, or in the near future
need or desire to learn more about your vehicles and your services

As soon as you receive the information request your sales rep should email or call back immediately to investigate whether this is a good prospect.

Based on the above characteristics the sales rep should tailor a list of questions that will elicit more information from the client and will identify them in one of the following stages:

raw lead: an initial request from any source (auto dealer website, portal, banner ad etc.)
dead lead: a prospect who has little potential to become a customer
inactive lead: a prospect who will not buy now but has future potential
suspect: an inquiry that has been qualified and has the potential to result in a paying customer
prospect: a lead that has been qualified in more detail
customer: a prospect who has made a purchase

The terminology is not really important. What is important is to clearly categorize the prospects based on the information you’ve collected. This way the sales team will put less time and effort towards leads that are qualified as “dead” or “inactive” and focus more on leads that can become customers immediately.

At this point it could be a good idea to setup a contact management database system (CMS) in order to record, maintain and review all contact opportunities. In the CMS system the sales rep can record and maintain information such as lead name and phone number, past phone or email conversations, times the prospect is available for phone calls, financial situation and dollar amount the prospect wants to spend in the vehicle purchase, other personal information.

All this can be used by the sales reps in future communications with the prospect, and can also be used by management to monitor all leads and ensure that important contact opportunities will not be missed.

Source: Jobber, David, and Geoffrey Lancaster. Selling and Sales Management. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Prentice Hall, 2005.

On-line lead generation for auto dealers

E-Squared Media — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:41:39 +0000

Auto dealers have several ways to generate on-line leads:

Through their websites
Through 3rd party providers (car portals)
Through classified ads
Through search engine marketing

Obviously, the most cost effective option by far is generating leads through their websites, followed by search engine marketing. Investing more in these two options then is a must.

How many leads are too many?

The next question an auto dealer needs to consider is: “how many online leads can my internet department handle?”

Many dealers get caught in the internet excitement and start investing more in their websites and internet marketing activities without having an understanding on how this could impact their lead generation and sales.

There has been quite a few surveys and research done on this subject. On average a salesperson can handle between 75 – 100 leads per month with some extraordinary salespersons being able to handle 125. The benchmark for conversions to sales is between one in six to one in eight leads.

To put these numbers into perspective:

If your internet department consists of one lone sales rep (or internet manager as most dealers call them), then you shouldn’t provide them with more than 100 leads per month. Provide them more and they will start cherry-picking (and waste possibly valuable leads).

This is why monitoring your leads and knowing how many leads you receive every month is critical. Bringing in 200 leads every month and only having one internet sales manager dealing with them is a waste of leads and a waste of online advertising money.

Get to know your visitors

The next question an auto dealer should ask is: who are my visitors and what are they searching for?

Recent research shows that over 90% of car buyers turn to the web to research their next vehicle purchase. Internet technology allows us to gather a lot of information about a website’s visitors. Dealers should make sure that their web developers or service providers are able to provide them with detailed information about all users who visit their pages and their vehicles.
Use your website properly

First impressions last forever. It goes without saying that your website should make a good first impression and convey the image of your dealership. It doesn’t have to be flashy (in fact it shouldn’t be!) or loud, but it has to be easy to navigate and provide an easy way for the visitor to contact you at any time.

Here are a few suggestions that may help:

Provide your visitors with an easy, consistent and straightforward navigation scheme.
Make it easy for them to drill down to detailed vehicle information in a few clicks.
Make sure that all the photos on your website are top quality.
Showcase relevant information for all vehicles in your inventory. Nobody wants to see a picture of a red vehicle and read in the description that the vehicle in the inventory is black.
Have a specials section prominently displayed on all pages. Make sure your specials are always up to date.
Make sure that you have at least one and no more than three call to action buttons on each and every page of your website.
Empower your visitors to ask questions.
Allow your visitors to compare features between car models and makes.
Make sure that all internet leads are replied as soon as possible. Call or email back within 30 minutes of receiving a lead. If the lead is receiving when the dealership is closed then make sure that you reply to it first thing the next day.

Well defined processes is what separates good to great auto dealers

E-Squared Media — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:07:00 +0000

The most common issue most auto dealers have with their internet sales strategies is the lack of properly defined online sales processes.

Even larger successful auto dealers with many years of sales experience seem to not be quite sure on how to deal with their internet sales department.

I’ve seen many auto dealers that are extremely successful with their internet sales, but in most (if not all!) cases this success is based on the stellar sales performance of their internet sales manager, or of the one capable sales rep who receives and properly follows up the sales leads that come from the dealer’s website.

In order for the auto dealer to sustain a well performing internet department they should understand and document all processes surrounding internet leads. Sure, some dealers may think of this as a waste of their time, but then some dealers thought of the internet as a waste of their time (and money..) a few years ago.

The benefits of putting a process in place and training your employees to act upon it are well documented in several business research papers. In the auto dealer sector the dealerships that have clearly defined processes and operations in place clearly outperform those that do not and stand-out of the competition.

Putting a well defined process in place could offer an auto dealer several advantages:

Deal effectively with employee turnover:It’s not a secret that employee turnover in the auto dealer sector is high. By having a well defined process in place you don’t run into the risk of crippling your internet business if you lose a high performer internet sales manager or sales rep.
Evaluate the internet sales team’s performance: Probably the most important reason for having a process is because it allows you to measure your staff’s performance. No more guesswork!
Evaluate the vendors’ performance: This is as important (if not more important!) as evaluating your staff’s performance. A well defined process will allow you to measure where you’re getting your leads from, how many of these leads become actual sales and at the end of the day you’ll have solid data and will be able to know if it’s worth it to list your cars or advertise with the A or B portal. No more guesswork!
Maximize your leads:A well developed process will allow your internet sales manager to effectively follow up and monitor all leads you receive through online sources.
Offer superior and consistent customer service: A well defined process will ensure that all customers get the same treatment and all leads are answered in the same consistent and timely manner.
Improve results: Having a process in place helps quantify and understand your internet marketing tactics and whether they have any impact on your lead and sales generation.

How you can start with this

Firstly and more importantly start gathering existing sales processes at your dealership: If something works for you and brings back positive results then mark it down and use it as a best practice. Ask your sales managers to outline all sales processes in their departments. Then sit down with them and weed out whatever doesn’t work or is not needed and come up with one global process that can be used by all your sales reps.
Hire a consultant:If you can’t make sense of your process or if you don’t have time to fully engage yourself or your sales managers in this task then ask the help of a consultant experienced with internet processes. They can help streamline the gathering of the information and provide you with input on how to improve things by building a custom internet sales process for your dealership.

Replying to customer emails – Best practices

E-Squared Media — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:00:35 +0000

In most cases dealers tend to blame low closing rates on the quality of the leads, however the reality is that each dealership’s process greatly affects the closing rates.

Best practices for auto dealers’ internet sales reps:

Immediate follow up: Make sure to call and email back within 30 minutes of receiving the lead.
Include alternatives: Provide one or two alternatives with all lead responses.
Long term follow up: Implement a long term follow up plan (1 week, 2 weeks etc.) for customers who don’t respond immediately or who sound indecisive.
Ask questions: The more you know about why this visitor is interested in this sepcific car the better. You may then be able to upsell him a different car or sell him some other service.
Study your lead carefully: Your lead information can help you learn/understand more about your customer.
1. Check the email address. See whether the email address is personal or business. If it’s business check the website to find out where your customer works.
2. Check the time the lead was sent. Time of day or night can indicate the lifestyle of the customer.
3. Check the name. It can indicate gender or ethnicity. Also check the dealership database to find out if this customer or a family member has bought a vehicle from this dealer in the past.
4. Check the address of the lead. It can show you what part of the city your customer lives in.
5. Read the comments carefully. They can indicate needs and wants.
Fully answer to all and any questions: If there is a question that you need more information to answer it then don’t be affraid to say so in your email. Also, if the customer requests a price quote make sure that you give them a price. Price should not be the focus of the conversation, but if the customer specifically request for a price you should be able to provide them with one.

When writing your email reply there are 4 important email elements you need to remember:

Attention
Interest
Urgency
Action

Grab the customer’s attention

You should do this in both the subject line and in the opening paragraph of your email.

You don’t grab the customer’s attention by making an extraordinary (usually false) claim. In fact, the best way to grab their attention is by stating the obvious. If they’ve sent you an email inquiring about a VW Jetta then a good approach would be to use exactly this as your email’s title. Also, next to it you can add the dealership’s name so that you can create trust.

Your opening paragraph should also be to the point and not lose the reader with irrelevant blabbing about how great your dealership is, or what a great choice the customer made to choose that vehicle etc.

Create interest on your product or service

Now that you’ve grabbed your customer’s attention give him enough relevant information to create interest about the product or service you’re offering. If you’re trying to sell him that VW Jetta then make sure that you’ll provide them with a few different options of Jettas (maybe a few different colours, a few different years, different options etc.). This is also your chance to push that certified vehicle. According to a 2008 J.D Power’s research over 70% of your clients will opt in for a certified vehicle.

Suggest urgency

Don’t lock yourself in those corny car salesmen line: “this price is only good today”.
You can create the sense of urgency without sounding pushy. For example, you could write: “Our dealership offers some great financing options this month”, and therefore hint that this month is the month to get a good deal.

Call to Action

Don’t make the mistake to end your letter in one of the usual sales-pitch endings: “I look forward to hearing from you”, or “Please email me back or call me at your earliest convenience”.

Instead, provide the customer with some links that elicit action (for example the link to your online credit application), or tell them that you’ll be available all day to receive their call and they can call you at any time TODAY, or you can also suggest that you can give them a call in a few minutes to make sure they received your email and explain over the phone any questions they may have.