Last Modified: April 2, 2024

Written By:Jessee Sandlin

|Published Date: August 25, 2022|2 min read

Customer Outreach: Three Tips for Diversifying Your Automotive Plan

A photo of a man in a suit standing in front of a row of cars at a dealership, looking and smiling at his smartphone
Engaging your customers effectively is one of the most important factors in relationship maintenance. If you want full-lifecycle customers, communicate with them intentionally. Customer outreach needs to be well-timed, properly articulated, and effectively delivered. Let’s explore three highly effective considerations for diversifying your communication with your automotive customers.
Why Video? - Automotive

1) Your customer outreach should be purposeful

It can be tempting to build out an extensive strategic communication plan that makes use of every event, deliverable, and trigger your company already has available. While technically not spamming, this “buckshot” approach risks abusing your customers’ time and attention spans. As you build out your communication strategy, it’s important to only reach out with relevant information and calls-to-action.As Entrepreneur notes, “If you keep bombarding your email list with emails, whether promotional or non-promotional, your subscriber list will begin to shrink at a rapid pace. In fact, 69 percent of users unsubscribe [because of] too many emails.” Covet your customers’ desire to engage in your customer outreach. Be selective with the topics, events, and opportunities you want to make them aware of.

2) Your customer outreach should factor in personalization

Notice this tip isn’t “personalize everything!” Some messages are just important updates that your entire customer base needs to be aware of, but throwing a personalization token in can cheapen your other efforts to individualize content. When you have an opportunity unique to a specific customer, the medium is crucial to reinforcing the message.Personalized videos, like those created through Covideo Dealer Service's platform, allow you to make a customer aware, beginning with the preview GIF, that this message is intended exclusively for them. We like to write the customer’s name on a dry erase board and display it in the preview (this can help with open rates), but make sure the individualized approach doesn’t stop there. Keep the message brief, relevant, and end with a clear call-to-action.

3) Your customer outreach should reward your customers’ efforts

Clicking on an email, answering a phone call, watching a video—these are all deliberate acts your customers must choose. Reward their effort. Sometimes this can mean literally rewarding them (with rebates, coupons, etc.). Sometimes this is more figurative (delighting with helpful, insightful, or actionable information customers need/want to know).The Nielsen Norman Group found that users read an average of 28% of the words they see on a page. Want more than skimming/half-listening customers? Don’t say more than is necessary. Keep videos from going on and on. Avoid calling “just to check in.” Know what customer outreach your audience wants, whether that’s a tangible incentive or aligning with their communication preferences, and give it to them.

The Takeaway

By diversifying your customer outreach, your automotive customers will repay your efforts with higher engagement, more awareness, and deeper utilization of your full sales cycle rather than disappearing and reappearing at random when they need something at a critical stage. Well-timed, deliberate, and purposeful communication that chooses the right channel demonstrates this to your customer base.
Want to learn more about “best practices” content, proven analytics, and more? Reach out to a Covideo expert today!

More articles like this

Category IconSales

10 Best Practices for Automotive Lead Response

Drive traffic to your dealership with these best practices for your automotive lead response. And reach out to CDS for a free evaluation of your lead response!

Read more
Category IconSales

CSI Score: Automotive Tips & Tricks for Improving Your CSI Score

In the automotive industry, CSI score stands for "Customer Satisfaction Index" score. In this article we cover what a good CSI score is, why it’s important, how it’s measured, and ways to improve your CSI score.

Read more
Category IconSales

Seeing Is Believing

Marinko Josipovic, who has been with Covideo since 2009 when using video for personalized communication was relatively new, reflects on changing technology.

Read more
00:00 / 00:00