By Jeremy Evans, managing director of Marketing Delivery

In a perfect world, all dealer systems would run off one platform making the job of keeping in touch with customers at the right time much easier. Such a system would be at the forefront of the areas of accounting, stock management (vehicles and parts), enquiry management, online bookings and CRM and it would be the leader in each of these key areas.


The reality is that many different systems exist because no single system is the best at all of the above. Companies tend to specialise in specific areas of the business such as showroom or service systems.

 

Juggling multiple systems to manage customers

Add in to the mix individual manufacturer requirements to install supported systems for the delivery of central leads and website bookings, plus of course the legacy systems that work perfectly well and are expensive to replace. All of this means that, in reality, there are multiple systems to deal with the various customer touch points.

 

How to combine complex data sources

So how to get the most out of these separate databases? The answer is to use a company who has a system which acts as a hub to receive data from them all, providing a single customer contact cycle.

That’s how we’ve built our business by doing for this seamlessly for car, van and bike dealers – our unique product SmartMail delivers one simple solution to make your customer communications more effective.

SmartMail works with email and SMS initially, with the dealer data then used again for telemarketing and direct mail as appropriate. Replies are fed back to the dealership for follow up action and customer response.

 

Keeping customer data fresh and effective

Taking data from DMS, showroom and aftersales systems, into SmartMail where it is held, de-duped, and updated daily from these multiple sources to ensure the central customer record is as up-to-date as possible, to generate the right activity at the right time using the right channel.

Service reminders are the most valued type of communication and an effective communication process is proven to be influential in future buying decisions, maintaining satisfaction and loyalty.

Sales enquiry follow up messages provide instant pay-back and important feedback on sales process performance with customer satisfaction messages after purchase enabling measurement and monitoring in advance of manufacturers programmes.

 

Getting Social

With 30 million UK users dealers can't ignore Facebook. Customers are "checking in" regardless of a dealers "official" presence. They are commenting to the 10 million Twitter users, again regardless of the official presence.

With SmartMail Social we help dealers with content management and active listening of their social media channels. Using SmartMail we post customer reviews to social feeds to keep visitors engaged and informed, with independent reviews proving to be far more trusted than marketing messages.

Using SmartMail to join the data-dots enables your customers to see the big picture…