Automotive Direct Mail: Why Dealers Shouldn’t Abandon Traditional Marketing
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In today’s tech-heavy world, digital marketing reigns supreme, as car buyers gravitate towards dealers providing seamless, online experiences. This strategy offers customers a straightforward purchasing journey on several platforms, including smartphones, tablets, and personal computers.
However, while it might seem like digital marketing is always the preferred approach, many experts will contend that traditional marketing – particularly automotive direct mail – remains a successful approach with many advantages.
This article discusses situations in which physical marketing might be appropriate and some of this traditional method’s benefits.
Advantages of an Automotive Direct Mail Campaign
Direct mail is still a well-liked traditional marketing strategy. It involves sending unsolicited physical letters to recipients who satisfy specific requirements based on demographics and dealer marketing objectives.
Campaigns can still profit from automotive direct mail in several ways, and there are numerous situations where more traditional marketing strategies may be preferable to digital ones, such as:
- Attempting to increase brand recognition
- Fostering a sense of confidence with would-be customers
- Eliciting genuine, emotional responses
The advantages of a direct mail strategy might include but are not limited to the following:
- It offers higher visibility. Every car dealer’s goal is for the consumer to open and read the advertisement (whether physical or digital) as soon as they receive it, but that does not always happen.
Unopened emails can get lost in a crowded inbox and eventually deleted, intentionally or otherwise. Physical mail, however, is not as quickly forgotten. Letters take up actual space, and household members must handle them at some point while cleaning and organizing.
- It limits competition. Direct mail has much less competition than digital marketing because many dealerships focus almost solely on online strategies. Fewer physical letters mean consumers are more likely to pay attention to what arrives in their mailboxes.
While a potential customer might view hundreds of digital advertisements daily via email and websites, they will receive only a handful of physical ones.
- It improves response rates. Any marketing campaign’s objective is to produce results, and an effective way to do that is by leveraging marketing strategies with a high response rate. Direct mail often has high response rates compared to digital marketing because of how few physical letters consumers receive and must sift through.
- It might expand the customer base. While most consumers prefer digital communications to physical ones, not everyone is tech-savvy. Some potential customers might open a letter from their mailbox before they check their email. These recipients are, of course, in the minority, but they are nonetheless a percentage of the target audience those digital communications will not reach as easily.
Impactful Letters Requires the Best Writing Machine
Automotive direct mail can significantly increase the visibility and effectiveness of your overall marketing campaign. Since physical marketing is less likely to be overlooked than its digital counterpart, it has the frequent advantage of better capturing the viewer’s attention.
However, designing an effective traditional marketing campaign does not mean bypassing technology entirely. Sending out high-quality, personalized correspondence quickly and efficiently might require an innovative writing machine that uses a pen to generate handwritten letters.
Contact us today and discover how Affinitiv’s Genuine Pen can help you create personalized letters that will promote stronger connections with customers and drive brand loyalty.