9 Tips for Reactivating Your Contact List

If you have been running your dealership for at least a year you likely have accumulated a decent number of contacts of leads and past buyers. And if you are like most dealers, these contacts just lie dormant in your database without you being aware of their inherent potential.

Most of these contacts may have never bought a car from you. Or they even never visited your dealership. But you have acquired them — hopefully — through legal channels. These channels have almost certainly asked these people for their consent to receive occasional calls or text messages from you.

Now, they may be 1 year or 5 years old but chances are they are still living in the area, and they likely will buy again. So why not activate these contacts and send them occasional offer?

Here are a few tips on how to reaching out to your database of past customers and leads.

1. Compliance

Before we talk about the process of talking to customers, a few words on compliance. The rules and regulations put in place are there to “ensure that people do not receive communications that they do not want to receive”. This has several components.

For one — as you likely know — robo-calling and sending text blasts to consumers are illegal. But this is not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about here is sending an occasional (maybe every 4-6 months), personalized text message to individual leads (P2P) with a specific offer to start a conversation. And before you wonder — yes this is legal. They gave you permission to market to them when they opted-in for the lead form. The only thing is that you need to give you them a way to opt-out. This is commonly done by replying 'stop'. By following these requirements you should be good to go.

Here's a white paper to learn more about compliance when it comes to text messaging consumers in the U.S.

With this out of the way let's get into the interesting part.

2. Segment your list

As marketers already know, segmenting customers is a key success factor in the reactivation effort. In this new era, businesses must segment customers in order to talk to them the right way.

First dimension of segmentation is their relationship with your company. Have they been a buyer, visited your dealership, call or email with you, or did they just appear as a lead in your database without any further touch points?

Also, it makes sense to segment by age: how long ago have the leads had interest in buying a car. A lead that was in the market 3 years ago is more likely to be looking for a new car than someone who just bought 6 months ago.

Third, their interest in cars. Were the interested in trucks, cars, SUV, or maybe a family fan. Use this information to talk to their interest and situation.

Finally, separate by acquisition source: how did this lead come into your database? From a lead sell, your own marketing, a referral? All these channels may create different entry points for talking to your leads.

All these segmentation angles should allow you to deepen your understanding of these leads. Then you can talk to them very specifically so that you don't come across as the average marketer. Also, the warmer the leads are the more often you can reach out to them. Keep frequency to once per 8 to 12 months for leads that didn't have considerable touch points with your dealerships. But to your past customers you can send a message every 3-4 months.

3. Communicate through different channels

Thanks to marketing automation, email communications have become very easy to deploy. And email can still be effective for customer communications. But relying entirely on email may annoy lapsed customers, not to mention leave you exposed to possible spam traps.

That's why I recommend texting. It has a much higher response rate. But there are also other options available: postal mail, retargeted display advertising, social media, your website. You can add them to the mix to broaden your reach and keep your customers interested in your messaging.

4. Use proven offers

Reactivation campaigns are no different from your usual marketing angles when it comes to the offer. You are reaching out to potential prospects that may or may not be in the market for another car. So to reel them in you need a good hook, i.e. your offer. This can be discounts or bonuses and you should look into your previous marketing campaigns to find successful offers to reuse here.

Here are just a few examples:

$500 Off Down Payment

$1000 Off Down Payment

$500+ Above Trade in Value

Special Financing $499 Down

Any Local Promotions or Events, Offer Tickets

Free Oil Changes for a Year

4 Free Oil Changes

Up to $1000 of Future Repairs

Free Window Tint

$250 Gift Cards

5. Don't just pitch

Yes, so far we have talked about sending offers to your past customers. But don't just pitch them. Mix offers with "thank you" notes after they purchased, casual birthday greetings with a special discount, or an invitation to an event you host or participate in. There are many ways you can connect with your database without being that sales guy all the time. If you only reach out to pitch and sell you will run the risk of burn out your list.

6. Optimize your reactivation messaging over time

Creating a new offer or test a creative variation is a great way to improve your results. When it comes to testing, there are many variables that can be tested. From creative content, to personalization, to the cadence of the touch points like email marketing, timing, and media channel. Testing is the foundation of successful marketing. Without it you'll never realize the full potential of your reactivation campaigns.

7. Clean up your data.

Data hygiene is important, especially when it comes to retention and reactivation. If your consumer’s email address has changed, you need to keep up! Or, perhaps, don't. Today’s consumers change email addresses often, and they will not hesitate to unsubscribe from your e-mail list. Especially if they find the content you send on a regular basis is not relevant. Deleting emails and phone numbers of leads that opted out on a campaign will pay off. Your database is becoming useless if it consists mostly of dead contacts and wrong information.

8. Be personable

Even if you are automating parts of your outreach, it is important that you keep your messaging personable and one-to-one. The messages have a much bigger impact when people feel they are writing with a person than being on the receiving end of an automation or a bot. So replying to their questions in a way that shows that you care will go a long way. This way you can stand out and differentiate yourself from your competition.

9. Make it easy for them to respond

Anything that’s in your customer’s way will reduce conversion. Look for ways you can remove obstacles that may be holding your customers back. For example, if you are using web-forms to qualify them, pre-fill them with the customer’s information. In short, streamline the process as much as possible.

Reactivate Your Database On Autopilot

While it is absolutely possible to activate your database yourself we offer this as a core service. Professional and personalized. With our help you can drive more sales for your dealership without spending a dime on advertising.

Want to learn more? Schedule a call with us below.