CAN-SPAM compliance for all email campaigns (unsubscribe links, sender identification, accurate subject lines)
Email & SMS Marketing for Dealerships
The Most Profitable Messages Go to People Who Already Know You
Your database is full of past buyers, service customers, active leads, and prospects who’ve already engaged with your dealership. Email and SMS are the most direct, lowest-cost channels to reach them — with the right message, at the right time, driving service appointments, repeat purchases, lease renewals, and referrals. We manage the strategy, the execution, and the compliance so your messaging drives revenue instead of hitting spam folders.
Book a Strategy CallSee What We Manage
$36
Average return for every $1 spent on email marketing — the highest ROI channel in digital
98%
SMS open rate — compared to ~20% for email. When a message matters, SMS gets seen.
Email is the workhorse. SMS is the scalpel. Together, they reach your existing audience with the most cost-efficient messaging in your marketing mix.
Email Strategy
Revenue-Focused Email Execution
Every email has a defined purpose, a target audience, and a measurable goal. We don’t send blasts to fill a calendar — we send campaigns written with intent, aligned with what you’re already promoting across search, social, and streaming.
Dealership Email Campaigns
Monthly and promotional email blasts to your full database or targeted segments. New inventory pushes, seasonal sales events, service specials, and dealership announcements. These are the bread-and-butter campaigns that keep your dealership top-of-mind with your existing audience.
Examples:
- Monthly newsletter with featured vehicles and current offers
- Seasonal sales event announcements (Memorial Day, Black Friday, year-end clearance)
- New model launch announcements
- Service department promotions (oil change specials, tire season, brake offers)
- Dealership news and community involvement
Targeted Segment Campaigns
Campaigns sent to specific audience segments based on their relationship with your dealership. Conquest campaigns for cold prospects, retention campaigns for past buyers, re-engagement for lapsed service customers, and special finance messaging for credit-challenged buyers in your database.
Examples:
- Conquest: targeted offers to prospects who’ve submitted leads but haven’t purchased
- Retention: service reminders and loyalty offers for past buyers
- Lease-end: messaging to customers approaching lease maturity
- Special finance: financing-focused messaging to subprime segments
- Re-engagement: win-back campaigns for customers who haven’t visited in 12+ months
Automated Lifecycle Flows
Triggered email sequences that run automatically based on customer actions or lifecycle events. Welcome sequences for new leads, post-purchase follow-ups, service reminder cadences, lease-end nurture sequences, and abandoned appointment recovery. These run continuously in the background, generating touchpoints without manual effort.
Examples:
- Welcome sequence: new lead receives a 3-email introduction over 7 days
- Post-purchase: thank you, first service reminder, review request, referral ask
- Service due: automated reminders based on mileage intervals or time since last visit
- Lease-end nurture: 6-month countdown sequence with upgrade options
- Birthday/anniversary: personalized messages with special offers
Email campaigns are written clearly, sent with intent, and aligned with what you’re already promoting across search, social, and streaming — not sent just to fill a calendar.
SMS Strategy
SMS That Drives Immediate Action
SMS is immediate. Messages are typically seen within minutes — making it ideal for time-sensitive communication. But SMS attention is earned, and overuse burns it. We use SMS strategically — not so often that it becomes spam.
Service Operations Support
Appointment confirmations, service reminders, and vehicle-ready notifications. These are the high-value, low-friction SMS messages that customers actually appreciate because they’re useful and expected. They reduce no-shows, improve service retention, and keep the service lane full.
Examples:
- Appointment confirmation with date, time, and dealership address
- Day-before service reminder
- “Your vehicle is ready for pickup” notification
- Service due reminder based on mileage or time interval
Time-Sensitive Promotions
Flash sales, end-of-month pushes, expiring offers, and limited-availability events. SMS is the right channel when urgency matters and you need the message seen today, not whenever someone checks their email.
Examples:
- End-of-month clearance: “3 days left — 0% financing ends Saturday”
- Flash service special: “Today only — $29.95 oil change”
- Event invitation: “New model reveal this Saturday — RSVP”
- Limited inventory alert: “2 units left at this price”
High-Intent Follow-Up
Direct outreach to engaged shoppers while interest is still warm. When someone submits a lead, visits a VDP multiple times, or starts a credit application without finishing — SMS follow-up reaches them faster and more reliably than email.
Examples:
- Lead follow-up: “Thanks for your inquiry on the 2025 Tahoe — still available. Want to schedule a look?”
- Abandoned application: “You started a finance application — pick up where you left off”
- VDP retarget: “Still interested in the CR-V you viewed? Let us know.”
SMS gets attention. We use it strategically to drive action when timing matters — not as a volume channel. Random blasts that don’t match your advertising? That’s noise.
Audience Segmentation
The Right Message to the Right Customer at the Right Time
Not every message should go to every person. We segment by sales vs. service, customer vs. prospect, recent activity, vehicle ownership, lease maturity, and purchase history — so communication feels intentional, not random.
Recent Buyers (0–12 months)
Post-purchase follow-up, first service reminder, review requests, referral incentives, accessory offers. These customers don’t need new vehicle offers — they need to feel good about their purchase and get pulled into the service cycle.
Service Customers (active)
Service reminders, seasonal maintenance campaigns, recall notifications, loyalty rewards. These are your retention audience — the goal is keeping them coming back to your service department instead of defecting to independents.
Lease-End / Equity Prospects
Lease maturity notifications, upgrade offers, equity position messaging, trade-in valuations. Time-sensitive and high-value — these customers are about to make a purchase decision whether you reach them or not.
Cold / Lapsed Prospects
Re-engagement campaigns for leads that went cold, past customers who haven’t visited in 12+ months, and conquest prospects from third-party sources. Lower expectations on conversion but necessary for database health and reactivation.
Special Finance
Credit-specific messaging for subprime buyers in your database. Financing-focused offers, approval-first language, and second-chance messaging. Completely different tone and content from prime customer communications.
Every segment gets messaging designed for where they are in their relationship with your dealership. Recent buyers don’t get conquest offers. Service customers don’t get cold prospecting emails. Special finance buyers don’t get 0% APR promotions. That’s the difference between strategic email and spam.
Compliance & Deliverability
Your Messaging Only Works If It Actually Gets Delivered
Email and SMS marketing are regulated channels. Send without compliance and you risk legal exposure. Send without attention to deliverability and your messages land in spam folders — or don’t arrive at all. We handle both so your messaging actually reaches the inbox and the phone.
Aggressive marketing and responsible execution are not mutually exclusive. We push for results while protecting your sender reputation, your compliance standing, and your customers’ trust.
What We Handle:
Deliverability is invisible when it’s working. You only notice it when your open rates crater or your domain gets blacklisted. We make sure neither happens.
Marketing Alignment
Messaging That Reinforces Everything Else You’re Running
Email and SMS perform best when they reinforce what shoppers are already seeing across your paid media. When a shopper sees your CTV ad, then gets an email with the same offer, then sees your social carousel, then gets an SMS reminder before the sale ends — that’s coordinated marketing. Every touchpoint compounds the one before it.
We align email and SMS messaging with your paid search, social, streaming, CTV, and display campaigns so the customer experience is consistent across every channel. If a shopper sees your lease offer on Instagram and then receives an email with the same offer and a direct link — that’s not a coincidence. That’s strategy.
How We Coordinate:
Performance Data
Clear, Actionable Performance Data
Email and SMS give you clean, actionable performance data. You’ll know exactly what’s driving action and what needs adjustment — no ambiguity, no vanity metrics.
Email Metrics
Open rate and click-through performance by campaign and segment
Lead and appointment conversions attributed to email
List growth, unsubscribe trends, and database health
Segment-level engagement: which audiences respond, which don’t
SMS Metrics
Delivery and read rates by campaign
Response and engagement performance
Opt-out monitoring and frequency compliance
Conversion tracking by campaign type
(service appointments, lead re-engagement, event RSVPs)
We Show What’s Driving Action
Monthly reporting covers what we sent, who engaged, what converted, and what we’re changing next. If a segment is underperforming, we’ll tell you and adjust. If SMS frequency is generating opt-outs, we’ll pull back. The data drives the strategy.
Over 30 Years of Automotive Marketing Experience
Ready to Turn Your Database Into a Revenue Channel?
If your email and SMS feel disconnected from your advertising — or you’re not using them at all — we’ll review your current setup and show you how coordinated messaging can drive service appointments, repeat sales, and measurable revenue from the audience you already have.