Sales events need to be more sophisticated

In general retail sales events or promotions kind of blend into one another and, in the case of the great DFS, they can seem to be permanent in nature and whilst I’m not suggesting that these ongoing promotions are anything less than genuine, surely customers will eventually become immune to sales events and therefore they’ll lose their impact. Taking car retailing specifically over the years sales events have been fairly predictable i.e. one in January and a spring/summer one, in recent times, and increasingly so as more dealers embrace the power of the net, they are becoming much more commonplace all year round.

The problems facing dealers who are trying to entice more customers through the doors to have a chance of selling more cars, is that with advertising and promotional materials the costs can run into thousands and therefore before a dealer can vouch for any success he has to at least cover his expenses.

If dealers have set a target of units they expect to shift for, say a mid month sales event, to be a success the business has to be incremental and not just the same amount of cars and profit they would have made but condensed into a shorter period of time but ultimately producing the same result.

With the increasing force of the internet in car sales e-mail data capture is becoming a vital marketing tool for dealers who can target customers who have already bought cars but more importantly buyers who are maybe still in the market but haven’t yet made that purchase, Certainly with a sales campaign what better way for the car dealer of the future to have a low-cost high impact campaign directed at a specifically targeted audience, where messages and offers can be updated quickly and easily. The future of car sales in this country will surely depend on dealers being able to control costs and marketing spend but still compete in a dwindling market and remain profitable.

From the point of view of a customer to receive an e mail promoting a particular car or deal at any given time, without having lots of unnecessary mail to open, means that they can respond immediately if there is any interest and can opt to be updated at all times of any special offers or deals which may be available until they have bought a car and beyond. Of course if they can opt-in they can also opt-out and the last thing any dealer wants is to end up in the junk folder so the more carefully targeted these campaigns are the better for everyone.

This kind of sale will enable car dealers to have more promotions which can be more subtle than great big posters plastered everywhere, blue crosses stuck on car windows and young salespeople dressed up as characters from “the invincible’s”. The whole thing can be more personalised and with the cost of marketing by website and e-mail a fraction of the cost of traditional point of sale promotions, the money saved can be used to offer some real incentives to customers interested in buying that product and getting a great deal.

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