Overusing auto-response emails could be killing your sales...

In today's fast paced world of short consumer attention spans and small windows of opportunity there is a real need for efficiency in customer communication and autoresponse emails are a critical tool used in sales of all kinds. Although a powerful way to keep ypur sales team in front of your customers there is a time and strategy that needs to be remembered before setting up your auto-reply schedule! The marketing pros at V12 Development had this to say about auto-reponders: "When your dealership is CLOSED, and someone submits an inquiry, there should be an EMail that goes out to creatively express you’re closed at the moment (and that someone will contact them FIRST THING in the morning). THAT IS IT!"

Social Media Marketing pro and automotive sales manager Mike theCarGuy recently added to the auto-response conversation with this post:
"As the sales manager its part of my job to inspect what I expect from my sales team and one of the areas most often overlooked is the emails being sent out to our customers. A good part of each day is spent reviewing the outgoing emails to ensure not only accuracy but also the quality of the message, call to action etc. In addition I am always doing mystery shopping to see whats going on in the car biz and I sometimes find things that I really like... most of the time I find myself screaming at my screen as I find yet another haphazard, poorly written or just plain lazy attempt at an email! SERIOUSLY FOLKS?!! ITS 2016 C'MON! Most dealership CRM's automate many emails to streamline a salespersons daily work load and I get that, but the emails that are set up to go out really, REALLY need to be scrutinized...

I receive emails from salespeople all over So Cal and at nearly every point there seems to no one looking over the sales process or at least the tools being used in it. One of my own biggest pet peeves is the format of the text, if you write an email in Word and copy it into your dealerships CRM it is imperative that you clear the formatting! Many times the text will look all the same in the CRM however when a customer opens it the font is in different styles, and sizes! I have email accounts with Outlook, Yahoo and GMail and will send myself every new email in addition to my own work email address to be sure it looks consistent in all servers.
Another issue I have is the continuity of an email, take a look at the email below. It was sent from the salespersons email address however the body clearly has the 'sales managers' name and is supposed to be coming from him. Not only is it obvious that it was automatically sent but the signature line is also auto filled... with the SALESPERSONS name and contact info! How legit does this dealer seem?

Every day I see emails from fairly successful dealers with little things like the auto fill tags not populating correctly, "here is the information about the <Make> <Model> you requested". As an industry we seem to make it so hard for a customer to do business with us! After a customer has gone to your website, looked through your inventory and clicked a vehicle display page why oh WHY would you email him back a series of questions asking him to 'tell you more about the car he wants' or ask him to call YOU so you can get more info? Worst of all, in my opinion, why would you direct him back to the website he was ALREADY on with a link?! Early on in sales I was taught 'its the little things that make you big, and its the little things that bring you down'.... lets focus on making it as easy as possible to be our customer and keep an eye on those little things!"