Want more bang for your marketing buck?

This summer ARI teamed up with PSB to deploy a survey on dealer digital marketing trends. While we’re still crunching the numbers, one preliminary result surprised us: Email marketing ranks very low as a priority among dealers and is highly outranked by organic social media.

These priorities are completely out of whack with what we’re seeing in the digital marketing landscape, so if you’re spending more time perfecting your social posts than on drafting your next email newsletter, you’d better read on!

Success on social media today is totally dependent on making an investment in advertising – according to a recent Agoro Pulse survey, retail businesses can expect organic reach on Facebook posts of about 7.58%. If you want to see success on social, your social media strategy needs to get wrapped into your overall paid media spend.

In contrast, the average email open rate for retail sits at approximately 20.95%.

Let’s do some simple back of napkin math:

If you have 1,000 Facebook followers, only about 76 of them will even be shown your post.

If you’re sending an email and have that same list of 1,000 people, virtually everyone on your list will at the very least see your email in their inbox (average email bounce rates hover below 1%), and more than 200 people on average will open your email!

Email marketing is the clear tactical winner. If you aren’t currently actively marketing to your customers via email, here are a few tips to get you started:

• Build your list: Collect email addresses and permission to send to your clients and prospects in-store at the POS and online via the lead forms on your site.
• Pick a vendor: There are rules and regulations on email marketing and using an established email marketing service provider like MailChimp or Constant Contact makes it easy to follow the rules and will provide you with tools and templates to make email marketing a breeze. The best part? If you have a list under 2,000, you can sign up for a free plan!
• Plan your content: One of the biggest barriers for many dealers is that they don’t know what to say in their emails. There is no need to reinvent the wheel: The same great content you used for organic social media is a great fit for your email. Focus on your in-store events, shop rides, team profiles and don’t forget to include your featured products, sales and manufacturer promotions!

Got more email marketing questions? Drop me a line at colleen.malloy@arinet.com or add a comment to this post!

Colleen Malloy is ARI’s director of marketing. Malloy has more than a decade of experience in the powersports industry and previously served as the editor of Motorcycle & Powersports News. ARI creates award-winning software solutions that help equipment manufacturers, distributors and dealers Sell More Stuff! — online and in-store. ARI removes the complexity of selling and servicing new and used inventory, parts, garments and accessories for customers in automotive tire and wheel, powersports, outdoor power equipment, marine, RV and white goods industries. More than 22,000 equipment dealers, 195 distributors and 140 manufacturers worldwide leverage ARI’s website and eCatalog platforms to Sell More Stuff!

Email: colleen.malloy@arinet.com

Phone: 414/973-4323

Website: arinet.com