Savvy car dealership owners know that direct mail isn’t the dinosaur many people think it might be. In fact, even in the 21st century, using car dealer direct mail to target both prospective and existing customers can still lead to much higher sales and engagement than you might have anticipated.
Of course, it’s not as easy as all that. Adopting direct mail practices to the particulars of car dealerships isn’t something you can just do without a little thought. If you want to know how to integrate car dealer direct mail into your dealership’s marketing strategies, here’s a great guide on how to accomplish just that.
Fine Tune Your Targets with Car Dealer Direct Mail
Reaching your target audiences is the most important part of any direct mailing strategy, and that goes for car dealer direct mail as well. If you’re too narrow, you’re leaving prospects on the cutting room floor; too broad and you’re just wasting time and money. Unless you’re mailing out to an established list of customers who have bought cars from you in the past, you have to strike a good balance. That is, of course, not always easy to do.
So how do you target car dealer direct mail prospects? Geographic region is one way, as it lets you be as particular as you want. Zip code, block, neighborhood – anything’s possible. This is just the beginning, though – you often need more data to get your target demographic just right, especially when it comes to selling cars.
Do you specialize in used vehicles versus new? Trucks and SUVs versus sedans and compact cars? Sports performance vehicles or commercial fleets? Think about financial status, customer age, and other instances. You’ll want to send that car dealer direct mail detailing your minivan stock out to families with kids, for example, and that will require researching and refining your mailing list to the places they tend to live nearby.
Make Your Mailer Useful – Add Value
What’s the worst thing that happens to your car dealer direct mail? Getting ignored. Prospects toss what they think of as “junk mail” in the trash all the time. What you’ve got to do is make sure your mailer stands apart from the rest of the marketing materials they get every day – and that means you have to get it together.
You need more than clever marketing slogans. Even the smartest mailers get tossed in the trash, after all. So how do you crack the code? By presenting your mailer as having as much value as possible. Getting your targeted audience to pause before throwing out your mailer is the goal here. To do that, your mailer needs to have added value to make those prospects pause.
You need to choose effective tools and strategies to accomplish this goal. Target your added value carefully, and make sure it’s going to appeal to the demographic you’re focusing on. If you’re sending out mail to customers who bought their vehicles from you recently, include discounts and coupons for free oil changes and car washes when they bring in their vehicle for regular servicing, for example.
Even if you’re targeting individuals who aren’t customers, you can still add value to your mailings. Including mini calendars or refrigerator magnets that have been branded with your dealership’s logo and contact details is an excellent method. Anything that will stick around a prospect’s house and not get immediately thrown out is one that puts your dealership in mind when they’re thinking of shopping for a new car.
Car Dealer Direct Mail Packaging Preferences
The 21st century hasn’t stopped your mailbox from filling up every day with fresh stuff from the post office. Granted, now it’s mostly bills, but ending up with a nice colorful mailer can actually be a pleasant change of pace once and a while! Of course, it’s only when the mailer itself piques the interest of the recipient that it even gets a chance to be looked at. Otherwise, it’s right in the trash.
This is why choosing the right packaging and presentation is such an effective direct mailing strategy. Using unique methods to package and present your marketing materials makes recipients instantly interested in what they’re pulling out of the mailbox, even if it is “just” a piece of car dealer direct mail.
In this case, it’s usually enough to avoid using plain white envelopes. Even better is when you combine presentation with added value marketing. This gets you a bigger, weightier package that will spark the attention of a recipient even more – and that will get your mailer opened and looked at!
Las Vegas Color Graphics Has Your Back for Direct Mail Marketing
Having trouble figuring out how to design or tweak your car dealer direct mail marketing strategy? Don’t know how to identify your target audience or haven’t the foggiest idea as to what you should include in your marketing copy? Don’t worry – help is right here waiting for you. Las Vegas Color Graphics has what it takes to make your next campaign a success!
Las Vegas Color Graphics is a skilled and experienced direct mail print provider that’s been around for more than 40 years. That’s why we’re known as the premier print shop for the Las Vegas and southern Nevada area. We’ve seen and done it all – and that means we have both the tools and the knowledge to take any old direct mail marketing strategy and change it into something amazing.
We do it all here at Las Vegas Color Graphics, starting with layout and design and ending with mailing out your marketing materials ourselves so you don’t have to. If you’re looking for the best print partner around for your car dealership’s mail marketing campaign, contact us today!
