Marketing Automation For a Car Dealership

The Challenge:

A car dealership wanted to improve its lead generation, nurturing, and conversion rates while reducing its sales cycle and costs. The dealership had a website, social media accounts, and a CRM system, but lacked a unified marketing and sales process that could leverage customer data and behaviour to personalise and automate interactions.

The Solution:

Emarkable recommended SharpSpring as a cloud-based marketing automation platform that could integrate with the dealership’s existing systems and provide the following features and benefits:

1. Lead Capture: SharpSpring enabled the dealership to create web forms, landing pages, and pop-ups that could capture leads’ contact information, interests, and behaviours, and store them in a central database.
2. Lead Scoring: SharpSpring assigned scores to each lead based on their fit, engagement, and actions, such as opening emails, clicking links, visiting pages, or watching videos. This allowed the dealership to prioritise its follow-up efforts and focus on the most qualified and interested leads.
3. Lead Nurturing: SharpSpring allowed the dealership to create workflows that could automatically send personalised and relevant emails, SMS messages, and social media posts to leads based on their stage, segment, and behaviour. For example, a lead who downloaded a brochure about SUVs could receive a series of emails that showcase different models, features, and benefits of SUVs, and invite them to schedule a test drive or request a quote.
4. Sales Enablement: SharpSpring enabled the dealership’s sales team to access and update lead information and activities in real-time, track and analyze sales performance metrics, such as conversion rates, revenue, and ROI, and collaborate and communicate with marketing teams using built-in CRM, chat, and project management tools.

The Results:

After implementing SharpSpring and working with Emarkable, the car dealership achieved the following results:

• Increased Leads: The dealership saw a 15% increase in its lead volume within the first three months of using SharpSpring, due to the improved lead capture and targeting strategies.
• Improved Engagement: The dealership’s leads became more engaged with its content and brand, as evidenced by a 12% increase in email open rates, a 24% increase in click-through rates, and a 50% increase in social media followers.
• Shortened Sales Cycle: The dealership’s sales cycle was reduced by 8% on average, thanks to the streamlined and automated lead nurturing and scoring workflows, which enabled the sales team to focus on the most qualified and interested leads.
• Increased Revenue: The dealership’s revenue from digital marketing campaigns increased by 6.5% within the first six months of using SharpSpring, due to the better alignment and integration of marketing and sales efforts, the improved targeting and segmentation of leads, and the personalised and timely interactions with them.

Typical User Cases:

Here is one example of how the car dealership used  SharpSpring and marketing automation, we experimented a lot:

• New Lead: A person visits the dealership’s website and fills out a form to request more information about a specific car model. SharpSpring captures the lead’s information and assigns a score based on their interest and fit. A welcome email is sent to the lead, thanking them for their inquiry and providing some initial information about the car model they requested. The lead is then entered into a lead nurturing workflow that sends them a series of emails over the next few days, each one highlighting different features and benefits of the car model, and inviting the lead to schedule a test drive or speak with a sales rep.
• New Purchase: Another example was when the dealership was able to create a workflow for customers who had just purchased a car, which included follow-up emails, customer satisfaction surveys, and reminders for service appointments.
• Targeted Emails: Another workflow was created for customers who had expressed interest in purchasing a car but had not yet made a purchase. This workflow included targeted email campaigns with personalized content based on the customer’s preferences and needs, as well as reminders for test drives and follow-up phone calls.

Overall, the car dealership was able to use Sharpspring and marketing automation to streamline their sales and marketing processes, increase efficiency, and ultimately drive more revenue. The dealership was able to focus on building relationships with their customers and providing excellent customer service, which resulted in higher customer satisfaction and retention rates.

This case study demonstrates the effectiveness of using Sharpspring and marketing automation for car dealerships. By leveraging these tools, businesses can improve their sales and marketing efforts, streamline their processes, and ultimately drive more revenue. Emakable’s expertise in implementing and managing Sharpspring can help businesses of all sizes achieve these results.

The dealership's leads became more engaged with its content and brand, as evidenced by a 12% increase in email open rates, a 24% increase in click-through rates, and a 50% increase in social media followers.

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