Digital marketing has numerous components, many of which can be valuable to a collision repair business in today’s world. Here at PSG, we’ve found that pairing digital marketing practices with traditional marketing methods is the best way to ensure you connect with more of your market.
Many auto body shop owners focus solely on one digital marketing channel, thinking that it will give them all the exposure they need. Typically, they’ll focus on email marketing and treat it as their “silver bullet”, sending out email after email, certain their customers are reading every one of them.
Here’s a sobering fact: there’s a good chance that your emails aren’t even reaching their inbox. Yes, email marketing can be a good tool, but only if you use it right.
PSG is all about using what works in a way that works best for your business. It’s about finding balance in your marketing output, combining the right touchpoints and always offering something of value to your customers.
That’s why we’re focusing on email deliverability. Sure, you might have an amazing email campaign in mind, but do you have what it takes to make your emails end up in the primary inbox of every customer, every time? Let’s find out.
What is email deliverability and why it matters?
In a nutshell, email deliverability is the ability of the sender and their emails to reach the inbox of the recipient. To achieve this, you need to have a trustworthy sender reputation, but also implement the right steps and practices every time.
Now, we are not talking here about the delivery rate, this is a separate metric. The delivery rate just means that your emails were delivered to the recipient, but whether or not they wound up in their inbox, promotions, or spam is anyone’s guess. And as you know, if it’s not in their inbox, chances are that they’ll never even open the email.
In fact, we’ve found that agencies in the industry will use the delivery rate to mislead body shop leaders into thinking that a high delivery rate is a sign of a successful email campaign. In reality, the emails might have been delivered, but chances are that they wound up in the spam folder.
That’s why deliverability is so important – it guarantees that the email reaches the correct inbox, not the spam folder. There are several factors that impact email deliverability, so here’s what you should keep in mind.
The factors that impact email deliverability
Deliverability is not a set it and forget it type of deal. It requires constant work and optimization to prevent the slow and subtle deliverability deterioration that can occur over time.
To do this consistently and maximize the chance that your emails reach your customers, take into account the following:
- Sender reputation. If the recipient’s internet service provider (ISP), such as Xfinity, Cox, Time Warner etc., deems you untrustworthy and spammy, your emails will never reach the inbox. Your reputation is based on important factors like the bounce rate, the volume of emails you send, and recipient behavior – whether or not they opened the email or if they ever flagged your emails as spam.
- IP and domain reputation. Your IP is a unique set of numbers assigned to your shop’s internet connection. If it’s trustworthy and secure (meaning that you have a dedicated IP), your emails will have a higher likelihood of reaching the inbox. Domain reputation, on the other hand, is the trustworthiness of your domain, meaning that your website and its information need to be clear, relevant, and secure.
- Cleanliness of your email list. If your email list contains duplicates, typos in the addresses, or if you constantly send emails to unresponsive recipients, you need to eliminate them from your list. Cleaning the data from your email list regularly will help you improve deliverability.
- Relevant and engaging content. As always, your emails must contain quality content. Good content will inspire positive action, while spammy content riddled with typos will send you immediately to the spam folder.
Get started with email deliverability
So, what can you do to improve the deliverability of your emails? For one, understand that this is a process and it requires you to:
- Audit your email strategy.
- Measure deliverability.
- Monitor performance.
- Clean your email lists.
- Tailor and personalize your email content.
- Keep optimizing your emails.
Be wary, though, you need to find the perfect balance between frequency and value, or you risk people unsubscribing because you’re sending them too many emails. What’s more, make sure to invest time and effort into producing content that’s interesting and important to your customers, not just to you.
Build an omnichannel approach
Email is not the be all, end all of marketing. It’s not even the most powerful tool in digital marketing. However, if you use it in conjunction with other marketing methods, well then, you’re onto something. At PSG we believe in an omnichannel approach to collision repair marketing that ensures you interact and engage with your customers on multiple channels, both online and offline.
Don’t think that email alone will cut it, instead, combine email with other effective methods. For example, if you alternate your email campaign with traditional marketing, you’re more likely to reach more customers and elicit engagement. After all, a business that takes the time to send a letter must care more for its valued customers than the one that just keeps spamming them with irrelevant emails.
We do it all and we do it right
The best part about all of this? The PSG team can do it for you. If you’re not an email marketing guru and can’t be bothered with all of this but you want results, then let PSG take over your email marketing and ensure that your emails reach the right people at the right time.
But we’ll go a step further. We’ll make sure to devise a marketing approach that’s just right for your business. Combining the right email strategy with other marketing methods, and scaling it all to fit your company’s goals is what will help you retain your existing clientele and bring more customers to your door.
Feel free to get in touch with our team to see how we can ensure your emails don’t go to waste, and how you can capitalize on other, complementary marketing tactics in 2021.
