Customer flow means cash flow in the service lane, and dealerships need to do whatever they can to generate business. Email and direct mail marketing are common, but auto dealer text messaging is a must in today’s market. Texting allows dealerships to reach customers, and get a response more reliably than other marketing methods.
SMS campaigns also present pitfalls that car dealerships must avoid to optimize ROI. Fortunately, many tools exist to enhance SMS marketing. Some assist humans via limited SMS messaging; the best incorporate AI to autonomously generate tailored messages, engage customers in two-way conversations, and book appointments in coordination with your scheduling tools.
Understanding why SMS (Short Message Service) is such a powerful marketing tool is essential to using it effectively. Emails and physical mailings are frequently ignored, but 95% of people open and read SMS messages. Customers and potential customers see every message.
SMS marketing also promotes accessibility. Other messaging apps require proactive sign-up, but anyone with a mobile device can receive a text. As Americans spend more time on their phones, automotive marketing materials only become more visible.
Professional marketers find that SMS improves customer engagement and provides a direct channel for customer interaction. SMS marketing is relatively easy to implement and drives measurable ROI improvement, making texts essential for any multichannel marketing strategy.
How can you take full advantage of what SMS outreach has to offer? Here are proven best practices for incorporating SMS into dealership marketing.
Every dealership should be engaging current and prospective customers through SMS, but many don’t know how to do so effectively. Here are nine tips to get the most out of texting:
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) restricts phone-based marketing activities, including text messages. An effective SMS campaign must be TCPA-compliant, meaning it must obtain explicit customer consent and make it easy to opt out.
TCPA’s exceptions also present important opportunities. For example, manufacturer recalls are exempt from TCPA rules since customers must be notified of potential safety issues even if they’ve opted out of commercial messages. That permits dealership service departments to contact lost customers without violating TCPA regulations.
Customers don’t want to read walls of text, so messages should be as concise as possible. Additional information can be provided through subsequent messages once the customer is engaged and responsive.
If you’re composing your own messages versus using automation, shorter messages also require less effort to write, streamlining overall operations.
Mass texting can be tempting, but most customers don’t respond well to generic messaging. Instead, messages should be tailored to the recipient. Most dealerships already have all the data they need to do this, in their DMS.
For instance, addressing a customer by name and mentioning their vehicle’s make and year helps establish a personal connection. They know the message was written for them and are more likely to respond.
Each message has a greater impact if customers receive it at the appropriate time. In general, dealerships should text during local business hours, avoiding weekends and holidays unless the specific situation demands it.
The content of a message also affects when it should be sent. If a dealership runs an all-day promotion, the corresponding message needs to go out that morning, or as a heads-up the day before—not in the evening when it’s almost over.
Car dealerships should approach customers through professional promotional messaging. Limit industry jargon or, if it’s necessary, explain it in straightforward language. The tone of the text should be warm and inviting, with clear value placed on customer time.
Promotional SMS should avoid “txtspk” slang such as “k,” “brb,” and “tbh.” These terms might be appropriate for more casual businesses, but they don’t project trustworthiness in a dealership context.
Spam is the number-one reason why customers opt out of commercial texting, especially with many SMS providers automatically flagging spam. Triggers include ALL CAPS, excessive special character use, and cramming too many links into a single message.
The first sentence of the text, which displays in the preview on the customer’s phone, should communicate the main purpose of the text at a glance and make it clear it’s not spam. Imagine yourself checking your phone during a busy day: based on the first line, would you open the message?
Every message should end with a call-to-action (CTA), or what the dealership wants the customer to do next. Common CTAs include “book a service appointment” and “visit our website for more info.”
Following the CTA should be as easy and stress-free as possible. Hyperlinks that let customers perform the requested action immediately on their phone often produce the best results.
Many prospective customers are leery of numbers they don’t recognize, so every communication should begin with the dealership and representative identifying themselves to mitigate confusion.
Something as simple as “Hi, this is Elizabeth from Downtown Honda” builds trust by letting recipients know exactly who contacted them.
Customers are increasingly likely to engage with businesses via SMS, but only to a point. Every text must offer distinct value to the recipient, whether it’s a service reminder, a manufacturer recall notification, a promotional offer, or an invitation to leave feedback after service is completed.
Dealerships shouldn’t inundate leads with texts, but they shouldn’t hesitate to reach out either. It’s about finding the right balance. And for many dealerships, it’s about finding the right technology to take care of it for them.
SMS marketing isn’t rocket science, but doing it well is a lot of work. Fortunately, BizzyCar can help. Our AI platform provides powerful SMS marketing with fully autonomous, fully integrated software that does the job for you from start to finish, in line with best practices.
Recall Outreach and Service Engine both use AI agents to contact individual customers directly, combining a comprehensive knowledge of current customers, local vehicles, and corresponding service opportunities with your shop inventory and schedule to solicit and book real-time appointments.
Together, these products cover the range of service-related outreach.
Both products handle every communication professionally with a conversational tone. Dealerships are identified promptly. The AI responds to customer questions, confirms a schedule opening that works for them, and sends the booked appointment info directly to your DMS and service scheduler, with no work needed from your team.
Our software integrates with all leading DMS solutions, and we build custom integrations as needed. Our AI agents pull data from your DMS, facilitating targeted SMS marketing that offers customers real, immediate value based on their car’s recall eligibility or maintenance schedule. Inventory and shop capacity are also tracked, eliminating potential friction points to improve the customer experience.
It’s one thing to understand SMS best practices, and another to experience them in action. Book a demo with BizzyCar today and see what fully optimized SMS marketing can do for your dealership.