Archive for the ‘Automotive Direct Mail’ Category

In my entire career, I don’t think I have ever seen that many lenders specifically focused on our target customer at one place and absolutely never have seen such a combined consensus of positive outlook on the immediate future of the subprime auto finance business.
–Tim Parker, CEO of DealerLink Inc.

After more than 40 years in the car business and in auto sales lead generation, I have been through multiple downturns in our industry. During the last quarter of 2010, I was able to estimate that the industry would begin to see a turn around during and presently, all indicators are certainly pointing in that direction.

A little over a month ago, I had the good fortune of having the opportunity to speak to a group of auto dealers from all over the country at a special finance conference in Indianapolis who were all there looking and hoping for signs that things were starting to turn around for our industry. Also present at this conference were almost all the lenders in the business who were also there to update auto dealers on the state of the industry. In my entire career, I don’t think I have ever seen that many lenders specifically focused on our industry’s target customer in one place and I absolutely never have seen such a combined consensus of positive outlook on the immediate future of the subprime auto finance business. Some highlights included all of the lenders removing the “looked to booked” penalties, revised underwriting guidelines and additionally an absolute total effort by the lenders to let auto dealers know that they had money available and were looking for ways to make deals.

I was asked by auto dealers to provide them with the top 3 strategies they could use to increase sales, lower advertising expenses and keep their cost of sales down.

The very first strategy at the top of the list was special finance leads (or subprime auto finance leads). Even though it’s been a very trying time for the last two and a half years, special finance leads still offer an incredible value for the money. A couple of things pointed out by the lenders at the conference that they were all seeing were: larger down payments, more money being financed and monthly payments increasing not only in dollar amount but in terms as well. It turns out those people with credit scores between 625 and 725 have taken about a 100 point drop in their bureau scores, putting them in unfamiliar territory when it comes to subprime auto finance. These same people still want to drive the nicer cars and are willing to come up with down payments and extend terms to get within budgets.

The second of the three strategies was auto sales leads, which can also fit within the special finance leads category except that because at DealerLink we generate the auto sales leads from over 500 consumer auto finance sites that are listed at the very top of the search engines, we are seeing a wide spectrum of credit scores, which is again a great value for the dealer.

Here are a couple of our most successful consumer auto finance websites:

• NationwideAutoLending.com – ranked #2 at Google for the term “auto loans”
• CapitalCarLoans.com – ranked #1 at Google for the term “car financing”
• AutoLoans.us – ranked #1 at Google for the term “bad credit car loan”
• DealerLink.us – ranked #1 at Google for the term “special finance leads”

Since they only asked me for the top 3 strategies that I would recommend, I had a hard time deciding whether to suggest automotive direct mail or automotive trigger leads. Ultimately, I chose to recommend automotive direct mail because more dealers have experience with auto dealer direct mail marketing albeit not always a good experience. I am unaware of any automotive direct mail marketing companies who are willing to guarantee an auto dealer even a 1% response rate, while DealerLink will guarantee a minimum of 2% on any of our direct mail programs. Additionally, with our one of a kind automotive credit card mailer, DealerLink will guarantee 100% of the dealer’s investment. In more direct terms, if an auto dealer chooses to participate in our automotive credit card mailer and spends $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 or more, we will guarantee enough sales to cover the dealer’s investment, period!

We are also having great success with bankruptcy mailers and other credit score-based direct mail programs that we offer.

There are an incredible number of dealers who have been waiting for good news and I’m proud to say this news has arrived. As an auto dealer, if you have been hesitant about getting back into the special finance leads business don’t miss this opportunity to do so! Pick up the phone today and call Tim Parker, President and CEO of DealerLink, at 704-544-9100 or toll-free at 800-890-8850 and I will help you personally. Try to call the other companies and see how many of the Presidents you can talk to!

Recent surveys show that automotive direct mail is at the top of the list for successful direct mail advertising. Most recent numbers indicate that consumers are responding to auto dealer direct mail about 73% of the time. This is a great improvement over the last few years as automotive direct mail had started to see diminishing returns from 2007 through late 2009.

Auto dealers in the last 25 to 30 years had auto direct mail as a routine part of their advertising plans. Now it appears that direct mail marketing for auto dealers has experienced a very nice resurgence. Here are just a few reasons why any auto dealer, regardless of size or advertising budget, should find room for some direct mail:

Low Costs – High ROI on Direct Mail

One of the great things about auto dealer direct mail is the fact it is so customizable. Any direct mail marketing company should be able to put together a campaign to fit any budget. Don’t let your direct mail company tell you they can’t do this. There are so many different types of automotive direct mail that you want to explore all your options. Since there are so many credit related issues in today’s economy, we have seen the best results when really filtering down by credit score and incomes. The most successful direct mail campaign we have seen is one using a mail piece that is commonly called a snap. It’s the size of a standard business envelope and looks very official and has the highest response rate of any that we have done. There are many formats such as post cards, multi-part in envelopes, give a ways, contests and so on. You will find that most direct mail companies do offer volume discounts usually seeing the discounts beginning around 5000 pieces.

Direct Mail has Flexibility

Automotive direct mail can help you get those incremental sales that make the difference between a month and a great month. Auto dealer direct mail can help you reach your service customers or be used as a lead generation tool which by using the available filtering can target both good and not so good credit customers. If your automotive direct mail company doesn’t provide you with the flexibility to meet your needs, call DealerLink at 800-890-8850. I guarantee that we have the knowledge, skill and experience to get the results you deserve.

Direct Mail Accountability

DealerLink’s auto dealer direct mail programs offer absolute tracking and accountability. We are the only direct mail marketing company that has a call center to take all your calls from the consumers and actually set your appointments based on dealership hours. We actually take the calls, set the appointments and follow up on anyone that misses their scheduled appointment.

Automotive Direct Mail Review

Advertising expenses continue to grow and with the use of a good automotive direct mail company, who will provide you with the filtering, targeting and most of all the accountability of your direct mail advertising, you can lower your costs and sell more cars with a lower cost of sale. If you aren’t getting the results you require call me, Tim Parker, President of DealerLink Inc at 800-890-8850 and I will personally show you how we can get this done. Good Selling!

-Tim Parker
About the Author:
DealerLink President and CEO Tim Parker has been involved in the automotive marketing industry for many years helping thousands of auto dealers across the U.S. increase sales while decreasing marketing costs. Parker’s auto dealer direct mail marketing program is his latest triumph along with his Credit Scored leads program and TRIGGER COMPLETE, the most comprehensive auto trigger leads program ever seen in the auto dealer marketing industry. If you are an auto dealer and want to learn more about how Tim can help you, just visit his website: DealerLink.us.

Any auto dealer who has made it through the last 2 years has to look for ways of controlling advertising expenses and automotive direct mail marketing has proven to be very effective. Auto dealer direct mail marketing can come in many different forms: bankruptcy list mailers, direct mail postcards, credit scored mailers and many others. The smart car dealer utilizes the services of an automotive direct mail marketing specialist like DealerLink.

The most important thing an auto dealer can do is to create and maintain a continuous flow of customers to their dealership. DealerLink has proven to be the best among all automotive direct mail companies and can provide many different forms of direct mail advertising from bankruptcy mailers to pre-approved credit score mailers. 100% of our auto dealer direct mail campaign advertising is FCRA and FACTA compliant. We guarantee that every automotive direct mail campaign will include an offer of credit. We encounter dealers all the time that are unaware of the requirements and are exposing themselves to potentially huge liability because many automotive direct mail marketing companies are not in compliance when it comes to consumer credit related issues.

DealerLink will guarantee that 100% of our automotive direct mail marketing campaigns are absolutely in compliance and we do not do any auto dealer direct mail advertising that isn’t totally backed by a firm offer of credit. All of our direct mail marketing includes a feature that only DealerLink provides: a call center that takes the calls from the consumer responding to the direct mail which means we take the calls, we set the appointments and we do the follow up in the event they don’t show.

All of our direct mail list marketing, including bankruptcy mailers, is guaranteed to be DNC compliant as well. We provide multiple ways for the consumer to respond: toll free number and a vanity website where they can submit their information online. In all cases, they all end up speaking with our call center operators who are highly trained in setting appointments originating from direct mail marketing or bankruptcy mailing lists.

We recommend that any auto dealer direct mail advertising be done in conjunction with credit score based direct mail. It makes no sense to advertise to a consumer for whom you can’t provide financing. We even suggest that with our auto bankruptcy mailers that the dealer associates them with specific credit score ranges. Recently, we have seen our best direct mail campaign results using credit scores ranging from 550 to 720.

DealerLink will customize your direct mail marketing campaign to your specific criteria and guarantee that our direct mail list will absolutely help you sell more cars with higher profits. We offer the only truly complete automotive direct mail marketing advertising when you combine our exclusive mailing list and our call center. We guarantee that our direct mail list is Exclusive by Dealer and will not be sold to another dealer in your market. Give DealerLink a call today at 800-890-8850 for all your auto dealer direct mail or bankruptcy mailer needs.