How to Sell One to Two More Deals for Each 100 Pieces of Mail You Send!

Written for AutoSuccess Magazine
February 2002

By Scott Joseph

Simple fact number one: You aren’t going to be able to sell cars unless your potential customers know about your dealership.

Simple fact number two: In order to tell potential customers about your dealership, you have to advertise.

Simple conclusion: Advertising isn’t a luxury, it is a necessity.

But, regardless of how you advertise, you need to be able to make sure that you are spending your money wisely. The biggest advantage direct mail has over other forms of advertising is the ability to measure its performance. No other method of advertising can have its results immediately quantified.

Any investment should be guided by results, so lets look at direct marketing. If you mail 5,000 pieces of mail, and 50 of those mailers make their way back into your showroom, you can accurately calculate the response rate of your mailer as 1%. This calculation is even easier if you assign a deadline to respond to the mailer. The statistics on the mailer are easily figured.

Why is this such an advantage? Because this allows for effective testing and measuring, which is the only way of improving your results in the future, and thereby increasing your growth and profit. Can you imagine how your dealership would flourish if you could, through analysis alone, sell one or two more deals for each 100 pieces of mail that you sent? It can be done, and it has been done.

The only way of improving what you do is to find out what you are currently doing right, and more importantly, what you are doing wrong. And, the only way to discover this is to TEST, TEST, TEST!

I have spoken to dealers who don’t use direct mail because “it doesn’t work.” When asked what, specifically, didn’t work about the mailing, they couldn’t answer. When asked how they tracked or tested the responses, most did neither. And, for those dealers who do track responses and amount sold, they don’t look at the reason behind those responses. What a shame! It reminds me of the old saying “Only half of our advertising works. I just wish I knew which half!” Something can be learned from every mailing, and without analyzing every campaign, you can be making costly mistakes by repeating bad mailers, or making even more costly mistakes by giving up direct mail altogether. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it!

So, where do we start? The primary activity should be tracking- keeping records of every criteria on every mailer. Remember- every variable of the mailing affects the overall results. Once there is a solid database of information about our sales efforts with direct mail, one can start measuring results, and testing variables one at a time.

For basic testing, you can break any direct mailing down to three main categories: list, verbiage, and form. Within these three categories, you can look at headlines, offers, giveaways, hooks, checks, check amounts, etc. Other than these three categories, there are other variables that greatly affect the mailing- day of the promotion or time of the month for the promotion, for example. But, only by altering the mail piece one variable at a time can you determine what works the best for your dealership. Start with the big factors- the obvious offer, the main criteria of the mailing list, and so on, and work down to the little ones. Your customer probably doesn’t care if you used blue or black ink, so look at small changes last.

A thorough analysis of your promotion should go well beyond a summary of the event. The particular zip codes that elicited response, the use of a particular giveaway or free gift, the form and verbiage should all be examined for effectiveness. A history of these events should also be examined, to discover trends in your market. This is also useful in helping to eliminate market saturation.

The ability to identify market areas that are the most responsive is also critical. Imagine the value of identifying the market areas that you should invest in, and the ones to avoid. You could eliminate wasted time, effort, and ad dollars in low response markets, and focus on markets that respond. And, by continuously improving the mailing lists in this way, you should see better response rates. Declining promotional results is a problem that most direct mail users suffer through, but can be avoided (and even reversed!) with the proper testing and measuring.

To give you some case study examples: in just this past year, one dealership improved responses 31% by merely changing the headline of the invitation, another dealer improved responses 23% by altering the form, and a third dealer improved by 42% by refining the mailing list. And, by consistent analysis and study, and many improvements over time, one dealer has improved their response by 52% in a single year, and improved sales by 27%! How was this accomplished? By analyzing and altering details as small as the teaser copy on the outside of the form, the color of the form itself, the premium offered, and carefully examining the response to each zip code that was mailed to and eliminating the low responders. Through testing and analyzing every aspect of every event, rather than suffer through diminishing returns, this dealership actually improved their response and sales over the course of the year! There is considerable time and effort involved in all this testing and measuring, but it is worth it in the long run.

Declining performance happens to dealers who don’t test and analyze their results, and instead rely on their own intuition for guidance. You must examine every aspect of every promotion to improve the results of not only your direct mail, but all of your other advertising. But consider the results- selling a couple more cars for every hundred invitations equals big profit!

Next month: The Seven Biggest Marketing Mistakes Everybody is Making, and How to Avoid Them!


Read another AutoSuccess article:

April 2001:
Seven Advantages of Direct Mail for the Automotive Industry

June 2001:

Testing and Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Advertising to Improve Your Profit

July 2001:

Killer List Strategies For Your Direct Mail Promotion

September 2001:
How to Make Them an Offer They Can't Refuse!

October 2001:
The Secret of Out-Performing All Your Other Advertising!

November 2001:
The Number One Strategy to Out-Market Your Competition

December 2001:
Creative That Gets Results!

January 2002:
Secrets to Improve Your Sales and Profit With Direct Mail

March 2002:
The Seven Biggest Marketing Mistakes Everbody is Making, and How to Avoid Them!

April 2002:
Business Rules to Grow By!

May 2002:
The Only Three Ways to Grow Your Business

June 2002:
Your Customers are Speaking To You. Do You Hear Them?

July 2002
How to Attract Quality Traffic

August 2002
Make Money on Your Sales Event Before it Even Begins!

September 2002
Marketing Lists That Work!