Project Background
Email marketing was an unexplored avenue for Meade Auto and they were open to its potential as a tool to help create awareness and sell cars. To this end, Meade approached eROI for help in implementing email marketing for their Lexus dealerships. Meade's goal was to promote the Service Department as the only place to have a Lexus serviced.
With their luxurious waiting areas - complete with leather sofas, flat screen televisions, and a complete espresso bar - Meade was already walking the walk. They now sought eROI's advice on how to talk the talk through an email broadcast targeted to past customers. Not knowing what to expect, the service manager said he would "do cartwheels through the show room" if the campaign brought anyone through the door. In the end, the results defied all expectation.
Meade worked with eROI to define their goal for this email campaign. Qualitatively, Meade wanted to have a sophisticated brand presence reaching the inbox of past customers. Quantitatively, Meade really didn't know what to expect. Instead, they relied on benchmarks set by eROI that were based on the average results of similar campaigns. Meade wanted to use their goals to firmly plant a stake in the ground by which to measure actual results for reads, clicks, conversions, sales, and ultimately the overall ROI of the project.
Finding a targeted audience is crucial to the success rate of any email campaign. The higher in quality the leads are, the more likely a sale will result from marketing to them. With this in mind, eROI and Meade wanted to find a way to reach the most qualified audience. It was determined that the recipients of this email would be those with whom a clear business relationship had been created in the past. These would be people who had at one time or another bought, or had at least shown interest in, a Lexus and that were familiar with the Meade name.
The challenge was to find these email addresses within several different computer systems that Meade Auto uses to store customer data. The eROI team worked with the Meade staff to comb the through their customer management platforms, management software and online subscription database. In the end, eROI gathered
3,390 email address of quality prospects. Now all that was left was crafting the right message.
With the importance of consistency in mind, the email template that eROI and Meade came up with was designed with the classy and sleek look and feel of the Lexus brand. The imagery highlighted the amenities of the waiting room and Meade's world class service, while the design and content provided a clear, impossible to miss choice of offers - 10% off service or a free Lexus-branded wine set. It is a simple truth of email marketing that a clear and concise call-to-action is what makes an email campaign truly successful.
Results
The campaign was launched on a Wednesday afternoon. The promotion lasted for 45 days.
The ROI of this campaign was 3417% - over 11 times Meade's goal of 300%. Furthermore, Meade received many positive mentions from customers on the convenience of the email and on receiving such a "nice-looking email." Both quantitative and qualitative goals were exceeded.
It is worth mentioning that just 291 of the 3,390 people who were sent emails in this campaign generated $175k in revenue. This is less than 9% of the total list. The significance of this is that while this campaign was an unbelievable success that generated an unprecedented ROI for Meade Auto, there still remains vast room for growth...
Observations and Impact
The folks at Meade Automotive Group are ecstatic with the amount of revenue this initial email campaign generated. With continued efforts, eROI is confident that this success will continue. The keys to this campaign were consistency, targeted leads (there were only 12 unsubscribes from the entire list) and strong calls-to-action. By sticking to this formula, your next email marketing campaign may be just as lucrative as Meade's, and eROI would love to show you how.
Perhaps you will be the next person doing cartwheels.
