Dealer Customer Retention Marketing: Reactivate the CRM List You Already Have

• Most dealerships have tens of thousands of past customers in their CRM who are not being contacted in any meaningful way.

• If your store is not sending past customers a reason to hear from you, another dealer is, and that dealer gets the next deal.

• A monthly email showing customers what their car is worth keeps your store's name in front of them until they are ready to buy.

• MOTO(retain) sends past sales and service customers their vehicle's value every month, helping you acquire inventory and sell cars from traffic you already have without spending more on ads.

Mike Crothers puts it plainly: "Most car dealerships have 30, 60,000 plus people sitting in their CRM. Doing what? Absolutely nothing." Those are people who already bought from you or serviced with you. They know your store. And most dealers are not doing any real dealer customer retention marketing to keep that relationship alive between purchases.

That database is not a list of dead leads. It is the most qualified audience your store will ever have, and it is sitting idle while you spend money on ads to find new people.

Why dealer customer retention marketing comes down to staying top of mind

Mike's point is simple: if you're not sending that email, someone else is. Your past customers are getting messages from other stores, from online buying sites, and from anyone else who wants their car or their next purchase.

So picture a customer who is finally ready to buy. They know what their car is worth because someone has been telling them every month. They keep seeing that dealership's name, image, and likeness. As Mike asks, who do you think they're going to choose? The store that went quiet after the sale, or the store that kept showing up with something useful?

That is the whole game with past customers. You do not need to be clever. You need to be consistent, and you need to give them a reason to open the message.

How do you reactivate a dealership CRM database?

The answer Mike gives is to send your customers the valuation on their car, every single month, until they buy with you. A vehicle value is about the one thing a past customer actually wants to see from a dealership. It is personal, it changes, and it answers the question they are already asking themselves: what is my car worth right now?

Here is what that monthly touch does for the store:

• Keeps your name in the inbox. The customer sees your dealership every month, not just when you run a sale.

• Builds awareness of equity. When customers know what their car is worth, the conversation about trading in gets easier. This is the heart of dealership equity mining.

• Brings in inventory. Customers who see a strong number on their current car are more likely to bring it to you, which helps your used car department acquire more vehicles.

• Uses traffic you already paid for. These customers are already in your CRM. Reaching them does not require a bigger ad budget.

The key word is every month. A one-time blast to the database gets a short bump and then fades. Monthly vehicle valuation emails keep you in front of past car buyers for the whole time they own the vehicle, so you are there on the day they decide to make a move.

How MOTO(retain) handles this for your store

MOTO(retain) sends past sales and service customers their vehicle's value every month. That covers the buyers in your sales history and the people who come through your service drive, which is a big share of the database most stores leave untouched.

The emails are built to actually land and get read. MOTO(retain) value tracking emails have 99.5% deliverability and a 36% open rate. For a store that has been letting its CRM sit, that means a large part of the list is seeing your name and their car's value on a regular basis.

MOTO(acquire) works with hundreds of dealers to do exactly what Mike describes: acquire more inventory, sell more cars, and retain more customers with the same traffic they already have, without spending more on ads. If you want to go deeper on this approach, browse more videos on customer retention and equity mining.

The bottom line

Your CRM is already full of people who chose your store once. The question is whether you are the dealer who keeps them informed every month, or the one who lets another store do it. Reactivate the list, send them what their car is worth, and stay in front of them until they buy with you.