Secret Sauce to Increase Service Drive Acquisitions: Value Tracking Emails

• Value tracking means emailing your customers their car's value every single month, and people already like tracking things they own, like stocks and home values.

• Monthly value emails keep your store's brand in front of customers on a regular basis, not just when they are due for an oil change.

• Mike calls value tracking "preheating the oven": by the time a customer gets your service drive text, they have already been watching their value for months.

• Old marketing folklore says you need to get in front of someone seven or eight times before they decide to change, and monthly emails help you get there.

• If you already run service drive acquisition, adding monthly value tracking is a straightforward way to likely increase how many customers say yes to your texts.

You send a service drive acquisition text, the customer reads it while waiting on their oil change, and nothing happens. Maybe they were never thinking about selling. So the real question for a used car manager is this: do value tracking emails help service drive acquisition by getting customers ready to say yes before that text ever lands? Mike Crothers, CEO of MOTO(acquire), says they do, and he calls it the secret sauce.

What value tracking actually is

Value tracking is simple. You keep your customers informed about their car's value every single month via email. Nothing fancy, just a regular update on what their vehicle is worth.

The reason it works is human nature. As Mike puts it, "People love tracking their stuff." They track their stocks. They track their home value. They should be tracking their car value too, and they should be getting it from you.

There is a second benefit that matters just as much. A monthly email keeps your brand in front of that customer on a monthly basis. That is twelve touches a year where your store is the one telling them what their car is worth, instead of somebody down the street.

Do value tracking emails help service drive acquisition?

This is where it gets good for the service drive. Mike describes monthly value tracking as "preheating the oven." When a customer comes in for service and you send them a text, they have already been getting their value for the last six months.

At that point, trading or selling is probably top of mind. They are not hearing the idea for the first time from a text in the lane. They have been watching the number move every month.

Mike points to an old piece of marketing folklore: you have to get in front of someone seven or eight times before they will make a decision to change. Monthly value emails are how you stack up those touches before the customer ever pulls into the drive.

What the customer is thinking

Picture the customer who has been tracking their value for six months. They see it going down. Now they are sitting in your service drive, and the thought goes something like this:

• My car is going down in value.

• I don't really want to keep going in for service.

• I want a new car.

• Maybe I should actually say yes to this text today.

That is the shift you want. The service drive text stops being a cold ask and becomes the next step in a conversation you have been having all along.

How to increase your service drive acquisition yes rate

If you are already doing service drive acquisition, Mike's advice is direct: keep your customers informed of their value on a monthly basis. It is one of the easiest ways to likely increase the probability of customers saying yes to your service acquisition texts.

A few practical things to get right:

1. Use your past customer data. Your service customers are already in your DMS. Those are the people you want tracking their value from you.

2. Clean the email list. Validate the emails before you start sending so the messages actually reach the inbox.

3. Send every month. The value of this comes from consistency. A one-time blast does not preheat anything.

4. Connect it to the service drive. The payoff shows up when the same customer gets your acquisition text on their service visit.

There are a bunch of different ways to do this. What matters is that it happens every month and that it comes from your store.

How MOTO(acquire) handles value tracking and service drive acquisition

MOTO(retain) sends past sales and service customers their vehicle's value every month. Mike shared that these value tracking emails have a 36% open rate and 99.5% deliverability. The MOTO(acquire) team does the setup work: validating the emails, pulling in your past customer service data, and sending the emails monthly for you.

MOTO(drive) handles service drive acquisition using DMS data and automated texts. It pushes VIN and miles to your inventory tools, and your sales team is alerted when a customer is ready. MOTO(drive) stores consistently buy about 1% of their repair orders without dedicated service acquisition hires.

Running both together is the point of this video: value tracking warms the customer up, and MOTO(drive) is there when they show up for service. For more on the service lane side, see our service drive acquisition videos and this short on how to buy cars from the service drive.