Over the years, we’ve encountered several dealership marketing companies who produce their own automotive direct mailers. Often times, dealerships will come up with the design in house, and then send the cuts out to a printing company or online print house to be prepared and mailed.
When you choose to present automotive direct mail materials in house, you could be setting yourself up for a situation where your mailers look the same year after year. Having mailers that vary from send to send can benefit your dealership in ways you may never have imagined.
Automotive Direct Mailers: Food for Thought
If you don’t vary them, every year you’re in business, sending out the same mailers year after year will ensure that your prints become out of date at some point. Rather than having this happen, it makes sense to consider producing an up-to-date design each year.
It benefits your marketing when customers see something different from you year to year. Of course, you want to make sure the basic branding elements that set your dealership apart are present in your mailers – logo and colors, for instance, should be present and recognizable in your automotive direct mail marketing materials.
This isn’t to say that you should ignore the importance of previewing your stock on the mailers – it’s obviously imperative to show what you have to offer the client, and naturally you want a potential buyer looking at the vehicles you have for sale.
The Harm in Recycling Designs
Many people feel that using the same designs in mailers will save costs, time, and will produce a mailer that clients are comfortable seeing and expect from year to year. Time and money aside, you may be wrong about the kinds of mailers your clients are looking to see.
Many dealership managers or marketing managers for car lots feel that customers will never actually remember their mailers from year to year. This isn’t what’s important – clients are looking for an updated look, and something that will appeal to them on a situational basis. There’s serious merit to being inventive when it comes to creating great automotive direct mailers for your customer base.
Mix It Up
Mailer templates are out there by the dozens – you can outsource your mailer creation, but if you continue to keep it in house, start with templates that you vary up so they are unrecognizable from the existing template and what other dealerships are doing.
It’s the time of year where many dealerships are ready to redesign their mailers. If your company is in that position, avoid “reinventing the wheel” from year to year. Rely on current marketing materials and design standards to inform your mailer design for changing to a fresh design or work with an outside direct mail company to introduce new designs.
What kind of mailers do you use consistently?
Recent Comments