Top 5 SMS Workflows to Build for Your Dealership

Are you considering adding SMS workflows to your prospect and customer outreach at your dealership but haven’t yet because you don’t know what to send? 

Here are seven great examples of SMS workflows that you can implement at your dealership immediately to start to get the benefits of SMS engagement with your customers throughout their lifecycle with your dealership. 

Are you tired of arguing with your sales team about lead follow-up after the first few days? Does it infuriate you to see hundreds or thousands of uncompleted tasks every time you log into your CRM system? 

Revival

Create SMS workflows to handle the 30-60-90 days unresponsive lead follow-up. Use a series of questions at each stage to engage your shoppers to determine if they are still in the market for a vehicle. Using this strategy relieves the pressure of your sales team to follow up on potential opportunities and instead lets them focus on the engaged customers. Your sales team will be happier, and you will deliver more vehicles through workflows driven by meaningful messaging. 

Inventory shortages are plaguing dealerships around the United States this May 2021 and will continue to impact the business over the next few months at a minimum. Dealerships need to find inventory, and one of the best places to do is the long list of people the dealership has already done business with before. 

Acquisition

This is an easy SMS workflow to create and implement at your dealership that will get inventory flowing in quickly. With experience, we found starting highly targeted segments works best instead of trying to blanket message everyone who bought a car from your dealership. 

1. Create a target audience from your DMS/CRM
   1. Target a specific (Model/Age) like Chevrolet Tahoe owners 2012-2019 
2. Create your messaging sequence
   1. How many messages to deliver and over what timeframe?
3. Use personalization at scale
   1. Adding the customer name and specific (Make/Model) goes a long way to create trust.
4. Choose your channel Text / Email or both
5. Start your workflow

First Service

Stop trying to schedule people at delivery for an event that won’t happen for 8-12 months from today. Booking these appointments from F&I has the lowest show rates of any appointment set. 

Instead, build a SMS workflow that periodically reaches out to check in and asks the right questions to stay in contact with the shopper during their first months of ownership—establishing continuous rapport with every single shopper. The focus is on increasing the number of sales the schedule the first visit for both new and used sales while doubling or tripling your show rates. All this drives a better, more engaged customer by utilizing a workflow designed to increase a positive experience with your dealership at every interaction. 

After-Sale

As more of the sale moves online, dealerships and technology have collided. In many instances, this has reduced the backend transactional value of many vehicle deliveries, causing profit erosion in the deal structure. Optimally it would be great that every F&I manager followed up on every deal sold to attempt to sell additional products after the sale and after the customer has had time to think about it. Yet this never happens, but if it did, imagine the results to your bottom line. 

Now you can automate it to happen using a workflow that sees the vehicle has been sold without F&I products. This targeted list can then be sent a series of questions to see if they have interest and in which available package. People are much more likely to purchase when they feel comfortable. Using text, you are empowering your customers to learn more from the comfort of their couch. 

Activate

You are sitting on a goldmine of customers who bought and serviced with you. It is sitting right in your DMS, and now is the best time to activate it. People stop coming in for a multitude of reasons, and your job is to uncover the cause. It is impossible and far too costly if you wanted to call all the people in your entire database that have done business with you, and email has such a low open rate that you can’t reach everyone. Yet text can instantly connect you with your customers with as high as a 98% open rate. Don’t wonder start learning about your customers. 

Here are a few quick steps.

1. Verify your customers DMS/CRM information
2. Ask questions to engage your customers
3. Share important updated Recalls/Inspections
4. Book Service appointments with calendar.dealer
5. Put more customers into your service drive with workflow automation.

In conclusion, the impact of SMS workflow automation on your dealership is transformational while using the marketing communication channel that drives the most engagement. Using workflow automation to stay in touch with your customers gives you a competitive advantage. 

There are so many other applications for using workflow automation within your dealership, like coupons, appointment reminders, declined service, birthdays, leas retention, and more. Open yourself up to the possibilities and meet your customer where they live on their smartphones.