A July 2016 client survey revealed some interesting insights from AutoHook’s dealer and OEM subscribers. The study’s strongest finding confirmed: What AutoHook customers want, AutoHook customers get.
Due to the success rates dealers have seen when it comes to increasing incremental sales and conversion rates, we’ve recently received several requests for more ways to utilize AutoHook within the service department to drive more appointments and fixed ops profits. Dealers can leverage AutoHook incentives to drive more traffic to their service lane, secure more confirmed appointments, boost the conversion of current service campaigns and initiatives, and ultimately increase service revenue.
Here are 10 different ways to use AutoHook incentive offers to boost your service campaigns:
1. To Secure the First Appointment:
Incentivize customers who have recently purchased a vehicle from your store to schedule their first service appointment. AutoHook incentives can serve as a reminder for customers who have just leased a new vehicle to ensure they stay up to date with their recommended maintenance schedule.
“The first service appointment is step one in the retention process that leads to future vehicle purchases.” - Automotive Digest
2. To Reactivate Past Service Customers:
Use retargeted incentives to reach customers who have not scheduled a service appointment within the last six months to one-year, or using a time frame of your choice. If you utilize Urban Science’s Market Master™, your AutoHook Client Service Specialist can help you pinpoint lost opportunities and create campaigns to target underperforming zip codes or markets.
3. To Push the Upgrade:
Send an incentive via email for any service appointments with an older model to test-drive a new vehicle while they wait. You could get a valuable trade-in for your used inventory, and they can get an upgraded model. It’s a win/win. Your equity mining software can help you target specific customers and incentivize them to trade in a desirable vehicle and purchase or lease a new one. If you didn’t plan ahead, you can login to our dashboard and use the Issue Coupon Code or Issue Instant Reward function to provide incentives to customers on the spot in-store.
4. To Target By Lists:
Dealers can maximize the benefits of offering incentives in the service department by pulling a list of vehicles within a specified mileage range, or a list of vehicles that meet certain criteria that will increase your probability of conversion. For customers who already have an appointment scheduled, use our Bulk Coupon Generator to push appointments already on the books to test-drive one of your cars instead of sitting around waiting for their vehicle to be serviced. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to take a spin in a vehicle that peaks their interest while they wait?
Midwest Dealer Group Example:
A large dealer group in the Midwest Region saw an opportunity to leverage AutoHook to reactivate old service customers who had not been in to have their vehicle serviced in the last year or more.
- They first secured a list of over 3,000 clients who met the set criteria from their CRM.
- They then sent an eBlast to this list and included an AutoHook incentive within their own creative email campaign.
- They used our Issue Instant Reward feature to give customers the promised offer when they scheduled and completed their service appointment.
- AutoHook was able to build a specific campaign, name, and track the overall success of the program based on these efforts. Meaning, we were able to show all the dealers within that group the specific customers (by name) that showed up and received service on their vehicle.
5. To Increase Your Website Appointment Form Fills:
To encourage customers to schedule service appointments online, dealers can use incentives as a reward for customers who book appointments directly on their website’s service page. We can also create a triggered link or an embedded form for specific lists right on your homepage. For those customers who abandon the online service scheduler process, you can recover those unfinished form fills with a retargeted offer. You can also use the Issue Coupon Code feature to encourage customers to schedule their service appointment on your site, or add an embedded test drive link to your confirmation page and email.
6. To Boost Email Campaign Performance:
Including a unique customer coupon code in your email campaigns will help increase your service email conversion rates and also provide you with customer-specific attribution tracking.
7. To Boost Social Campaigns:
Dealers can use triggered links on custom landing pages and send incentives for generic social advertising. Social also allows for many retargeting opportunities to reengage lost clicks or potential service customers. This tactic can add substantial conversion to your social and digital advertising campaigns.
8. To Get More Positive Reviews & Referrals:
Issue an Instant Reward as the perfect way to say thank you for writing a positive review on behalf of your dealership. You can also use AutoHook as an enticement for customers to submit positive reviews, testimonials, or feedback of their experience buying or servicing their vehicle at your location. On the flip side, you can use the Issue Instant Reward feature to any customer who complained or had a poor experience (not that that would ever happen at your store…but know it’s available for you to have in your back pocket, should that problem ever arise). Use the Issue Instant Reward feature for customers who refer your store to their family and friends. Issue Coupon Code can be leveraged to lock in referrals over the phone in the states that allow referral payments.
Real Dealer Example:
A Kia Dealership uses a strong referral program and used our Issue Instant Reward as their fulfillment and measurement tool. We noticed a trend in multiple $25 gift cards being issued to the same people and the dealership had a very high ratio of issued rewards to their other products. AutoHook built a set of special Issue Reward placements, ranging in value from $25 to $200 and marked each as a Referral Gift.
As always, AutoHook completely handled the fulfillment process for them. We were also able to track the specific placements to see who refers the most people to buy and how much they need to offer to incent the best referrals. This same tactic can be used for service referrals.
9. To Use in a Direct Mailer:
To include an incentive in a direct mail piece, your dealership would provide your AutoHook Client Service Specialist with a list of names and addresses, and we would then upload that list to create a unique coupon code per customer to be used in the direct mailer. Our unique codes allow us to track all redemptions and provide you with attribution reporting that validates your ROI.
10. Create Your Own Customized Campaign!
Do you have your own idea on how to drive more customers to your store using AutoHook incentives? Chances are, we can make your idea a reality. Just think of the possibilities! All you have to do is contact your Client Service Specialist and they will set up and build your own unique campaign within our user dashboard. We have already built these types of custom campaigns for several dealers, large dealer groups, and OEMs, and we would love to do it for your dealership as well!
Remember that every coupon code we issue is unique so we can track all redemptions and provide the attribution data to prove which customers came from us. Dealers do not get charged for issuing a coupon code unless the customer physically comes in to redeem their gift. In addition, dealers can choose their own expiration date for all AutoHook offers to push customers to take action immediately.
Offering incentives to your customers is one of the best ways for both parties involved in any business transaction to get something they want. Targeted promotion offers are proven to be effective in increasing showroom and service traffic, inventory turnover, and most importantly, dealership revenue throughout multiple departments.
To set up a customized service campaign, utilize AutoHook’s Bulk Coupon Generator, issue individual or personalized incentives, target customers on social media, or to use AutoHook incentives in other departments within your dealership(s), please email dealersupport@urbanscience.com or call (855) 532-3274 (option #1).
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