Automotive Industry: The real reason Email Addresses are important

One thing that has stuck out at me in my years in the Automotive Industry, is data collection for marketing purposes is far from perfect.

Forget postal addresses. My postbox tends to serve as a collection point for \’food\’ my recycling bin to eat. We have gotten so much junk mail in our lives, we are now on autopilot with recycling it.

This is where the humble email address comes in.

Email more than saving paper and ink. For those on devices every day, it\’s about timeliness, ease of response, ability click the number on your smartphone to call etc.

Email Addresses are not about sending emails anymore

This is where the weight of the email address hits home.

Of all the social networks you\’ve signed up for, how many have your email address? 99.9% of them. If you have signed in with Facebook or Twitter, they are using your address from those networks as well.

A lot of the value of digital businesses come from the amount and the quality of the user data. That\’s why these networks are free. We give them our information, in order for us to have fun with our friends, which provides us value.

Customer matching for digital retargeting on social networks is why your email addresses need to be up to scratch.

Facebook has the ability to take an email address list, load it into your Facebook ads manager to put your offers directly into your customer news feeds. A news feed they are tuned into and looking at all the time.

These are customers that know you, that have been to you before and are most likely to purchase again. Smart digital communication is a cost effective way to keep them on the simmer.

Data Quality

Obviously if the email address is not correct you are not going to reach that customer. I also warn against automated cleansing before the @ symbol.

One example I have is my weird name. Yes, my name is spelt with a Y and not an I. However a lot of companies assume this to be incorrect and therefore change the Y to an I in everything (such as my email address) without validating it electronically or personally with me first.

After purchasing a car a few years ago I noticed the Y changing to an I across all the communication I got. I called the dealer as well as the brands head office to get it corrected. I was still in honeymoon mode and wanted to be contacted by them. It kept being changed.

Every time I entered the dealer, I was not asked if my details were still current. My email address remained incorrect.

The missed opportunities were:

1. Service Offers being taken up
2. Dealer noticed I got a set of new tyres and said \”We do that here now. Did you get the email on that?\”.
3. Customer Satisfaction Surveys – The dealer did a great job. I was happy every time.
4. As the car was coming out of Warranty, I assumed I would have been sent something about extended warranty options.
5. Every other bit of communication from the dealer and manufacturer.

I make the assumption that I would have gotten these things, because of the email communication in the first few weeks was very good, before I noticed everything had changed.

We should value our customer database\’s their accuracy highly. Ensure you double check email addresses and monitor bouncebacks. Ensure you include the option to update details at every contact point.

Your business cannot afford for you not to.