Email campaigns have long been a reliable marketing tool for dealerships, but did you know you can get even better results with video email campaigns? According to CampaignMonitor, using video in email marketing campaigns increases open rates by 19 percent, click-through rates by 65 percent, and reduces unsubscribes by 26 percent.

With stats like these, why wouldn’t you embrace video email marketing?

As more dealerships incorporate the use of video into their email marketing strategies, they are heeding the advice of marketing and advertising partners who advocate developing expensive videos for single-purpose campaigns. You want a new campaign? A new (fancy) video is needed.

This level of expense and effort is completely unnecessary. You can develop your own quick and effective email campaigns using video content that you develop in-house. Here are a few tips.

Define your goal

For every email campaign, define a goal. For example: based on research you know that one of the biggest concerns that consumers have when buying a new car is getting a fair trade-in valuation for their current vehicle. You decide that you want to be known as the dealership that offers trade-in valuations guaranteed to beat your competition. This is a long-term marketing goal.

Goals can also be short-term. Let’s say that mid-month you discover your service department is having a slow month and their revenue goal is in jeopardy. Your short-term marketing goal is simply to get more service business, quickly.

Decide on a strategy

The next step is to come up with a strategy on how to accomplish your goal. For your long-term goal, you may decide to create a series of email campaigns that:

• Promote the trade-in widget on your website to get more leads
• Educate customers on how you arrive at trade-in valuations
• Offer every customer a trade-in guarantee

For your short-term goal, your strategy is to create a service special to bring more customers in. Your service manager decides to offer a tire special to appeal to the general public. Additionally, he decides to offer a discount on a new timing belt for customers with 50,000 to 60,000 miles on their vehicles.

Create videos with targeted messaging

Once you decide on a strategy, it’s time to come up with messaging. Remember that most consumers don’t respond to a sales pitch, they respond to a message that has value to them. Create messaging from your customer’s perspective. What is their problem or need, and how are you solving it?

When it comes to trade-in valuations, distrust is the primary challenge to overcome. You can say you offer the best trade-in valuations, but what is going to make your customers believe it? Social proof in the form of a customer testimonial video would be ideal. Additionally, you might create an educational video that shows customers how to use your trade-in widget. This video can be created in-house featuring your used car manager or general manager talking into the camera. Nothing fancy needed.

Approach messaging for your short-term goal in similar fashion. You can offer a special on a timing belt but how is a customer supposed to know if this is something they need? Let the customer know up front that they were identified as potentially needing a new timing belt. Explain why it’s important to get a new timing belt and the dangers associated with a timing belt that breaks. This video could feature your service manager or a service advisor delivering the message.

Send to a targeted list

As with traditional email marketing, sending video email campaigns to targeted lists are a cost-effective method that yields better ROI. This will require the ability to make more videos, but again, these videos do not need to be expensive productions. I guarantee that at least one person in your dealership has video skills, and all they need is a little incentive (and time) to create some. An alternative is to contact your lot services rep and see if they are willing to create video content for a little extra cash.

Video email campaigns are a proven way to increase your email marketing ROI. But you don’t need to create expensive, fancy videos designed for single-purpose campaigns. Developing in-house video content with a targeted message will likely deliver better results than a fancy campaign that an outside marketing partner can come up with.