Automotive Email Marketing and Best Practices

Prospect Email Deployment Services

An email marketing campaign can be designed to support reaching an identified automotive audience with personalized relevant messaging. It is important to note that the email design guides for prospecting are much more stringent than CRM marketing to accommodate for spam filter issues. CRM-based emails can be much more flexible with their design and subject line selections as the recipients have already identified a connection to the sender.

Gone are the days where simple trigger words or excessive punctuation is what would doom a creative to complete failure. ISPs, email systems, and end users have become a lot more sophisticated and defined for what they are willing to accept and receive, and every marketer must adapt. Reputation, process, and creative all now need to be equally considered. These best practices guidelines have been developed by the collaboration of cross-functional teams and industry resources, pooling their knowledge and expertise to help make clients’ campaigns a smashing success. The specific rules will continue to change on a frequent basis, as will success rates, but these helpful suggestions will assist any marketer towards the right track for successful considerations. This document outlines creative guidelines, standard best practices and requirements to deliver an email prospecting campaign.

Creative Approach

Subject Line

The subject line is like the outside of the envelope. In addition to being a key determinant by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on whether the message is delivered, put in the junk/spam box, or the primary inbox, it is what motivates the reader in the first 1-2 seconds of viewing to open the message.

Subject lines should be short (50 characters or less), absent of key “spam” words and provide a compelling and direct reason for consumers to open the message. It should be clear and honest as to what the recipient should expect when opening the message.

From Name and Address

For CAN SPAM compliance, the “from” name must be that of the client as the perception of the consumer is that the message is coming from the client. The “from” line should be less than 50 characters. Additionally, all emails must contain a physical mailing address for the client and an opt-out link. This can be a client’s own opt-out link or it can be provided. Note, any suppliers involved are only deploying the email on behalf of the client.

Fonts

Use universally available fonts (Arial, Verdana, Tahoma or Times New Roman). Any other fonts will resort to a default font if the recipient doesn’t have it installed on their computer. Minimize the number of fonts, sizes and colors for an overall more efficient look and design. Avoid using non-standard punctuation/symbols, as not all receiving ISPs/email systems render them correctly across all devices and operating systems.

Headers & Pre-Headers

Use of message headers and navigation menus, if applicable, is recommended. These should be used to greet the user, has a short email summary, and should come above the message/in the preview pane and ideally be integrated into it. This is good for mobile users. Just remember to keep it short!