Whether you’re in a year-end push or looking to set your parts team up for a demanding year ahead, you’re likely looking to expand your buyer audience. This is a logical approach, but a wholesale growth strategy does not end with adding more customers. That’s only the first step. Of course, growing your customer network is worth celebrating and absolutely needs to be a priority. Expanding your buyer network creates opportunities and diversifies your profit streams. However, once you add buyers, you need to make sure they continue to be consistent, loyal customers rather than shops that order once and then vanish.
This is where a two-phased approach to shop marketing comes into play, driving customer acquisition and supporting an equally critical retention strategy. Obviously, you can’t retain customers you don’t have, but expanding your customer base is only the first piece of the puzzle. A strategic parts wholesale campaign should include a retention component to help promote long-term growth initiatives.
Here’s a quick breakdown of customer growth campaigns and retention campaigns, plus a look at how they work together to promote consistent customer expansion & loyalty:
Wholesale Growth Marketing
As stated previously, you can’t retain a customer that you don’t have, making a targeted customer acquisition approach a smart, strategic first step – with an emphasis on strategic. Without identifying ideal or likely customers, your marketing campaigns will yield negligible results, based more on luck than data or insight. Casting too wide of a net only creates a customer base (to use the term loosely) filled with unreliable buyers.
The OEC eMarketing platform, as a counter example, leverages ecommerce data to find white space in your market (i.e. ideal customers for your dealership). It identifies shops that have not previously ordered from your brand of parts (likely need a supplier) and are not currently attached to a dealer. On average, dealers leveraging this approach experienced a 38% increase in attached shops. This focus on targeting prospective buyers establishes a strong foundation for converting newly attached shops into reliable, long-term customers that support sustainable growth.
On average, dealers leveraging this approach experienced a 38% increase in attached shops
Customer Retention Marketing
Now that your dealership has these newly attached shop customers, it’s important to keep them engaged and ordering (this is also why targeting the right customers is critical during the growth campaign). In fact, shops that receive an email campaign demonstrate a 19% increase in orders. The key to this step is not just making consistent contact, but crafting communications to align with shop behaviors.
As a useful example, the OEC eMarketing service aligns retention messaging according to shop activity. When your messaging meets the customer where they’re at, it’s far more impactful than a generic message that approaches all customers the same way. A “Thank You for Your Loyalty” message won’t land right with customers who haven’t ordered from you in weeks. Just like a “We Miss You” campaign won’t sit well with customers who order multiple times a week.
Shops that recieve an email campaign demonstrate a 19% increase in orders
OEC eMarketing messages customers differently based on their ordering trends and level of activity with a dealership. Messages are developed based on:
- Retention
- Loyalty – Actively ordering, consistent customers
- Re-engagement
- Declining orders – Demonstrate a reduced order volume
- Unengaged – Not currently ordering from the dealership or attached to a dealership
The results? Authentic, customer-focused retention campaigns can produce a 12% increase in revenue for dealers from their targeted shop customers on average. This is driven by messaging that speaks to customers in a way that resonates with their behaviors and business while still promoting the benefits of ordering parts from your dealership.
Authentic, customer-focused retention campaigns can produce a 12% increase in revenue for dealers from thier targetted shop customers
A strategic approach built on trust
The obvious (and critical) connection between customer growth and retention marketing campaigns is how their success relies on one another. But that’s not the only connection: Successful marketing and customer retention campaigns are built on trust. This means establishing and then maintaining a strong relationship with the customer.
Neglecting to do the important work of identifying customers who are a good fit for your business will create a mismatch in the short term and potentially spoil a future relationship down the road. All that said, when you put in the effort to identify a strong customer fit, you’re not done. You then need to nurture the relationship through multiple touchpoints to encourage repeat business.
Strong, lasting customer relationships are not built on one-off interactions or set-it-and-forget-it campaigns. The ones that last and produce long-term, consistent results are built strategically and maintained through authenticity. This approach puts your parts department in position for healthy growth and, at the same time, provides the customer with a reliable source of parts from a dealer they trust.
Ready to move forward with your own campaigns? OEC eMarketing is a turnkey service that does the heavy lifting for your parts department. Click here to learn more.
