Spiting COVID-19 By Taking Care Of Your Customers

Do you have an ‘Emergency Car Count Button’ you can push? One that can fill your bays in the blink of an eye? “Before I ran those campaigns, I didn’t have a button like that I could press,” said Adam Bendzick (Pro Service Automotive, Prior Lake, MN) on The Digital Shop Talk Radio Show. “Now, if you run the right campaign and everything, you can boost that car count up just at the click of a button.” So how exactly does this ‘Emergency Car Count Button’ work?

Check out this week’s episode of The Digital Shop Talk Radio, hosted by Tom Dorsey, as we welcome Adam back on the show to tell us precisely how his approach to filling the bays and how he has used targeted campaigns to reach his customers with messages that resonate during the COVID-19 era. Joining him is AutoVitals’ campaign expert Chris Maggard, who will show you the practices for running effective campaigns which made Adam so successful. Be ready to ask questions about how this will work in your shop.

By watching the episode you will:

• Discover what types of campaigns have the biggest impact
• Learn industry best practices for running effective campaigns

The Digital Shop Talk Radio Show is hosted by Tom Dorsey and airs LIVE every Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT. To attend each week’s episode, go to www.autovitals.com/dstr. If you would like to listen to or watch previous episodes, go to www.autovitals.com/podcast for the complete list.

Episode Transcript

*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].

Tom Dorsey (00:00:05):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey. We got quite a show for you today. Like I told you last week, we’re changing our format up a little bit and we are going to do a full hour from now on. And in the first half an hour we’re going to be talking about kind of why you should be making some changes in your shop. And for this episode, we’re going to be talking specifically on topic again about how to stay relevant, how to stay busy during the COVID-19 pandemic. And so welcome back Adam Bendzick from Pro Service Automotive. Adam has been a regular, we’re probably going to make him a co-host here pretty quick, but we have to continue this conversation. As a matter of fact, I was just on with Drive on Monday and did a Facebook Live over there.
(00:00:57):
Same topic and matter of fact, really strong audience there as well. And we’d had a nice breakout session afterwards and we really want to continue off of that, right as we were talking in the Digital Shop Summit and we were talking last show kind of, yeah, you got to do some campaigns, you got to stay connected, you got to stay relevant. Today. We want to get into more detail. We want to get to the nuts and bolts and talk about some results. We’ve offered to send out campaigns on your behalf for all of our customers over the last week we’ve been doing that. So we’d like to hear some of those results from you as well on how you are thinking about what messaging you’re using, what format you’re working in to get those customers engaged, maybe additional services that you’re offering in your operation to make it easy for them to do business with you, which is extremely critical, how you are kind of assuaging those fears of people that don’t want to leave the house, all that good stuff.
(00:01:59):
And so we’re going to chop it up with Adam today. We’ve got a special guest also, and in the second half of the show, we’re going to be going into kind of the how to do it. And we’ve got, actually, let me say two special guests because I don’t want to take anything away from the one that I will reveal now, which is Chris Maggard. She’s a fantastic trainer for AutoVitals, super deep knowledge in CRM and marketing all the way back from her customer link days. We were lucky enough to recruit her after Customer Link was acquired and she’s been helping our customers ever since and a lot of Chris and that the results that she can bring to the table. So we’re going to have her come in and really give it to us from an operational perspective and really from how do you create these campaigns and think about what’s the most effective structure and messaging that you can get.
(00:02:56):
And we’ll have Adam continuing to join there and kind of giving us his insight on what’s been working for him. And then our special guest, which I will not reveal until the second half hour, so you have to stay tuned, will also be joining us and he’s got tremendous success as well to join. If you’re just watching us on the Facebook live stream and you want to see the second half, you’re going to have to join our Zoom room and you can go to AutoVitals.com/dst, AutoVitals.com/dstr. You’ll register. But you know what? Hey, it’s going to give you notifications for when we have awesome shows like this one in the future and so that you’re always prepared and then you’ll also be able to join and contribute. We want to hear your questions, get in the chat. If you’re in the Zoom room already, ask those questions. Give us your success stories and ideas and let’s chop it up. So Adam, don’t mean to overrun my intro other than I love to talk, obviously, but what do you think? What do you have to say, my friend?
Adam Bendzick (00:03:58):
That’s probably one thing we have in common is we’ve probably both love to talk. So yeah, no, glad to be back again. Yeah, definitely a few weeks here in a row, but it’s been nice to communicate with people. The networking, keeping a positive attitude and such has been great through all this. Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:04:18):
And we’ve been getting great response just because of that. A lot of people are just like, man, I’m just so happy to be able to see other folks in the industry and stay connected and feel like I’m not stuck in a cell somewhere. So really appreciate what you’ve been doing and hey, you’ve been working on a project. Tell us a little bit about the project. I think today is the grand unveiling, if I’m not mistaken.
Adam Bendzick (00:04:43):
Yeah, yeah. Dustin asked if we could premier it on the show, so without a doubt, that’s awesome. A lot of it is the involvement of AutoVitals in the shops that are all customers and all part of that network. So it’s been great to everybody’s involvement. We had several shops that sent us pictures and video and different audio and everything, so we tried to incorporate all that into it and just the general message, I left a long video on Facebook kind of explaining what we were going to do, which got to be obviously long-winded. But what it came down to is just creating a really quick, or not really quick video, a emotional vulnerable type video that says, Hey, we’re going through hard times. And this, quite frankly, it sucks. It’s just a matter of let’s get through it, let’s get it through it together.
(00:05:31):
Let’s keep that unity, that strength that is in the automotive repair industry and the shops that are involved in it. Let’s band together and say, Hey, we’re going to beat this thing together. And if there’s anything that we can reach out to each other to do to help each other, by all means. My Facebook messenger is always open. We’ve gotten several messages. It’s been pretty cool. It’s actually been really kind of, I don’t know what I want to say. It’s really been kind of special to get the messages from the other shops and the shop owners and everything to say things like, Hey, you’ve been kind of like a leader through all this and everything like that. And I don’t view myself as that by any means, but at the same time, when hard times come up, I just view it as I just want to stay positive and step up and try to do something different and make a difference. And if that has inspired anybody, great. More power to it without a doubt. But there’s a lot of people that are contributing to keeping that positive aspect. It’s not just myself or our shop or anything. There’s just a lot out there. So really makes you feel warm and tingly after it’s all said and done.
Tom Dorsey (00:06:37):
Well, that’s the thing, right, man is you got to give to receive, right? And if you do that, and that’s how you lead, right? You lead by example and you put it out there and you make that decision and you commit and you do it. And I mean that’s what we do on an everyday basis. Every single person in the audience, everybody listening to us today, Adam does that every single day. They get up, put their boots on and they go get it done. And it’s no different. And this is really where the rubber meets the road is when we’re in times of crisis like this. And gosh, is it another week? Is it another six months? Who knows exactly. But the most important thing is that you have a community to serve, right? You have folks that depend on you, and now it’s time to, I mean, it was so prescient what you said in the show.
(00:07:27):
Matter of fact, it was before Summit, right? Was when you said, Hey, I can basically, I’m paraphrasing, I could roll up in a corner in a ball in a corner over here, or I can use this time to improve myself because we’re going to come out of this and we’re going to be ready for it, and I can get ahead of the game right now. Yeah, I might take it in the shorts in the short term, maybe even in the midterm, but you know what? I’m going to come out of it. I’m going to rebalance and I’m going to have a plan and I’m going to drive forward and that’s how we’re going to succeed. And real quick, I’ll tell you a little insight. I was talking with the lady who works for the county, just happened to be standing next to her in line, and we were, even though we were six feet apart, we were still socializing.
(00:08:08):
And she was telling me she inspects businesses, restaurants, and she was saying that she thinks 70% of the restaurants in her territory are never going to be able to reopen. And so that’s the impact that it can have on folks. And if there’s any way you can get out there and support your local restaurants, support your local automotive repair, support all your local businesses, now’s the time to do it. Even if they’re just going to offer you, gosh, sodas in a case from the cooler and they’re not, just buy something from ’em, keep ’em going, get the delivery. Do whatever you got to do. If you want to start helping folks, maybe you’re going to send some sandwiches or a pizza over to the kids’ hospital or to a retirement home or something. Buy something and send it to somebody and just help people out.
(00:08:57):
Keep ’em busy. I’ll get off of my soapbox right now, but it’s getting critical that we reach out and that we support each other, just like you said, Adam. And so let’s talk a little bit about how we do that, because what Adam’s going to be showing here at the end of the first half hour is a video project he worked on and I got to see a little piece of it, and I tell you what, it was powerful. It was very powerful, and I imagine it’s even better now because I kind of saw the draft. So I’m really looking forward to seeing that. But how did you come up with, why did you build that?
Adam Bendzick (00:09:36):
A lot of it, it was just like get off your butt and do the things you’ve talked about doing for the last how long. So we’ve talked about doing a video that yes, this is a little different picture that we’re maybe painting about the shop unity and the shops across the country and everything. The original idea was just way back before all this covid stuff came out was yes, about our shop and putting a message out there and telling ’em, Hey, this is our family, this is what our shop represents, and all those good things. But then when time of crisis comes in there, it’s like, okay, how is this impacting everybody and how can we include everybody? So I’ve actually been kind of rejuvenated through all of it, which is really, really weird to say that through a pandemic that were rejuvenated as a shop or myself individually.
(00:10:24):
But it’s all those things that you think the time with your kids, the time with your family, the time with your friends and everything like that. The things that we’re missing right now in some cases are like, God, somebody rips that away or something rips that away. That puts everything in perspective. And then you start thinking about your business and it’s like, okay, put that in perspective. If I meant to not we ever flag up and it can actually see it in my little virtual video, I had to upped John’s still image of his background of a shop. So we put a video up there, but we finally got to the point of putting up that flag, which has been three years we’ve been in the shop, and I’m like, I want to flag right out on the corner of rebuilding, put it up. And then we’ve actually gotten customers that have called and said, Hey, I’m not calling to schedule an appointment.
(00:11:08):
Just notice you put a flag up there. That’s pretty cool that you flew that. It’s just this whole sense of positive mentality, which we always have, but really taking it to the next level to say, God, we don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. Let’s try to make today as best as we possibly can. And that’s overflowed into our Facebook page, our different campaigns that we’re running through AutoVitals and such. I mean, AutoVitals definitely does some of our Facebook posts and everything for us as part of that CRM and everything, but now we’ve said, let’s not just rely on that. Let’s do some personal connection, some of our own stuff that another company maybe can’t do for us. We love all those posts, but we’ve been focusing on the positive, the family aspect. One of the things that we ran as a campaign but also did on Facebook was Family Forever for Always No matter what.
(00:12:01):
And that tagline, you can see the views, you can see the clicks on our campaigns and all those little things. This is actually a pretty interesting time to captivate people into spreading your message out because that vulnerability pulls that emotion. And if you can play to that emotion, you can get a more captivated audience. I think about a Miller Light commercial that’s out there right now, and there’s just a piano. Nobody says anything. There’s just texts across there saying like, Hey, I think it’s something about our local bars and everything like that are shut down right now, but we’re going to be back and we’re going to be in this together. But it’s just texts in the background and there’s piano playing, and literally every single time I hear just the tone of that piano for one second, I stop what I’m doing. I’m looking up there, I’m like, oh, it’s a Miller Lake commercial. But just the general mood of the economy and everybody as a whole, I feel like I notice those emotional things more than I did before. So I think if you can focus your campaigns on something that makes an emotional connection, it’s probably more impactful right now.
Tom Dorsey (00:13:12):
Good, Adam. And see, that’s why I love having you on the show, buddy, is because you’re so inspirational and I tell you what you dropped right now and I want to repeat it because this is the first step that you need and that’s a positive attitude in a plan. You’ve heard the term smile and dial because that frame of mind, that positive, that your energy comes through the phone, it comes through your email and it comes through your text. Also, believe it or not, it comes through your campaign. If you’re writing it from a positive and hopeful and frame of mind from that reference, it’s going to translate, call me crazy, but it does, whether writing it while you’re thinking you’re scared or you’re drawn in or whatever it is, you’re guarded, that’s going to be reflected in the way that people perceive that message when they read it.
(00:14:12):
And so that’s the first step is to be positive, is to have that hope is to go from that perspective, whatever it takes, even if you don’t feel it personally, but you feel committed to serving your customer well, then you have hope in that and you can put that through your message to connect with those folks because that’s really what, especially now, because we’re being bombarded with so much information and some of it’s super scary and some of it’s hope and well, which way do we go? We’re just spinning. You need to be that rock. You need to be that anchor in your community and be able to lead with that example. And so that’s the very first step that you want to get into is that that positive frame of mind, have a purpose behind you, have a higher purpose, and that’s going to connect with your audience. Dude, thank you, Adam. That was brilliant.
Adam Bendzick (00:15:04):
Yeah, yeah. And just like you said, it has to be genuine. You got to mean it. You can’t fake these things when everybody’s email is probably no different than mine and mine’s filled with 50, 60, 70, a 100 different emails about here’s what we’re doing to prevent the spread of the virus and all those different things, and that’s great. And our campaigns have showed that in there as well. We have that text, but it’s actually the second portion of the message. The portion that we are kind of featuring, if you will, is just saying like, Hey, we’re here for you. We’re open, we’re available. Don’t feel pressure to come in. We understand the economic situation and such, but at the same time, we’re here for you and we mean that if there’s anything that we can reach out and do, even if it isn’t auto repair related, let us know what we can do.
(00:15:52):
We’re here to help. And that message of that positivity and such, and the way the campaign came across, I literally had a customer that hasn’t come to us for five years, clearly was cheating on us with somebody else probably, which happens. I mean, I’m no different than any other shop. If you feel like that’s not the case, it happens without a doubt. So literally five years goes by and he sends a message. He said, Hey, I appreciate the email. That was such a positive message. I know I haven’t came to you for a while, but I got to have my breaks done in a couple of weeks and I’ll let you know as soon as I do. And it was just literally one email family forever for always no matter what, and that caught his attention. And if you can just, you got to mean it. But at the same time, if you focus the attention on that genuine nature positive aspect type campaign and Facebook posts, I think you’ll probably benefit from it. But you can’t go into it thinking that, Hey, how is this going to benefit my shop? Because that may take away the emotional and genuineness of it. You just got to do it because it’s what you believe in and what you feel is right.
Tom Dorsey (00:17:02):
Exactly. Exactly. So that’s great, right? I mean, you came from your heart, you came from a place that you are mentally and you built a campaign around that, and it’s obviously been effective, right? Because it seems like there’s going to be two buckets of folks. There’s people that are like, Hey, this thing, it’s just a flu and we’ve had lots of flus and we can’t crush our economy over it, and I’m going to get out and still shop and I’m going to get out and I’m going to do whatever I can legally in my area to stay engaged. Then there’s folks that are, they’re hunkered down. They don’t even want to crack the door open. They haven’t been to the mailbox in who knows how long and got to, there’s kind of a different message. There’s folks that are out shopping right now that are loving.
(00:17:55):
There’s no lines and gosh, and everybody’s discounting everything, and I’m going to take advantage of this. They’re kind of easy to catch and you need to have a message to kind of hook that fish. And then what about the other folks? And those are the ones that are going to be more concerned about the safety and those types of things more so probably than the price, but you also have to give them a compelling reason to take that action. So what are you doing from that perspective? I mean, what’s your thought as you’re developing these campaigns? What kind of thought process do you go through to identify what’s going to be effective or how do you attest to make sure something is
Adam Bendzick (00:18:38):
Yeah, this is without a doubt the toughest time to decide how you’re going to address the campaigns. Our emergency panic button type campaign that we’ve been talking about is literally a cheaper oil change with a free brake inspection and tire rotation. It’s so simple. It’s a 1999 oil change and free tire rotation, free brake inspection saves the customer maybe 30 or 40 bucks roughly. So it’s nothing huge. It’s no big secret. I’m sure other shops have done that, but we look at it and we say, what’s our car count? You manage that over the course of seeing a trend dipping down. And then once you hit a certain level, and that’s going to be different for every shop, is think start thinking, okay, that’s our go-to if we get slower and such, that’s our go-to, and then we’ll hit that. And by no means do I want to devalue the price of our service or anything like that.
(00:19:34):
But at the same time, you need to have that in your back pocket for when the car count goes down that you can hit that to bring the cars back in. I look at campaigns that yes, we want to increase the car count. Yes, we want to get the sales back in perspective, yes, we want to hit the GPS and everything, but I also look at it as like your staff, our shop, one of our guys is salary, but three of ’em are flat rate, and these campaigns aren’t just about the shop and sales and everything that way. It’s also about the build hours and keeping your staff happy and everything. So I think that when you can do those things to bring the cars in, I have some data that we can share as well, but basically when you do those things to bring the cars in, it’s not just always about the sales, it’s always about creating those hours and stuff for your techs as well.
(00:20:22):
And yeah, maybe they don’t want to do an oil change and the tire rotation isn’t the preferred job, but at the same time, if it means a couple hundred bucks here, a couple hundred bucks there on their paycheck and not seeing a drop off, that’s huge to them. So that’s the biggest one that we’ve sent is the 1999 oil change free tire rotation, brake inspection, putting the trust in our guys to do a good quality inspection, take good pictures, take good notes and videos and such, and then putting it in the hands of our service Pfizer staff to then say, Hey, we’re going to sell some work off this. Yeah, our ARO might go down because we’re kind of giving some stuff away for free or cheaper. But at the same time, those opportunities that are created not only just this week, but then weeks to come are huge as well. So it’s kind of given maybe a shot in the arm by doing that is what’s been effective for us. So if you want to know some of the numbers and such, I can definitely give lay
Tom Dorsey (00:21:12):
As well. Lay ’em on. No, I think it was brilliant. Real quick, just so know something to chew on is, you know what I thought that came to my mind when you were saying that is it’s almost like golf clubs, right? I’m a golfer. And so if you think about it, your campaigns are kind of like your different sets of irons. You use an iron for a specific shot, and so think of setting your campaigns up that way. Like you said, you got your long ball hitter back there for when you need it, might have some coupons in it, but then you’ve got other campaigns in the bag that you apply to very specific situations or very specific goals that you set for what you’re trying to accomplish. Thanks, Adam. Appreciate that buddy.
Adam Bendzick (00:21:59):
Yeah, for sure. So we have those specific campaigns as well. We have our last customer campaign that runs basically, if we haven’t seen a certain customer in nine months, it’ll throw out a, Hey, we miss you type campaign so that people can maybe get the ball rolling back As far as people that we haven’t seen for a while, that’s not based off of a certain dollar spent or anything like that. That’s just if we haven’t seen you in nine months, hey, come on back, give us another try. Maybe we failed you type thing. Just being upfront with everything as to why we haven’t seen you and then we have a $25 free gift card to any service. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an oil change, whether it’s a brake job, whether it’s a $500 ticket, doesn’t matter, it’s just 25 bucks. And if they just spend that towards just an oil change, I want to give that customer the opportunity to come back in.
(00:22:47):
Yes, it is giving away a free 25 bucks, but at the same time you don’t want to lose that customer. So if that means we get that next chance because of whatever reason, price or this and that wasn’t quite to their expectation or maybe they just haven’t been in just creating that recurring customer base. So as far as the oil change one goes, the last time we ran it, we were in February, we had like 76, 71, 84, 74 as far car count, so like mid seventies ish, and we’re used to getting close to 90 on average throughout the year every single week. So that weekly car count was down maybe 15 cars. Then all of a sudden in March it dropped to 56, 69, 47 50. And we’re like, God now has this Covid deal has come up. Now our car count is dang near half what it was before the one week we ran the campaign.
(00:23:36):
Our car count went to 101 cars with just that campaign of the oil change. Our average car count through February and March, which in Minnesota is our slowest time of the year for sure was 69 cars. So that is 32 cars more off that one campaign. Our ARO did drop a bit, but our sales throughout February and March, our average weekly sales was 30,000, about $500. And that particular week it was $32,500. So we’re actually $2,000 higher in sales. Our tech billed hours were average 143, it went to 190. So techs are happier because now they billed out more hours. And then our GP went up about a thousand dollars over what it was before. So we’re doing a lot. We’re giving away dollars, we’re spending more money on tech overhead costs and everything because they’re billing more hours, but at the same time they’re happier because their paychecks went up.
(00:24:34):
Even if it was just for that week, they went up and then our GP like, yeah, it wasn’t a significant amount higher, but at the same time it still was higher and our total sales were higher. So it’s like the cashflow aspect of it. Right now everybody’s budgeting for how many going to get cashflow like this PPP loan is coming out and everything and hopefully get forgiveness and such. But the biggest thing is you got to cashflow until it comes out there. So slow time for us, right? There was no different. We needed a cashflow until the April, may, June busy spell comes back on there. So I look at that one as just a way to create some cashflow, give some build hours out, maintain sales, and then it’s crazy how the impact that running that one campaign can have over the next several weeks.
(00:25:23):
I took a snapshot of September of 2019 was the last time we ran that and we were down on car count by about 10 to 15 cars. Again, our sales were down, they averaged about, looks like about $31,000 in sales. We ran that same exact campaign with the 1990 and oil change and we ended up boosting our car count back up to over a hundred. We did about $42,000 in sales. The tech build hours was the highest over the course of like I’m looking at a three weeks before we ran the campaign and at three weeks after we ran the campaign, our tech build hours are up, our GP was up for that one week of running the campaign. And the most interesting thing about it was is the three weeks thereafter into October after running that campaign, every single number across the board was higher.
(00:26:13):
Our ARO was up, our total sales were up, our tech build hours were up and our GP was up because just because those people didn’t maybe do the work that week of when we did the inspections and did the free break inspection, everything like that, is it just coincidence that all of a sudden our ARO and our sales skyrocketed three weeks thereafter? No, probably not. Those people said to themselves, you know what? I don’t need an oil change right now, but God, that clunk, I haven’t gotten addressed yet. So now all of a sudden our no, they
Tom Dorsey (00:26:40):
Were nice and they were great and they were cute. It what magic wand do you have? Right?
Adam Bendzick (00:26:44):
Exactly. Exactly.
Tom Dorsey (00:26:47):
Because I want to address Jay because Jay Ebersol said, Hey, aren’t you afraid of catching those bottom feeders with that 19.99 stuff? Right? And that’s the key. That’s the second half of is you got to rely on your process and your digital inspection program to make them sales to plant those seeds. Jay, that’s what you want to do is you want to plant the seeds. So if you’re doing it consistently and your guys are knocking it out the right way each and every time, let the inspection sheet do the work for you. And you know what? A lot of the bottom feeders, bottom feeders, because they’re used to getting sold to and pressured and all that, and if they throw ’em a curve ball like that digital inspection, just lean back and let it do its job. That bottom feeder might become your best customer. You don’t know that.
Adam Bendzick (00:27:24):
And then there’s also a question there about did he run in October? I thought this 19.99 campaign was run during the pandemic. The last time we ran it was March 15th, so it was during the pandemic and that’s where our car count did go to 101 the last time prior to that that I ran. It was in September, which is usually a little bit of a slowdown for us during going back to school and everything. So we ran it at that time as well. And that’s where both times pandemic or not skyrocketed, our car count helped with sales created opportunities and all those things to the point of the bottom feeder part of it. It doesn’t bother me that that’s said, it’s not that we don’t ever talk about those types of things in terms of our shop or network and everything, but when it comes down to it, I don’t really love that terminology just because they’re still a customer.
(00:28:17):
And just like Tom said, it doesn’t mean that if somebody has a bottom feeder, they may have been burnt at a prior shop before. I just had a customer come in yesterday that was very apprehensive about doing some breaks and some fluid services and everything because the four prior shops she was at, she had been burned and she wasn’t quite sure she was guarded and she wasn’t sure if she could, although she saw great reviews and everything and felt a good comfort level. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to buy that stuff from me. So we ended up just doing a ball joint safety inspection item yesterday. She gave approval and she just called me this morning and said, Hey, I’ve been thinking about it and everything that you said, let’s do everything on the list just because like I said, I was hesitant before, but I get a good feeling, get a good comfortable feeling that you are genuine in this stuff as needed. So let’s go ahead and do it. So please just don’t get focused on the bottom feeder. Oh, they only came in for an oil change. They only spent 50 bucks every time they’ve come in. That doesn’t always mean that they are a true bottom feeder. It could be an opportunity that you need to sway their mentality towards us auto shops in general.
Tom Dorsey (00:29:21):
Exactly. Yeah. And then you can always fire ’em later. Get ’em in, make some sub Bonnie, keep your techs busy. Fire ’em later. Right. Hey, so Dustin’s bringing the hook out. So we want to get a couple things. We are going to premiere the video that Adam created and we’re going to introduce our secret special guest, John Long’s joining us from Schertz Automotive for the second half hour. Told you that was going to be a boom, a bomb drop. Dustin, queue up that video and stop chatting me.
Dustin Anaas (00:29:55):
Going, man, thanks for putting this video together. I watched your video.
Video Promo (00:30:00):
Perseverance is not giving up, not today, not ever. It is. Persistence and tenacity is the effort required to do something and keep doing it until the end, even if it’s hard. We all fall on hard times, moments that we are weak, vulnerable in ways we would’ve never guessed. We all cry, tears, our hearts get broken, scared of what tomorrow might bring. We all bleed red. We all need someone. Find strength in each other, face our fears and thrive together. We all need comfort, a shoulder to lean on, genuine love for one another. We all bleed red. This is a moment in time. This time will pass through strength, unity in the secret ingredient. Love. Perseverance is not giving up, not today, not ever.
(00:31:16):
Thank you to all the shop owners for working hard and keeping our country for the reason our country’s going right now. Just keep up the good work everybody, and it’s the best way to thanks out.
Tom Dorsey (00:31:37):
Wow, buddy. I’m telling you that’s some strong stuff, man. That is incredible job and saw it here first. We’re going to make it go viral. Share it with your friends now. Seriously, everybody watching that, share it. Get on there and share it. That was great job Adam. I’m really touching buddy.
Adam Bendzick (00:31:56):
Thank you. I appreciate it and thanks for everybody’s involvement. Couldn’t make it that way without you and I genuinely mean that. It’s been really cool, the outpouring of support, not only with just picture sharing, just messages and different things like that. It’s pretty cool.
Tom Dorsey (00:32:11):
Yeah, that was awesome. I dunno if I can handle another one. Matter of fact, I it up. I got to lighten it up. And so we’re going to start in the second half, we’re going to bring in Chris Maggard and we’re going to start talking now kind of about how do you take some of these things that we’ve been talking about and actually turn it into results for you, right? And Chris, are you on with us? Can you hear me okay?
Adam Bendzick (00:32:35):
I am here.
Tom Dorsey (00:32:37):
Fantastic. And so what we’d like to talk about, I think getting started is kind of some of the basic elements of
Dustin Anaas (00:32:44):
Before we get started, Tom, I just want to make a solid break to anybody who’s listening live on Facebook. Okay, now you got to go over to AutoVitals.com/dstr to enter your email address. Another video will pop up, but in order to access the second part live, we got to go over to that website. The link is on Facebook right now. Just click on it, move on over. All right.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:02):
Yeah, come join us. We’re all in here. We’re sharing cocktails, you’re missing out. They’re digital cocktails, but man, do I feel tipsy
Chris Maggard (00:33:11):
After that video,
Dustin Anaas (00:33:12):
Right? We’re done with Facebook. Oh dude,
Tom Dorsey (00:33:14):
I shot after that. I need some scotch or something.
Chris Maggard (00:33:21):
Shots of coffee. That is,
Tom Dorsey (00:33:24):
Yeah, that was good stuff. All right,
Dustin Anaas (00:33:26):
Well here we go. Now we’re off Facebook. We’re ready to go with part two on the how. Thanks Tom.
Tom Dorsey (00:33:31):
Thank you. Voice from the sky. So Chris, we were talking about how do we set up what are kind of the most important elements when you’re advising folks? What are you telling ’em? Like the building blocks on how to create effective campaigns?
Chris Maggard (00:33:48):
Absolutely. So keep in mind we are going through a challenging time right now across the world, but what we’re going to talk about today can be applied for the covid issues that we’re facing, but also just in real life day to day. So couple things that are really important in what I talk about, and it also comes back to what Adam said is your first impression, catchy subject lines, draw in attention. That’s your first impression. To get them to click that button to take the next step. Whether that next step is to schedule an appointment, it’s to review that offer, to see vehicle information that’s on that campaign, right? First step is a catchy subject line to draw in your attention. Another thing is making sure you’re segmenting your targeted audience. So some of the questions that Adam got was pertaining to are you worried about bottom feeders?
(00:34:42):
You might send out that 1999 oil change to your best customers. They’re loyal to your shop. Helping them help you during this time and need is important. So making sure you have the right targeted segment for the type of campaign you’re going to want to target. Lost customers, new customers, maybe your whole database depending on the message that you’re wanting to communicate. And then another thing that is important to me is you spend time creating campaigns. You can use a templated base campaign, which is really quick. You can have it done in a couple minutes. You might spend 30, 40 minutes creating a custom campaign. Always share your template and save it. Why? You can repurpose that and use it down the road. You can change your messaging, but you have the ground roots of that campaign created. And then lastly is always keep track of when you’re sending your campaign, the delivery and the day and time when you’re sending that campaign makes a world of difference. Personally, I’ve seen a lot of success when triggering campaigns on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 AM 10:00 AM your time. It tends to generate a lot of success. Why that is more successful than a Monday at 7:00 AM I’m not sure, but I see a lot of success triggering Tuesdays, Thursdays at 10:00 AM
Tom Dorsey (00:36:01):
Interesting. And so would you recommend, so folks, just keep a log. I mean we timestamp the campaigns and the campaign manager, but you want to mix it up I guess, until you find the sweet spot. And it probably is local. It depends on, I mean, if you live in lazy town, people aren’t even getting out of bed till noon, so then you got to send it a little later.
Chris Maggard (00:36:20):
It’s kind of like the messaging world is you need to target someone three times before they respond. So you might send it out at a different day and time, three different times, analyze your results, identify what day and time was best suited for you, and apply that to the future. You got to find the right combination to unlock the lock.
Tom Dorsey (00:36:42):
Yeah, and so you dropped a lot of nuggets there, so let’s chop it up a little bit. So if I want to back it up a little bit, because I think you’re right, the first thing that they see is kind of that subject line. And so Adam, and I’ll start with you and John, I’d like to get your input too, because hey, the more perspective we can get and the more experience that we can get, I should say wisdom, it’s going to be helpful in terms of working on that. Adam, what goes into your thought process when you’re thinking about the subject line? I mean, that’s the first impression, right?
Adam Bendzick (00:37:16):
Yeah. Yeah. Trial and error. A lot of it is looking at how your campaigns do with click rates and email rates and everything. Interestingly enough, I thought the text click rate would be higher than the email rate, but we’ve actually seen better email rate. So I don’t know if that’s generated towards having a subject line and being able to see a lot more of the campaign with a picture as opposed to just text. It seems like the pictures go a long way, and we’ve noticed that on our Facebook posts as well. Even text over a picture is get the message. It’s like the editing inspections Lincoln and believing in that end of it, seeing the picture and then having text overlay your campaigns and your Facebook posts and different things like that are just as important to put that text overlay of a mini image. So that’s the best thing that we’ve seen. Subject line stuff is, like I mentioned before, is a heartfelt message right now probably catches somebody’s attention more than the saying like, Hey, here, we’re disinfecting your steering wheel kind of thing. But right now, to me it’s about heartfelt messages as opposed to throwing a special out there. But if we need a quick car count in a time where there isn’t a pandemic going on, it’s a 19 nine oil change. Oh, lemme see what that’s all about and click on it
Tom Dorsey (00:38:34):
And it’s making something that’s relatable and something that somebody can take action on. So your subject line might say, Hey, click this link for a free chance to win a roll of toilet paper. A lot of people will click on that right now when the Popeye sandwich is blowing up, Hey, giving away free Popeye sandwiches, you can’t get ’em. They’re sold out. I got ’em. And then you have a coupon for a free Popeye sandwich when they got ’em back in stock down the road. I’m just, so
Chris Maggard (00:38:57):
To add onto that, everything Adam is mentioning is calls to action. You have your subject lines, your call to action, your coupon is your call to action, your messaging is your call to action. Without calls to action, you probably aren’t going to have that great of a campaign that goes out, calls to action, creates your customers to do something right. It makes them want to take that next step, which is why those images are really important.
Tom Dorsey (00:39:27):
Awesome. Thank you Chris. So John, what’s your process when you’re looking to create a new campaign?
John Long (00:39:36):
Yeah, just like Adam and Chris have said, it’s all about timing and having a great subject matter. I am definitely not the smartest person in the room or the most creative. So I mean, I always pull my staff, my team members, they are really, really great about trying to help us out. And I’ll get four or five of ’em together and say, okay, what do you guys want to do? How do you want to do it? What do you want to say? And collectively, we’ll come up with something together. And then there’s times where I’ll even something off other shop owners like Adam, Adam and I talk quite a bit, but just number one, you got to have the correct timing. You don’t want to send something out now, not, I wouldn’t say not relative, but you got to be careful of what you want to send out.
(00:40:19):
Now, two weeks ago on March 23rd, talk about hitting that panic button. We had almost no appointments set for that week, pretty much none. I hit the panic button, I sent out a campaign and the subject line was just simple. Yes, we are open. Then after that I got into why we’re open. I talked about we’re open because of the family to support your family, to support the first responders out there, just any government employees that needed to work and got into that to let them know why we’re open and what we’re doing. And from that campaign that kept us open that week, we generated over $8,000 in gross profit dollars, gross profit dollars. And that definitely helped us pay the bills that week for sure.
Tom Dorsey (00:41:08):
That’s brilliant. And this is what I’d say to folks that maybe they’re not used to running campaigns. You can’t do it once, you have to test it. You have to track those metrics, your open rate, your response rate, and yeah, you know what? I was talking with some guests a week or so back and oh, I had negative response. I sent out something about how dare you. Well, you know what? You’re always going to get those folks, let ’em vent and focus on the rest of ’em that still need their vehicle to operate and get to the store and to the doctor and to the hospital, whatever they have to do to get to work. And then again, be prepared. What’s the first thing anybody’s going to want to do when this thing lifts? Get as far away from their house as possible. They’re going to do that in their car.
(00:41:49):
What? I mean, you guys are going to get slammed. So matter of fact, Dustin load up that video I showed you because John, you said something that was beautiful. You don’t have to be DaVinci, you don’t have to be the guy thinking of all the ideas. You know why? Because all those goofballs that are running around in your business right now are probably cutting it up and coming up with funny stuff and thinking of creative ideas as reactions like all tradesmen do when they’re in there working and you just have to observe some of the silliness that they’re coming up with and leverage that. Right, exactly. And I’ve got this video, and you might’ve seen it, but I’m going to go ahead and play it, maybe you haven’t. This is from a shop in, I believe it’s Australia, but this is 10 million views, almost 11 million views now.
Video Promo (00:42:49):
And repossess vehicles buy that guarantee available now on selected cars. So you can buy with confidence at auction every Thursday from 10:00 AM
(00:43:18):
You
Tom Dorsey (00:43:18):
Get the idea right? You can find that video on Facebook. It’s blowing up. It’s gone viral. It’s just funny. I’m sure that the techs were doing in the shop, the owners noticed it and they made a little funny video out of it and it just took off. I mean, 11 million views on that thing, and it’s right there walking around in front of each and every day hitting the timecard because yeah, I mean that’s what you do, and most people that are positive thinking and have a job to do are going to make light of even the worst situations. And there’s obviously, there’s a big audience that appeals to, because look at how much views that video has. Not everybody wants to be feeling the doom and gloom all the time. We have to focus our minds on positive things. And that’s a perfect example of how you can create something in a minute on your phone and really reach out and touch folks, and that’ll be remembered for a long time.
Adam Bendzick (00:44:22):
Think about Tom, how much that creates more traffic to their Facebook page and different things just from having it on there, and then how many more likes they have. So now two or three months from now when that shop needs to get some cars in and they run a special or they do whatever, they got another a hundred people that are liking their page that see that next message. So it’s not always about today’s message, about the next message too. Yeah.
Tom Dorsey (00:44:46):
Yeah, that’s a great point, right?
John Long (00:44:48):
Yeah, and that kind of brings up another point. I’m going to send out a campaign probably later today. I was trying to get to it before we came on, but it’s going to be just to say, Hey, we’re still here. It’s going to have a little video that we did that says, okay, we know you’re not driving. This is what you need to look out for. When you do start driving in case something happens, drive your car around the lock, charge the battery up once in a while. If your brakes squeak it possibly normal because this car’s been sitting, check tire pressure. If the tire pressure light comes on, stop by, we can fill up your tire pressure, but I’m going to send just that link out. Then I’m going to send a link to our car guy video that we did, just something kind of fun for them, and there’s going to be no discount, no nothing on it. It’s just going to be, Hey, I know you’re not driving. Look out for these things. And then if you’ve got five minutes to kill, here’s a fun video we did last year on it.
Tom Dorsey (00:45:42):
No, that’s a great idea. And it’s, again, it’s give to receive. Your first campaign might just be how you doing everything. Okay? Absolutely. Anything I can do for you,
Chris Maggard (00:45:59):
For sure. Make sure they know that you’re open and you’re there to help them, what you’re doing to protect them, right? Keyless, drop off, maybe you guys are doing free pickup and delivery of the vehicle. You’re disinfecting, right? You can always send something out that will still generate business. Just knowing that you guys are open, top of mind awareness, getting in front of them. If you do something like that, it’s not successful, it’s not helping drive in business, then two weeks later, maybe you kick in a coupon, right? It’s all about trial and error and finding that sweet spot and making sure that you’re continuing right now, a lot of folks are doing campaigns that have never done ’em before. Being proactive in your marketing, not just for issues that are going on with Covid, but also create a marketing calendar. Do something to get in front of your customers, if not monthly, quarterly, right? It will help you and also help them. It’s proactive marketing, especially when you know you’re having a valley in your business. Always target your customers 30 days to a couple weeks before that to subsidize and try and fill up your base during that time when you know you’re going to be slow.
Tom Dorsey (00:47:08):
And that’s a brilliant point, Chris. For folks that are maybe doing this for the first time, you have to commit. You can’t send something out and get a low open rate and get too phone calls. See, I knew this was going to be garbage, and that’s the best way to do it, is build a calendar, set a goal, set milestones in that calendar and commit to it. And then even look at the results. Don’t even look at the results. It’s like when you’re doing the weight loss thing, right? If you keep getting on the scale, pretty soon you’re just going to quit because it takes a while in the beginning. Don’t even look at the results yet. Run the campaigns according to your calendar. Send them, mix ’em up, get brilliant ideas, and pick the brains of your peers on the Facebook form or directly on what’s successful. Talk to your AutoVitals advisors and trainers on what they’re seeing success across our network of shops. Use those ideas and just commit to it and do it. Then look at your numbers.
Chris Maggard (00:48:05):
Another suggestion is if you have the retention program, use your business control panel, download your customer frequency report, identify your peaks and your valleys and a couple hours, create ideas for your marketing calendar. What you want to do when you want to do it, go into your campaign manager, create active recurring campaigns. You can create an active campaign for 12 months, January through December, schedule it. You never have to go back and look at it again unless you want to revise it. So a couple hours of your time can set you up for 12 months.
Tom Dorsey (00:48:47):
Yes. See, that is awesome. That’s exactly like we were talking about in the first half hour in the first segment is to say, think of it like those different clubs in your bag and you got to build them. You had to go down and buy your clubs and put’em in there, and then now they’re ready to be used and those templates are there. And that calendar that you plan out now, you just schedule when you’re going to apply those shots and it’s almost ready to go. I mean, you’re going to want to track the metrics and you’re going to want to tweak here and there, and you’re going to want to make sure that they’re working right and that they’re sending right, and all the recipients or it’s actually working good maintenance. But to Chris’s point, you can put in a Sunday, Saturday afternoon’s worth of work and reap the benefits. How are you, Adam, kind of scheduling those campaigns? Do you just kind of keep ’em in a template and pull ’em out when you need ’em? Or do you run a recurring calendar?
Adam Bendzick (00:49:49):
Yeah, we save everyone as a template just because you never know if one was working great that you’ll want to run it again. If one was not working great. You still want to see those stats from way back when and watching that data and looking back at the ones you’ve sent and the open rate and the click rate, and then comparing that to your car count data and maybe your sales history of when you ran those can give you a lot of insight as to how that performed. And definitely as far as recurring ones, like I mentioned, the last customer one is a recurring monthly one that goes out. Chris, actually, I had a question for her to clarify for myself and anybody watching is she had said 12 months or so, that goes for 12 months, you’re set up for the year. If we have that recurring monthly one, is it something we have to update yearly or is it doing it on its own?
Chris Maggard (00:50:37):
You’ll need to update it yearly. And the reason being is when you, in order to create that active campaign, you need to schedule it and put a due date and launch and then it will launch based on that date. So it depends on how you create it. If you’re going in there and you create something for 24 months, or you give it different scheduled dates to launch, it’s going to launch based on that date. So it’s how you configure it. But essentially I would do it just for the year and then go back and identify what did work, what didn’t work, and make adjustments to the next marketing calendar that you’re going to launch
Tom Dorsey (00:51:08):
And think of your seasonal stuff in the same way back to school happens when back to school, happens 4th of July and 4th of July. So you can build specific seasonal campaigns as well, and then just schedule ’em out for week out two weeks before and two weeks after, something like that. However you want to run it. I mean, Chris, what would you recommend as far as a timeframe around events like that
Chris Maggard (00:51:29):
30 days prior to the event, because that gives them time to figure out for them to apply the special, be scheduled and come in, because keep in mind, you’re targeting people that are due, overdue or not do it. All right. So the goal when you’re doing these campaigns is to get these customers in sooner rather than later, more frequent and in between services. And so a couple campaigns that work really, really well that, I mean, tax rebate, and these are some specials that Dustin put out here that I’ve kind of done some covid specials New Year’s special, but just in my, I’ve been doing retention marketing since 2008, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or holiday, because some people just don’t want to use the word Christmas tax rebate back to school. Winter, spring, summer, fall every month. There is something you can do and you can change it up and do it differently in order to drive in business and get in front of those folks that maybe aren’t due, that you can drive them in for an additional service.
Adam Bendzick (00:52:31):
Any particular day of the week that you feel is most effective to run that campaign?
Chris Maggard (00:52:36):
Tuesdays or Thursdays.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:38):
Okay. Sounds confident in that.
Chris Maggard (00:52:41):
Yeah, it works really well. And again, I don’t know why Tuesdays and Thursdays are the sweet spot, but I’ve done a lot of digging and Tuesdays and Thursdays tend to be the best.
Tom Dorsey (00:52:51):
What time should we send them? 10:00 AM. 10:00 AM?
Chris Maggard (00:52:56):
Yes. Awesome. I mean, right now with Covid, you can’t really control what’s going on. It’s really funky. You got to get it out when you can get it out to do the best you can, but if in fact you can be picky going forward, 10:00 AM Tuesday, Thursdays is the sweet spot.
Tom Dorsey (00:53:13):
Awesome. And then what about follow up? Should you plan on doing some follow up to that campaign? And when would you run that? If so,
Chris Maggard (00:53:24):
You can. So to me is if you do a campaign and it completely fails, right? You get nothing out of it, switch it up and launch it again in two weeks, I would always wait two weeks. You got to give your customers time to react, right? And then also, when you’re using coupons, always, always use an expiration date your expiration date creates the urgency. And try not to be flexible. Don’t let Mr. Smith walk in and today you’re going to offer and allow him to use that coupon that expired 30 days ago because that same guy’s going to come in again with an expired coupon. And now you’re setting a trend. It sucks. You want to help them, but there’s a reason why you’re doing an offer to help you generate business, get front of your customers, stick to your expiration date or you’re losing urgency.
Tom Dorsey (00:54:10):
So let’s talk about that a little because in the chat we had quite a bit of reaction around talking about discounts. John, do you send out coupons in your campaigns regularly?
John Long (00:54:24):
Yes, we do. And part of that is thinking you’re going to use your digital inspection, you’re going to get some more out of it. We’ve just got to be great at doing what we do and trying to maximize every sale. Now sometimes we will put a cap on those discounts, so say 10% off up to $50 or a hundred dollars. So it really doesn’t kill us too bad as long as we can maximize other stuff by using our digital inspection and trying to maximize everything. And we’re not trying to sell everything to the customer, but we’re just trying to make them aware of everything that’s wrong and let them make the decision on it. You’re the car
Chris Maggard (00:55:03):
Doctor.
John Long (00:55:04):
Yes, exactly. We’re going to let them make the decision, but let them know everything that is wrong. Inspect a hundred percent and estimate a hundred percent yes. And then present it a hundred percent. The 300% rule.
Tom Dorsey (00:55:17):
So Adam, you gave us some insight on what you running from a coupon or a promo perspective. Have you ever tested it, like sent the exact same message with and without the promo in it? And what results did you get? If so,
Adam Bendzick (00:55:33):
I wouldn’t say necessarily test them back to back so to speak, but we have tested the different types of coupons in a sense of the oil change one, obviously the heartfelt me is one that we touched base on and then the hey fall tuneup special kind of deal. I’ll be honest, and maybe other shops have had other better results and such, but for us running a tuneup special and different things like a specialized service type deal has not really worked that well. It’s like the timing of it is so hard to hit. I mean, you’re looking at maybe a 5% open rate reaction of an oil change special to boost our car cone up. Now you’re looking at hitting the same 5%, but then the likelihood of those 5% needing that particular service at that timeframe, unlikely. So more of a broad range like John had mentioned, a 10% off up to a certain dollar amount kind of deal has been much more effective for us.
Chris Maggard (00:56:31):
I agree. So when you do coupons that are service specific, you’re limiting your response. Right? Oil changes are different because generally everybody needs an oil change. But I definitely recommend if you’re going to do a service specific coupon, also do, and by the way, you can add up to three different offers, you guys through the campaign manager with AutoVitals. So if you’re going to do something service specific, also do something that’s not service specific. So if you have somebody that needs something else, you have an opportunity to drive them in so the additional non-service specific coupon would apply to them.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:07):
Let me ask you something. So what about sales drivers that you get from your vendors? The NAPA sales drivers are great ones, right? Matter of fact, we have automation on those NAPA sales drivers in your campaign manager now or we have for a long time actually. But Chris, what experience do you see? I mean what’s more effective kind of a campaign or coupon that you create yourself and it’s more local to the shop or some of those rebate sales driver type things that come from suppliers?
Chris Maggard (00:57:35):
I think it depends on the time of the year and what discount you’re trying to offer. For example, if you have NAPA and they’re doing free wiper blades or something like that and it’s winter and yeah, it’s going to work great because they’re going to come in and they’re going to get free wipers.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:48):
Did you put both?
Chris Maggard (00:57:50):
I would absolutely. I absolutely don’t limit yourself. One thing that works really well is like October brakes for breast. I would probably do just brakes for breast at that time, right? That’s
John Long (00:58:03):
What we normally do. Yeah, we did that last year and that was a tremendous success for us.
Tom Dorsey (00:58:08):
And you need to change out your website or build a landing page around brakes for breasts. So that’s the other thing is that if you’re going to get behind something like that, it has to be real. It has to be committed and that you have to show that you’re committed. And the greatest way to do that is to put your call to action to the brakes for breasts landing page that’s on your website. And there may be a specific coupon for that and a specific appointment widget. It’s still the same appointment book, but it just looks specific to that campaign and it shows really that you are committed to that degree and people will take you serious when you show that level of commitment. Tony,
Adam Bendzick (00:58:49):
That’s a great
Chris Maggard (00:58:50):
Point. Oh, sorry, go ahead Adam.
Adam Bendzick (00:58:52):
Tony mentioned in the comments there about we also got our main vendors involved by giving them discounts. John specifically, we didn’t run the brake one last year. He did though. You got your vendor involved in that, I believe.
John Long (00:59:05):
Oh yeah. Yeah. They gave us free brake pads for that, for whatever brake pads we ordered and needed. And I think we did almost 80 or 90 some brake pads or brake jobs that month. I’d have to go back and look, but it was close to a hundred. It didn’t quite hit my goal of a hundred, but we got pretty close.
Chris Maggard (00:59:24):
Absolutely. And what I was going to say is just to tag on a Tom is when you’re doing a promotion like a campaign, you’re only targeting existing customers, you guys. So you should be duplicating that offer on your website. Again, expiration dates help. It removes that offer. They become not valid after a certain timeframe. But don’t exclude yourself to greatness. Include not only existing customers, put it on your website. If somebody lands on your website, offer it to a new one as well.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:51):
Yeah, because you can create user experiences just by adding landing pages and you funnel them right to that landing page and then you can offer whatever ongoing promotions or services that you need to be able to convert them into returning. I mean that’s the name of the game is get ’em to become repeat customers, great to get ’em in the door. And if you got a discount to get ’em into the door, and like we were saying earlier is you just rely on that inspection sheet. You just follow the best practices and let that inspection sheet do the work and convert them into lifelong customers. That’s really the goal that you’re looking the big goal. And then you can chop that up into segments following your campaigns and give them a funnel with that experience. And it’s going to bring ’em right to the phone call, right? You just lead ’em in. You just do it digitally.
Adam Bendzick (01:00:45):
One thing I haven’t done yet that I intend to do next time we do it in February, actually it expires in February because I like that call to action expiration date deal is our Christmas special. We do the wild cards. I think AutoVitals is starting to mention, or maybe Protractors starting to mention doing wild cards and maybe piggybacking on the actual campaign of the wild card, the wild cards, like a gift cards, a $50 off any type of service. But as of yet, I have not ran an AutoVitals campaign at the same timeframe to those customers to say, Hey, look for this in your mail. That may generate a better result by piggybacking together on a digital platform to expect this to come in your mailbox type deal. So I dunno what your guys’ thoughts are on that, but it’s a note that I’ve made for myself come November when we start planning that to piggyback that on top of each other. I
John Long (01:01:35):
Think that’s a great idea. That’s an awesome idea.
Chris Maggard (01:01:38):
Can you share your results, Adam,
Adam Bendzick (01:01:40):
With the wild cards?
Chris Maggard (01:01:42):
Well no, I know. Wow. Cards work well. I definitely like them. Your results with piggybacking with AutoVitals in addition to the wild cards?
Adam Bendzick (01:01:49):
Oh, that’s what I was saying. As far as the wild cards go, the wild cards themselves have been led to $800 average repair order for the last four years that we’ve done. So it’s been awesome that way. I have yet to piggyback with AutoVitals, but this next coming year we certainly will. So you’ll have probably have to have me back on in March and maybe we can bring John in there. He loves seeing me as well. So as far as that goes, I haven’t done it yet for
Chris Maggard (01:02:14):
Sure. If you remember, please share those results. I would like to see how that outcome was for
Adam Bendzick (01:02:20):
You. Yeah, we usually get about a hundred of the cards back over the course of January and February when the promotion is out there. So then all of a sudden we get 150 and we usually send it to about the same quantity of people. Obviously it was better to piggyback on for sure, but we just don’t have that data yet.
Tom Dorsey (01:02:40):
Yeah, awesome. Tony Thunderberg has great input here too that the brake specials for front of rear pads are working really well for them and that one of the nice things is it’s really easy to plan it on your calendar and so it brings in a huge boost and you can then expect that business. So like Chris’s point earlier, you want to schedule those types of effective campaigns, even if you’d only do ’em a couple of times a year, but you schedule them in those valleys. If you start to look at your car count with your seasonality in your car count, you’re going to see the peaks and valleys. You want to schedule those heavy hitters, pull out the driver for those valleys, right? And you want to flatten that curve. Go figure. I guess this is part of our life now. Flatten the curve.
Adam Bendzick (01:03:29):
Definitely.
Tom Dorsey (01:03:32):
Well, that’s awesome. I think an hour flew by. It was pretty incredible. We’re three minutes over. Justin isn’t even yelling at me yet. Thunderberg says, happy to share with everyone. Just message her. And that’s the other thing is everybody message each other. You all just get together and hold hands and message each other right now because to Adam’s point in the beginning of the show, it really does take this community of folks and everybody’s out here and hey, who doesn’t have some time on their hands right now and stay busy by helping stay busy by helping others. And that will come back to you in new ideas and a fresh perspective. You heard Adam himself right out of the horse’s mouth say that just building that project and rethinking his messaging and some of the services that he provides to the community and the way that he does it has inspired him and put him in a frame of mind where he’s positive through this period of time and really going to just keep that trajectory running when this thing gets in our rear view mirror and be way ahead of the pack as we come out of it.
(01:04:42):
And that’s where we want all of you to be. And you do that by banning together with positive, turn off the stupid news on the TV and get on the Facebook form and start talking shop with these folks and it’ll put a new pep in your step
Adam Bendzick (01:04:59):
Without a doubt. And I’ll be the first one to say we don’t do everything at our shop. There’s shops that have great ideas. John, what Chris has brought up today, I’ve actually made a couple notes for myself in this and everything. And a little bit is a lot better than nothing. So just try to do something and put a positive effort towards it.
Tom Dorsey (01:05:20):
And you can find Chris Maggard on Facebook too, so she might not be your advisor, but say hi, friend her, all that good stuff and just reach out, ask questions because you’re going to get lots of good answers. And hey, they might not all work, but I bet you something in there is going to help you hit the long ball.
Chris Maggard (01:05:41):
Absolutely. I’m here to help. So if anyone needs help with anything, just message me and I’ll do my best to help you. And if I can’t help you, I’ll make sure we get someone that can.
Tom Dorsey (01:05:51):
Yeah, and huge shout out, John Long thank you for coming in in your secret super guest role. Adam, like always man. Just you almost made me cry today, buddy. That was pretty awesome. Great show. And really just from the bottom of my heart, I really thank you guys for coming on. I’m sure everybody listening to you today is taking away some inspiration from what you guys are giving us. Thank you enough gentlemen.