SMS & Email campaigns made simple with Harmony

With practically everybody now owning a mobile phone and the increasing popularity of SMS text messaging, Progress DMS has developed a new and exciting text messaging and email campaign marketing system designed to let car dealers send sales and service promotions and reminders direct to their customers.

Progress Harmony is an online application available to individual dealers and dealer groups alike.  The system slashes traditional marketing costs by sending instant reminder messages and promotional texts and emails direct to customers at the push of a button. The system offers a great level of campaign reporting so that you can measure the effectiveness of your message and your customer’s response.

The system is simple and easy to use and will allow customer data to be imported from the dealership DMS and edited. Marketing campaigns can be set up on the system to schedule and send out SMS messages and emails. The creation of emails couldn’t be simpler with templates loaded into the system and ready to be customised with copy, images and links and then sent. Text message responses flash up within seconds on the dashboard screen giving you instant feedback to your campaign. Similarly, with email campaigns you can see who is opening your email and even which links they have clicked on and when. Progress Harmony is available on three different service levels; you can simply choose the service your business requires. Each service level provides differing volumes of email templates and monthly inclusive emails with each level. The SMS module, however, is present on all three service levels and you simply pay for the volume of texts sent in a month.

Text messaging can be used as a stand-alone marketing campaign: several of our clients have used text messaging to promote used car sales weekends and aftersales promotions including encouraging lapsed service customers to return to the workshop with great success. In addition, SMS provides excellent support for other marketing campaigns. A letter or a mailer serves to whet the appetite but quite often people will put these to one side, albeit with good intentions, and then it is forgotten. An SMS sent a few days after your campaign has landed on the doorstep serves as a timely reminder. Not only that, the response mechanism is so simple: customers and prospects simply hit ‘yes’ or insert their own message and it appears in your campaign organiser’s inbox enabling your team to contact the customer knowing their interest in your campaign or offer is already high. This ease of reply extends to email. Your email campaign lands in the recipient’s inbox who then clicks through for more information and hits a button to reply.

SMS and email marketing is all about simplicity and ease of use for both sender and receiver. Your marketing message is instant as is your recipient’s response. Both mediums can direct your customers and prospects to straight to the appropriate section of your web site where marketing messages and further information are contained in more detail.

Then there’s the cost effectiveness as both mediums enable you to execute highly targeted marketing campaigns without the cost of creating separate artwork. You can select as low (or as high) a number of recipients as required, so if you want to target customers who drive a particular model which is a certain age with a new car sales message or customers whose vehicles’ mileage suggest a cam belt change might be in order, you can do so in a way which traditional marketing mediums don’t allow.

The mediums are self-generating, the more you and your staff use them, the more return you will enjoy and the more email and mobile numbers you will harvest from both customers and prospects so creating an ever-increasing audience.

Several Progress DMS clients have been trialling the text messaging campaign system, including Lookers Plc, Squire Furneaux and the JCB group, and all with outstanding success. Lexus Edgware Road used the text messaging service to boost numbers to a hybrid event in January. The campaign supported a written invitation and boosted attendees by a further third. A recent campaign sent for Squire Furneaux’s Volvo division saw 2400 database customers receive a New Car sales offer. They received 118 responses to the message, of which 90 were positive – a positive response rate of 3.75%. They went on to sell 5 cars from the campaign. A Service campaign for Wimbledon 4x4’s Aftersales department had similar success, with 52 people booking in for a service following a £199 service offer.

H.R. Owen Plc’s Sports Car division have been using Email campaigns for over 6 months...and with great success. A multiple email campaign for Lamborghini was sent to customers inviting them to a track day and the day was fully booked swiftly following the campaign. The Ferrari businesses had similar success with a Monaco F1 Grand Prix invitation – selling all 10 places in a matter of days.

Find out more about Progress Harmony

For more information, please contact:

Alex Knight,
Account Manager, Progress DMS,
Tel:  +44 (0)845 257 9306
Email: alex.knight@progressdms.co.uk
Web: www.progressdms.co.uk