Auto-responders can be unwanted noise to a shopper, or they could be the key that opens the door. It all depends how you build and schedule yours.
Our clients know that our DealerKnows auto-responder is one of our little-discussed secrets to engagement success. While all of our templates have evolved and changed over the years, our auto-responder has held true. Across all of our dealers, our auto-responder generates just over 40% reply rate. (Pretty good when most dealers don’t even have open rates that high). Well one of these things actually contributes to the other.
Let it be known, I hate auto-responders. I don’t like receiving them and I don’t like sending them. (The “typical” auto-responders we see from our mystery shopping efforts, at least.) Most auto-responders say disadvantageous things such as…
- This is an automated reply…
- Do not respond to this message…
- This is confirmation that we have received your lead…
- We’ll get back to you in x hours/minutes…
Ugh. All painful. Not personal, which is what shoppers want. The best auto-responders do not appear to be such. They are plain-text, personal, include the customer’s name. Have no links or images or videos or bolds or underlines or excessive use of exclamation points. A great auto-responder should be scheduled to fire a few minutes after the lead arrived rather than right away, to give the effect that it is personal (and also to sit atop the inbox messages that the shopper may have received immediately from others. They must be short, and most importantly, ask a relevant question. Following these steps will prevent getting caught in spam or passed over as having no relevance.
Don’t just ask how they’d like to be contacted or the best way to contact them as your question. Unless they specifically requested something, they already made the choice when they completed the form field. Open up range of considerations, or confirm the research they’ve performed up to that point. And again, keep it short and free of any html formatting.
Auto-responders, if your team is quick enough responding back during on-hours, are wholly unnecessary. But if formatted correctly, with the proper wording to look like a fast, personal response, asking the right questions, can pay dividends by eliciting a high percentage of engagement immediately from interested prospects.
Do these things above and you’ll find that great auto-responders are the key to opening the door to valuable conversations.
