Email Marketing Statistics

This compendium of statistical data is based on the most recent verifiable statistics published by major leading surveying and industry sources at the time of writing. This data has been correlated with the results of direct questions posed to automotive dealership owners and managers. It is interesting to note that less than a quarter (or only 22%) of all automotive dealerships are currently engaging in email campaigns with a scant 4% stating that they plan to start email campaigns at some undefined time in the future. The extremely large proportion accounting for 73% of all automotive dealerships that are not engaging at the present time and have no plans to do so are statistically justified by the nature of the automotive dealerships surveyed, which included all types of businesses that sell motor vehicles.

Since there are a considerably larger number of smaller facilities that sell used cars on an independent basis than there are large new car dealerships, this statistic reflects the reality that the independent used vehicle business is still essentially being conducted without the assistance of online technological advantages and the concurrent promotional benefits. 57% of all Automotive Dealerships send out their email missives and newsletters on a monthly basis, with quarterly being the next most popular send frequency at 21%. The longer frequencies such as every two months and seasonal or yearly scored at 8% and 5% respectively. It is interesting to note that at 9% the frequency that automotive dealerships send email campaigns on a weekly, bi-weekly, or other basis greater than once a month is considerably higher than the overall average for all industries. The type of emailed newsletter that combines both informational aspects and offers of discounts or sales was the most popular type of content to be included in dealerships' campaigns, accounting for fully one third of all sends. Emails that were strictly informational by nature accounted for 13% and the ones that included little to no informational content and instead focused on providing sales and discount information were responsible for 21% of all sends. Although the common impression might be that the majority of subscribers on automotive dealership rolls are current and past customers who have either purchased a vehicle through the dealership or have physically visited the location to join the list, that sector is in second place at only 29%. Purchased and supplied leads account for the largest section at 36%, clearly reflecting the impact on the statistics of used vehicle operations that by far outnumber new car dealerships. Subscribers derived via promotional means account for 21% while subscribers secured via web based means tally up to 9%. Fairs, concerts and sports event signups accounted for a relatively small 5% of the total subscriber list. The fairly even breakdown between these sections is somewhat surprising as it shows that automotive dealerships are varied in the size of their subscription lists. The 19% of automotive dealerships that had less than 500 on the list is roughly equal to the number that had more than 5,000 (21%), indicating that there are a variety of equally applied standards to prioritizing subscriber list gathering. Segmentation of a subscriber list according to a series of criteria ranging from type of vehicle currently owned and/or desired to the traditional email marketing strata of demographics, lifecycle and behavior seem to be largely ignored by automotive dealerships. Most respondents (73%) do not segment their lists in any way and send out the same content to all subscribers equally, with barely more than a quarter (27%) actually breaking down their lists to some level of segmentation.