PSM Marketing

DID YOU KNOW? Firestorm Email with Automatically Linked Title Sections

Tia Robinson | 10/22/2020

Which of these benefits is the NUMBER ONE purpose of Email Marketing?

A.   Get Your Name “Out There”

B.   Share Cool Stuff With Your Customers

C.   Send Promotional Information

D.   Drive Traffic To Your Website

E.   Make the OEMs Happy

While email marketing can (and often does) all of the above very well, the Primary Purpose of Email Marketing is to:

D. Drive Traffic To Your Website

The ROI on email marketing is astounding…IF it keeps that main goal front-of-mind while building an email. Our Firestorm Email Software makes sending emails and generating a huge ROI fast and easy. Plus, our creative graphics allow you to send Kick A$$ emails that don’t just look good, but do their job (driving traffic to your site) really well.

Each one of the hundreds of themes available are pre-loaded with title sections that link to specific pages on your website automatically such as:

•   Homepage
•   New Inventory
•   Used Inventory
•   Parts & Accessories
•   Apparel
•   Service
•   Events

This ensures that every email created, will effectively drive traffic to targeted pages of your website.

Are you using an email marketing software that was designed specifically for dealerships? Does your email software include powerful traffic-boosting features like integrating with your website – which leads to conversions and ultimately sales?

If you want to see what makes Firestorm Email such a dynamic Email Marketing Software, call or text us at 770-692-1750 for LIVE Demo today.

When a Plan Comes Together

Brad Cannon | 05/21/2020

As I sit here to write this, the world seems to have gone completely nuts. There’s a pandemic that has shaken up the entire planet, we’ve hunkered down and isolated ourselves, and yet I keep hearing about dealers who have had record months.

Go figure.

With all the isolation and social distancing talk, now seems like a great time to talk about websites.

We’ve always said that your website is your digital dealership, and nothing proves that more than recent events. With many brick and mortar dealerships shut down by mandate, websites have quickly become a go-to for information, communication, sales, and ultimately, survival.

It’s the anchor of your digital presence, and it needs to be efficient and effective at doing it’s job – generating leads that turn into sales. Anything less, and you’re wasting time and money.

Leads have to be generated, tracked, and followed up with every single day. I’m proud to say that PSM has a website platform that generates those results and provides leads every day – 24/7 for dealers better than the competition, and with the best customer service in the business. Don’t believe me? Read our reviews.

While a critical component, having a great website is really just the beginning. When you opened your physical dealership, did you just unlock the door and wait for floods of people to just come rushing in? Would that happen? Of course not.

Anyone with half a lick of sense advertises, right? That’s why we developed our digital advertising program, partnering with Google (as Premier Partners), Facebook, and Instagram. Don’t sit back and hope for the best, we drive traffic to websites with SEM and social media marketing better than anybody in the powersports business.

We successfully run Digital advertising for hundreds of dealers across the country, but dealers who have a Firestorm website get to see the advantage of the seamless experience and premium performance of using an integrated suite of products to leverage additional performance above and beyond the competition – with less work.

For those serious about performance, we bolt on Firestorm email and website tracking. Visitors are identified – even if they didn’t fill out a form – and begin to receive messages encouraging them to come in and make a purchase. On top of that, regular emails with featured inventory, follow-up, birthdays, anniversaries, and many other important events can be created and deployed automatically. Yeah, it’s amazing. Oh, and all with themes (well north of 200) and graphics designed BY riders FOR riders. Not some cookie cutter platform that tries to be all things to all people. Riders are a special group that deserves special treatment. Oh, and some of that special treatment is a data hygiene program like no other in the industry, along with audience segmentation, that leads to the best delivery rate in the business. Check it out.

There’s really only one thing that is better than advertising. Word of mouth. And we have that covered in our suite of products as well. Our reputation management product has generated hundreds of thousands of positive reviews for our clients – and studies have shown that people make decisions about who they buy from based on both quantity and rating of reviews. Think about it. When you’re looking to make a purchase, do you look at the reviews for the product? Sure. And what about the business selling it? When it’s a big ticket item, of course you do.

So what if you want to buy a motorcycle, and you’re looking at two different dealerships – one has 10 reviews with a 3.5 star rating, and the other has 400 reviews with a 4.7 star rating? Which one would you buy from? That’s why our reputation management bolt on is so critical. It’s word of mouth from the internet. And a lot of it.

What is one of the best ways to communicate in a non fear producing way? Text.

We have an app for that too. Literally. Customer Connections is our app that allows you to use your website (and dealership main phone number if you want) to text back and forth with clients. Texting has a ton of benefits for all departments, as it reduces phone calls, and allows for employees to answer as quickly as possible without customers sitting on hold and getting frustrated. It’s amazing. And we keep hearing stories from clients who have gone through the entire sales process via text, with customers only coming in to pick up their new units. It’s crazy cool.

My point here is that if handled properly, using all the right tools, it’s possible to use your website and digital marketing to generate an incredible amount of sales. The suite of products we’ve created for you will do just that. We’ve seen it over and over with our clients. I’ve really only given the 30k helicopter view of how powerful these products are, but hopefully you can see how each of them can dramatically improve your dealership – even more so when used together. We’d love to talk with you about how these solutions can work together for your dealership. Give us a shout.

DID YOU KNOW? Firestorm Websites + Firestorm Email = Marketing Powerhouse

Tia Robinson | 03/31/2020

Did you know that the PRIMARY purpose of email marketing is to drive traffic to your website? It sounds so simple, but that tunnel-vision purpose is what gives email marketing one of highest reported ROI consistently over most other media channels.

As I’m sure you know, at PSM we send a lot of marketing emails – both for our company and on our clients’ behalf. So, we know how challenging it can be to continuously create emails that are engaging, compelling, and most importantly, drive traffic to your site.

That’s why we created the Firestorm Email platform. Now this isn’t just any email newsletter tool. It is the best in the industry for a few distinct reasons; here are just a few:

It is simple to use – Big, clear buttons. Lots of options that are simple and straight-forward.
It is designed for the Powersports industry – nothing generic, lame or boring about the themes you’ll see in the Firestorm Email library.
It has killer reporting – You can see who’s opening, clicking, what they are clicking on, and much more.
It has email hygiene built in! – This is a feature that is not available with any other email platform, and it comes complementary with Firestorm Email. This keeps bad emails (fat fingered in at the service counter) from causing your email reputation to tank – and it keeps your emails showing up in inboxes week-after-week.

While Firestorm Email is an incredible email marketing platform in its own right, it gets SUPERCHARGED when bolted on to a Firestorm Website. Here’s why:

Every single vehicle you have in stock on your Firestorm Website is already linked up, with images to your Firestorm Email account!
*insert mind-blown emoji here*

That means no more saving images from your site to your computer, then uploading them to your email, then copying the link from the website and pasting it into a hyperlink on your email. We’ve done all that for you – automatically. But, we didn’t stop there. We also connected all your homepage slider banner images to your Firestorm Email platform too….complete with links as well.

So, by combining Firestorm Email to your Firestorm Website, we’ve not only made sending emails more reliable, better looking and easier to create – we’ve also automated the process that takes the most time and generates the biggest ROI – linking your emails to your specific inventory pages.

Check out this video that shows you how simple this powerful feature is to use: https://youtu.be/x1kpxqen-e0

If you have a Firestorm Website and you’re not using Firestorm Email, give us a call today at 877-242-4472 to get this powerful tool bolted on to your site and watch your email marketing efforts drive a huge boost of traffic to your site (which ultimately results in more leads, more sales, more money!).

Ask Tory – Email Deliverability

Tory Hornsby | 03/02/2020

There are two types of Email Deliverability…

1. Emails being delivered from one server to another without bouncing.
2. Making it to the inbox instead of the SPAM or Promotions folder.

Typically, issues with bounces have to do with having a list of bad email addresses due to typos, staff entering fake email addresses (you know they do it), SPAM bots filling out web forms with bad email addresses and more. The cleanliness of your list also plays a huge factor in your email reputation, which impacts inbox deliverability. If you’re constantly sending email to bad email addresses, ISPs (internet service providers) and ESPs (email service providers) know it’s happening. You develop a bad sender reputation and they send you to the SPAM folder.

While the old email filter systems are still important, Google has been hard at work over the past year changing the way they filter email. They released a big update to Gmail filters in September 2019 that places a high priority on user engagement. Engagement includes opens, clicks, replies and whitelisting.

Google has always focused on giving people what they want with their products, starting with their search engine (which nearly 80% of all searches are done on), and now in Gmail. In their eyes, if a person isn’t engaging with you they don’t want to hear from you. Hard to argue their point.

With all this in mind, we’ve been hard at work adapting Firestorm Email. We’ve made many improvements over the past few months, and recently released updates to the Firestorm Email platform. Here are a few highlights…

We still have over 200 themes to choose from, but no there only one pre-built template. Of course you’re free to add and remove sections and edit to your liking, just keep in mind that emails with more text and less images than you’re probably used to will get you to more inboxes. This industry has always been about bold graphics, but you want to be sure you have no more than a 65% image to 35% text ratio. In fact, be sure to add an all text email to your rotation every so often… they’re best at reaching the inbox.

When selecting lists, you’re now able to choose between active & inactive groups. Active means they’ve engaged with you within 12 months. Inactive means they haven’t. If you send your regular emails to those who don’t engage with you, you’ll notice an increasing dip in inbox deliverability. Therefore, send your normal emails to your active group, and send text only re-engagement emails to your inactive group. Focus on a reason to open, click and especially to reply.

Firestorm Email now has an automate re-engagement email option as well. As soon as a person falls from active to inactive, we attempt to re-engage with them.

For a demo of the new features call 877-242-4472 and ask for Tory.

Ask Tory: Featured Inventory & Marketing Automation

Tory Hornsby | 02/14/2020

Firestorm Websites take Featured Inventory to the next level by combining an easy-to-use interface with a leading-edge marketing automation system. You can Feature and Un-Feature inventory in our Back Office one-by-one, or in bulk in a matter of seconds.

Once a unit is Featured, it’s immediately showcased on your website.

Plus, dealers who have access to our Firestorm Email system are taking advantage of PSM’s ‘Marketing Automation.’ Our system automatically sends a Featured Inventory email to their entire list (or list segments) in order to increase website visits directly to inventory pages, which increases leads!

You can adjust how frequently these Automated Featured Inventory Emails send out, how many units they include, which day they send, what time they send, who the email is from, and even more… All without having to lift a finger. Once set up, the system runnings automatically, saving you time and money while driving traffic to your site and increasing leads!

I’ve recorded a short video with some more details on this process; check it out at: https://youtu.be/jE2BTerjf_Y

If you want to generate more traffic, leads and unit sales, consider getting a Firestorm Website. Give us a call for a quick demo at (877) 242-4472.

-Tory

Pull Back the Curtain

Brad Cannon | 02/12/2020

Email marketing is a combination of art and science. You have to have good looking, eye catching emails to pique the interest of your customers, and you need the data to get a good idea of what is working and what isn’t. It’s a balancing act.

Historically, the norm has been to report a single number for email clicks – which is somewhat helpful, but if you’re doing it right, your emails will have several different calls to action, and knowing which resonated and which didn’t is extremely important.

It sounds painfully obvious, but with the ability to know exactly which calls to action got clicked and which didn’t, you can begin to craft emails that your customers look forward to receiving and will engage with more and more over time. And that moves metal and rings cash registers.

So, this month I want to take you on a little bit of a deep dive into a feature that our Firestorm Email clients have available – our email preview and heat map.

After your Firestorm email deploys, you can go into the results screen and view the preview. What you’ll see is a map showing all of the calls to action along with how many clicks each of them received. It’s awesome. Take a look at the picture below to see what I mean.

Now, a picture is worth a thousand words, but even that won’t do justice to this new feature, so we’re going to do something new.

I’ve made a YouTube video showing exactly how this feature works, and I want you to take a second and go to https://youtu.be/OfS_sgKrVXU and check it out. You’re going to love it (the heat map, that is).

See you soon!

Ask Tory: I keep hearing about your Firestorm products. Are those included in the Local Web Dominator, or are they a separate product?

Tory Hornsby | 11/11/2017

In this 100th Issue, I’ll breakdown what’s offered in our Local Web Dominator, which is Powersports Marketing’s suite of digital solutions. Here is what’s available within our different packages:

Reputation Management – It’s no secret that online reviews are just as powerful and trusted as word of mouth. Our reputation management system grows online reviews (primarily Google reviews) to make your dealership the obvious choice in your local market area. We even create a custom review site to boost SEO. The good reviews go for all to see. The bad is sectioned off into what we call Feedback, and only the dealership’s management team can view them. (Note: We do not remove bad reviews. Call 1-877-242-4472 for more information on our proprietary Feedback system.)

As consumers view your review site they’re able to see reviews for your team members. Consumers are more likely to choose the employee with the best reviews, so your staff has something to gain by asking for reviews. This is called the Employee Ranking System.

Reviews & Rankings Mobile App – This app really drives the Employee Ranking System because your frontline staff uses it to email the customer a picture of their purchase at the point of sale. This is particularly effective in the Sales Department. Who doesn’t want a picture of themselves with their new ride shared on Facebook the day they bought it?! This image is also saved in our database to be used for future marketing to that customer.

Directory Listing Submission – We submit accurate data to the top four Data Aggregators to boost SEO. This includes your dealership’s name, address, phone number & website. The more your dealership’s information is consistently listed online, including your website, the more backlinks/citations it creates.

SEM/AdWords Management – Search Engine Optimization is very important, but it doesn’t cover all the bases. Pay Per Click advertising ensures you’re on the first page of Google when prospects in your area are searching for what you sell.

Facebook Advertising – Whether you’re looking to increase traffic to your website or grow your ‘Likes’, our dedicated team of Facebook Specialists can give you the biggest bang for your buck.

Firestorm Email System – Our email platform is an easy to use drag-and-drop solution that includes done-for-you content that’s cool & creative. It’s not built for Nancy’s Bakery & Carl’s Shoe Store... it’s built for you. It generates higher open rates and more clicks. In fact, when clients use Firestorm Email as prescribed it quickly becomes the top source of traffic to your website!

Firestorm Onboarding – I’ve written about this subject a lot lately because the amount of leads/sales/revenue this solution can produce is ridiculous. First, let’s cover the challenge. 75% to 80% of your websites page views are of your inventory. Sweet, right?! The gut punch is that only 1% to 2% of visitors fill out a Quote Request form. This means 98% (+) of your traffic remain anonymous, including what is likely thousands of customers browsing your in-stock inventory. Website providers have solely focused on improving Conversion Rate, which increases the smaller 1% to 2% number. There is obviously nothing at all wrong with that, but even if you doubled to 4% (which ain’t likely) there would still be 96% that remained anonymous.

Firestorm Onboarding begins linking the customer data you have in your DMS with anonymous website visitors. Every morning, we email you a list of the customers who were on your website yesterday looking at inventory. The system automatically sends those customers a pre-built email from your Sales Manager (Marketing Automation), and we provide a script for your sales people to call and make sure the customers received the email. GUARANTEE: Use this system as prescribed and you will earn multiple unit sales within the first 2-weeks.

Firestorm Websites – Ever heard of Marketing Incest? It’s where one company copies another company’s marketing, who copies another company’s marketing and things just keep getting dumber and dumber. I believe this has happened with many website providers. The Firestorm Website platform is different:

• Increased Conversion. Again, there’s nothing wrong with improving a site’s Conversion Ratio, and we do it without focusing on price. Having a ‘Quote Request’ button is the equivalent of asking customers if they’d like a discount when they walk through your front doors.

• Fully Responsive Design. boosts SEO / page rank because it improves usability by creating a consistent experience for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

• SSL Security Certificates. Google boosts page rank for sites that utilize HTTPS.

• Inventory Integration with VIN Decoding. We pull inventory straight from your DMS saving you time and money on data entry. Then, the system loads the details and specs of each model by decoding the VIN.

• Mobile App Back Office. Enables you to instantly add multiple images of your inventory from your mobile phone while standing on the showroom floor. Includes access to the Internet Lead Manager and more.

• Lead Manager. Track progress of leads (sales process), log calls, set follow-up reminders, and more.

As of late, I’m noticing a trend of dealer’s inquiring into the solutions with the Firestorm nomenclature, and for good reason. Firestorm Websites, Firestorm Email & Firestorm Onboarding fit together like Peanut Butter & Jelly. In fact, they were made to complement each other.

For a low-pressure demo of any of our solutions, or to learn more about packages & pricing, call 1-877-242-4472.

- Tory

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DID YOU KNOW? Firestorm Email with Automatically Linked Title Sections

When a Plan Comes Together

DID YOU KNOW? Firestorm Websites + Firestorm Email = Marketing Powerhouse

Ask Tory – Email Deliverability

Ask Tory: Featured Inventory & Marketing Automation

Pull Back the Curtain

Ask Tory: I keep hearing about your Firestorm products. Are those included in the Local Web Dominator, or are they a separate product?

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