The Autobytel Success Story

*The Autobytel Success Story

By Eda Galeno

Looking for a new car? Interested in reviews and pricing? Chances are your needs will be met by one of Autobytel Inc.’s e-zines.

Autobytel Inc., an automotive marketing services company, helps retailers sell cars and manufacturers build brands. The company owns and operates the automotive Web sites – Autobytel.com, Autoweb.com, CarSmart.com, Car.com, AutoSite.com, Autoahorros.com and CarTV.com.

“The difference between the sites are the way they are organized, the content and navigation,” says Michael Rosenberg, senior vice president of Marketing and Media Service, who handles the consumer and industry newsletters. “The overall experience is different to appeal to different people.”

The objective of the sites and newsletters is to stay in touch with consumers throughout the purchasing cycle. Typically, a prospective purchaser will reach one of Autobytel’s Web sites looking for research on safety ratings and recommendations. Rosenberg knows they’ll visit multiple sites and before visiting a dealership. That’s why he considerers the newsletters important. “The purpose of the newsletter is to establish us as an automotive expert in their mind,” he says.

This Irvine, CA-based company reaches millions of car shoppers monthly as they make vehicle buying decisions online. Autobytel has a total of six newsletters—three business-to-consumer and three business-to-business.

These e-zines, with an 85 percent delivery rate, are distributed to over 2 million subscribers monthly.

The consumer newsletters correspond to three of Autobytel’s brands: Autobytel.com, carsmart.com and autoweb.com. All three are the same newsletters are the same except for colors, design and branding which ties the newsletter back to the site from which the subscriber opted in.

Subscribers for autobytel.com and autoweb.com outpace those for carsmart.com. Rosenberg attributes the difference in subscribers to the amount of Web site traffic.

“On the consumer side we generate thousands of purchase requests where they click on a newsletter link and request a car quote,” says Rosenberg. “They generate a good amount of business for us. We send it to the dealers and they are responsible to convert that information to a sale. We look at the open rates and what percent submits a request.”

The consumer newsletter open rate is around 30%, says Rosenberg. The open and follow through by submitting a purchase request are approximately 15 to 20 percent of recipients.

A standout on the business-to-business side is Auto News Link, distributed monthly, is three years old and distributed to 6,560 dealers with a 90% deliverability rate. It features a number of different products and lead management services, best practices tips for dealers and industry information.

“It’s a combination information and business newsletter,” says Melanie Webber, vice president, Corporate Communications, who handles the dealer newsletters. “This month we’ll have an article on cool gadgets and what we call Dealer Download where we survey our dealers to find out how they feel about industry things.”

The B2B newsletter titled At Your Service first shipped in November. This newsletter targets dealers who use Autobytel’s CRM product RPM (Retention Performance Marketing). It is distributed monthly to 780 dealers with a delivery rate of 90%.

Autobytel SmartBrief is an industry newsletter distributed weekly to 4,000 subscribers. It launched about eight months ago and focuses on what’s going on in the world of online automotive marketing. “We’re an automotive marketing service,” says Webber. “We help auto manufacturers market more efficiently. The objective of SmartBrief is to keep the press, our dealer customers, automotive manufacturer customers, investors and agencies educated in what’s going on in on-line automotive marketing.”

Editorial for the newsletters are the collaborative effort of internal and external resources and technical issues are handled in-house. Rosenberg says that they experience the occasional deliverability issues but working with Yesmail, a list management services company, helps resolve those problems quickly.

For the future, Webber is hoping to continue to get more industry feedback from dealers on what they like to read and remain on top of the industry with presenting useful and beneficial information.

Rosenberg hopes to personalize consumer newsletters to a greater extent than just a person’s name. “We’d like to look at customizing the newsletter by the type of car someone is interested in,” he says. “If someone looked at a Chevy Corvette, it would be interesting to send information on Corvettes or related sports cars.”