Attract and retain car wash customers with (e-mail) newsletters

If you regularly publish a newsletter to keep your customers up to date on the latest news from your car wash, you can remind them that it's time to visit again. We explain to you here how to get your customers' e-mail addresses and how best to approach newsletter marketing.

You should not buy addresses for the e-mail newsletter

You inform people on your website, on Facebook and also at the pay desk of the car wash that your customers can sign up for the newsletter. However, the registration process is slow. Before you come up with the idea of buying email addresses from a more or less reputable retailer, you should consider a number of things. Such lists have often not been produced in a legitimate way, and the e-mails often end up being suspected of being spam or are not even opened. But even more important in a business like yours, which is highly regional, is that you can't know where the people whose addresses you bought live. 

Even if e-mail addresses from the region are offered to you, you should not accept them directly. Think for a moment how you yourself would feel if a company wrote to you who you had never had anything to do with before. Would you find the newsletter helpful and informative or rather intrusive – especially since you don't know where this person got your e mail address from? With this method, you are more likely to scare customers away than to attract them.

How to collect e-mail addresses for the newsletter

It is better to collect the e-mail addresses in the conventional way. Inform your customers online or by putting up a display in the shop that there is a newsletter and that they can subscribe to. It is also important that you make it clear from the start that customers can unsubscribe at any time. Some people do not subscribe despite being interested because they are afraid of being inundated with spam. You can dispel this fear by declaring directly in the subscription information that you will send the newsletter, for example, once or twice a month. That's not too much, and customers are more likely to suspect that you actually have something to say. Be sure to include a double opt-in when collecting addresses. This way, only those who are really interested actually subscribe.

Do not collect unnecessary data! Just let your customers enter their name, if necessary their gender and e-mail address. If the interested parties have to enter significantly more data, many of them will be deterred from signing up. Awareness of one's own sensitive data has increased considerably in recent years. Don't be disappointed if you don't collect a lot of e mail addresses this way. Those who you are writing to are genuinely interested. In this way, you avoid getting on your customers' nerves and prevent them from associating negative feelings with the name of your car wash because of an unwanted deluge of e-mails.

This is how good newsletter marketing works

A popular incentive for customers to subscribe to the newsletter is, for example, a discount that they receive the next time they visit your car wash. However, you should also make sure that your customers don't just sign up for a short time, take advantage of the discount and unsubscribe again. You can only achieve this with succinct newsletters that offer added value and which are informative. Write to them about innovations relating to detergents or equipment, changes in opening hours or before a holiday, but above all in the run-up to special promotion days. These can be seasonal, for example. You can offer a discount on underbody washing, for example, in slushy winter weather or announce a special promotion day centred around flower pollen in summer.

Short sentences and eye-catchers are especially important when producing the newsletter. Nobody has the time or desire to read an eternally long sermon in a newsletter that deals with something as practical as car washing. So it's best to get straight to the point: What's it all about? And what is the advantage for the reader? Short sentences, structured texts and above all meaningful pictures (bought symbolic pictures or those of your car wash) ensure that the newsletter is well accepted. It is not time-consuming for customers and offers added value.

Is newsletter marketing worthwhile with promotional letters?

Unfortunately, there is no one answer to this question. In most cases this would certainly not be the case, because you would not only have to collect the e-mail addresses, but also the actual addresses of your customers. A letter would only be of use to those who do not have an e-mail address and who are not familiar with the Internet. Their numbers are dwindling fast. However, if your car wash is located in an area with a large number of pensioners who are actually not particularly interested in the Internet and who are happy to receive physical mail, you can give them the opportunity to register for a newsletter by post at the pay desk with their address. But remember that in this case you would also have to pay for envelopes and postage! In most cases, this investment is no longer worthwhile.

Summary: You can easily produce a good newsletter

When composing e-mails or letters, you should always try to inspire a positive feeling among your subscribers. They should think as often as possible that it was a good idea to subscribe to this newsletter. If you do everything right, subscribers will not only come to your car wash more often than they would otherwise, they will also feel valued as regular customers. In addition, it will almost never happen that someone puts your newsletter straight into the recycle bin without reading it.