Send emails triggered by each customer's vehicle and timeline: service due, appointment confirmations, post-sale check-ins, lease end and equity, new arrivals for shoppers who asked, and seasonal service offers. Keep consent records, include full finance and lease disclosures, and measure repair orders and units sold.
Fewer, better-timed emails beat weekly blasts.
Service emails: the steady earner
Service customers return several times a year if you remind them well. Five emails do most of the work:
- Service due: by mileage estimate or date since the last visit, with a booking link.
- Appointment confirmation and reminder: time, advisor, what to bring, shuttle or loaner details.
- After the visit: what was done, what is coming up next, and a review request sent to every customer.
- Seasonal: tires before winter, air conditioning before summer, with prices stated in full.
- Declined work follow-up: a reminder about recommended work the customer postponed.
Sales and retention emails
Past buyers and active shoppers respond to emails about their own situation:
- Post-sale check-in: a week after delivery, with help using the car's features and a review request.
- Purchase anniversary: a thank-you and a service reminder.
- Lease end: months before the end date, with the options and an appointment offer.
- Equity alerts: when a customer's vehicle may be worth more than they owe, an invitation to talk.
- New arrivals: for shoppers who asked to hear about a model, when one comes in.
Consent and the email rules
Transactional emails about a booking or a purchase are one thing; offers are marketing. In the USA, the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide requires accurate headers, a postal address and an opt-out honored within 10 business days. In Canada, CASL requires consent before a commercial electronic message, and the sender must be able to show it. Capture marketing consent at sale, service write-up and online forms, record it, and keep transactional and marketing emails separate.
Texts need more care
Many customers prefer texts for service reminders. In the USA, the FCC's TCPA rule (47 CFR 64.1200) requires prior express written consent for telemarketing calls and texts made with an autodialer or prerecorded voice, bars telephone solicitation before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. local time, and protects numbers on the national do-not-call registry. Do-not-call rules cover marketing texts as well as calls, and an opt-out made in any reasonable way, such as a STOP reply, must be honored within 10 business days; an FCC order effective 25 November 2026 changes some of how opt-outs work, so check it when you set up your process. In Canada, CASL applies to commercial texts. Get text consent separately and clearly.
Offers in email: finance, lease and price rules
An email is advertising when it offers a car or a deal. In the USA, a monthly payment, down payment or number of payments triggers the full credit terms under Regulation Z, and a lease payment or amount due at signing triggers the lease disclosures under Regulation M; our dealer Google Ads guide lists them. In Ontario, OMVIC counts internet advertising as advertising and requires all-in prices except HST and licensing. Keep offer emails consistent with the prices on your website.
Review requests
Ask every sales and service customer for a review the same way, after delivery or the visit. The FTC's reviews rule bars fake reviews, rewarding reviews of a particular sentiment and suppressing negative ones. Route unhappy replies to a manager who can fix the problem.
How to measure automotive email
Service: appointments booked and repair orders from each email, and declined work recovered. Sales: appointments and units sold from lease-end, equity and new-arrival emails. Overall: unsubscribes and complaints by email type. Opens are unreliable now because some mail apps load images automatically; judge emails by bookings and sales.
What we do and do not do
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. We plan, build and send dealer emails through our email marketing service, triggered from your DMS and CRM data, with consent records kept. We sell no lists and give no legal advice; your compliance team approves finance and lease wording. Our car dealership marketing page describes the work.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.