The holiday season brings more than twinkling lights and festive cheer – it presents a golden opportunity for your service department to connect with customers and drive meaningful revenue. While your sales floor may be buzzing with year-end vehicle promotions, your service bay shouldn’t take a back seat during this critical time of year.

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Why Holiday Campaigns Matter for Service

Service departments aren’t facing one challenge at a time. You’re juggling manufacturer retention requirements, competing for wallet share in a crowded market, and working to bring back customers who haven’t visited in months. The holidays offer a unique moment when customers are already in a spending mindset, planning their budgets, and thinking about year-end vehicle maintenance before winter weather hits or holiday road trips begin.

The numbers tell a compelling story. Recent holiday-oriented service campaigns have achieved an impressive 18.6% response rate, which is significantly higher than typical direct mail benchmarks. Even more striking: these campaigns deliver an average ROI of 58:1 for every dollar spent. With an average of 903 repair orders generated and over $406,000 in revenue per campaign, strategic holiday marketing makes a compelling business case.

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Understanding Your Target Audiences

Your holiday campaign success depends on reaching three distinct customer groups, each requiring a tailored approach:

Your dealership database customers are your foundation. These are customers who’ve trusted you before and, with the right incentive, will keep coming back. Remember, your manufacturer requires a certain percentage of these customers to visit annually, and holiday campaigns can help you meet those benchmarks while building lasting loyalty.

OEM database customers represent tremendous opportunity. They’re already invested in your manufacturer; you just need to give them a reason to choose your service department.

Conquest customers are the growth engine. These vehicle owners in your area might be dissatisfied with their current service provider or simply unaware of what you offer. Strategic holiday offers can be the nudge they need to give you a try.

For at-risk or inactive customers who haven’t visited in 12+ months, more aggressive offers often prove worthwhile. The cost of customer acquisition always exceeds retention, making even steep discounts on services like oil changes a smart investment when they bring dormant customers back into your ecosystem.

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The AI-Powered Advantage

Creating effective, personalized campaigns for thousands of customers traditionally required significant time and resources, which are luxuries most service departments don’t have during the busy holiday season. This is where technology can transform your approach.

CruiseCTRL, Dealerwing’s AI-powered platform, streamlines the entire campaign process. The system analyzes your customer data to generate targeted offers matched to each recipient’s engagement patterns. Rather than sending the same generic offer to everyone, you’re delivering relevant, personalized incentives.

The platform also handles creative development, designing eye-catching, colorful, and personalized greeting cards that stand out. With customizable seasonal greetings, handwritten-style personal messages, and your dealership’s branding seamlessly integrated, each piece feels thoughtful and authentic, not like mass marketing.

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The Details That Drive Results

Success in holiday service marketing often comes down to execution details. First Class Mail with live stamps return undeliverable pieces, helping you maintain clean, accurate customer data, a benefit that pays dividends long after the holidays end.

Personalization matters tremendously. When a customer receives a card that acknowledges their specific vehicle or includes a tailored offer based on their maintenance schedule, it cuts through the holiday noise. With an average campaign size of 5,127 mailers, automating this personalization is a must for efficient marketing.

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Making Your Move

The holiday season waits for no one, and your competitors are likely planning their own campaigns. The dealerships that succeed are those that act early, allowing time for strategic planning, creative development, and timely delivery when customers are most receptive.

Your service department has tremendous potential beyond being a profit center: it’s a relationship builder, a customer retention tool, and a competitive advantage. This holiday season, give your service marketing the attention it deserves. The ROI speaks for itself, but more importantly, you’ll strengthen the customer relationships that sustain your business year-round.

Ready to make this your service department’s most successful holiday season yet?

Ready to Take Your Dealership’s Marketing to the Next Level?
Dealerwing specializes in AI-driven marketing solutions designed to increase service retention, optimize ad spend, and drive measurable results. Let’s build a smarter, more profitable marketing strategy for your dealership today.