Email Drips That Never Sleep

A follow up sequence that goes out on schedule whether the salesperson is on the lot, at lunch or on vacation, and stops the moment the customer answers.

Email drip automation writes the follow up once and sends it many times, on a schedule, to every lead that qualifies for it, and it keeps doing that on the days when nobody at the store has time to think about the third email to an internet lead from two weeks ago. That is the one sentence version. In LeadLocate CRM it is three tools that share one contact database: Email Automation, the dock tile that reads Drips that never sleep; Follow Up Processes, the multi step sequences per lead type under Billing and Admin; and Automated Templates, the per feed responses that answer a new lead the moment it arrives.

The reason it is three tools rather than one is that a dealership runs three different kinds of automated email. The first is the instant reply: a lead comes in from a feed at 11 p.m. and gets a response that sounds like the store within the minute. The second is the long sequence: an unsold lead gets a planned series over days and weeks, with the wording changing as the lead ages. The third is the scheduled send to a list: the whole pre-owned inquiry list gets the aged inventory email on Thursday at 9 a.m. Each one has its own screen because each one is set up by a different person for a different reason.

This page is the product side view of those three screens. The category page, dealership CRM with email automation, explains why a store wants automated email in the CRM at all, and the full features list puts these tools next to the texting, calling and desking features they work with.

Say a lead arrives Sunday night from the store's website, a shopper asking about a certified crossover. Nobody is in the building. The Automated Templates set for that feed sends a reply within the minute, in the store's voice, thanking the shopper, confirming the unit and offering two appointment times. Monday morning the round robin has assigned the lead to a salesperson, who opens the lead detail and sees the reply already sent, so his first touch is a call, not a delayed apology.

The shopper does not answer the call. The salesperson sets the lead's status, and the Follow Up Process for internet leads takes over: a second email on day two with the vehicle's photos, a short check in on day four, a message on day seven about the store's trade appraisal, a final note on day fourteen. Each step is written once by the BDC manager and edited when the store's offer changes. The salesperson does nothing except watch the lead's communications log fill in, and when the shopper finally replies to the day seven email, the reply threads under the lead in the CRM inbox, the notification fires, and the salesperson picks up the conversation with the whole history in front of him.

Meanwhile the internet director has a list of ninety unsold pre-owned inquiries from last month. She opens Email Automation, picks the campaign list under Send to Campaign, chooses the subject and the template, drops in the flyer as the attachment, sets the Schedule Time for Thursday at 9 a.m. and saves. The row appears under Scheduled Delivery with its status, and on Thursday it goes out while she is in the sales meeting. Three tools, one contact database, one inbox for the replies.

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Email Automation is on the dock. Click Marketing Tools on the bottom taskbar and it is one of eight tiles, beside Bulk Email, Text Automation, Bulk Texting, Texting Chatbots, Voicemail Drops, Phone Validator and Email Validator. The page has a scheduling form, with Send to Campaign, Subject, Template, Attachment, Message and Schedule Time, and a Scheduled Delivery table beneath it showing each queued send with its Status and View and Edit actions. Text Automation is the same idea for SMS, and the two are built to run side by side so a sequence can alternate between an email and a text.

Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates live under Billing and Admin on the main menu, next to DNC Blacklist, Voicemail Drop Files, Lead Feeds Manager, User Management and Account Settings. That placement is deliberate: these are the store's policy, set by a manager, not a per user preference. Follow Up Processes holds the multi step drips per lead type with a restore defaults option, so a manager who over edits a sequence can put the original back. Automated Templates holds the per feed inbound templates, a master set, and the unassigned lead automation that covers a lead nobody has claimed yet.

On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app shows the result rather than the setup: the email inbox, the lead's communications log, and the notification when a reply arrives. A salesperson does not build drips from a phone, but he sees every email the drip sent and every reply it earned.

Automated Templates is the first touch. Every lead feed in the Lead Feeds Manager can carry its own template set, so the reply to a website lead reads differently from the reply to a third party lead or an inbound seller offer request, and the master set covers any feed without its own. The unassigned lead automation is the safety net: a lead that has not been picked up by a person still gets a response, so the customer never learns that the store's Sunday coverage was thin.

Follow Up Processes is the long game. A process is a series of steps with a delay between them, defined per lead type, so a finance lead, a trade lead and a new vehicle inquiry each get a sequence that fits what the customer asked for. Steps are written in the store's voice, and the process pauses the customer out of the sequence when the conversation turns live, because nothing reads worse than an automated day seven email arriving the morning after the customer bought the car.

Email Automation is the scheduled send. It answers the question that Bulk Email does not: not send this now, but send this then. A manager queues a send to a campaign list for a date and time, sees it in the Scheduled Delivery table, and can edit or delete it up until it goes. Alongside it, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes each have their own page if you want the setup detail for one of them.

The direct replacement is a separate email marketing platform with its own contact list and its own monthly invoice. The indirect replacement is the salesperson's memory. Most follow up at most stores stops after the second touch because the third one has to be remembered, written and sent by a person who has eleven other leads and a customer on the lot. A drip does not have eleven other leads. It sends the third, fourth and fifth touch on schedule, and the store finds out that a meaningful share of buyers were simply not ready on day one.

There is also the cost of the disconnected tool. When the drip runs in a product beside the CRM, the lead record does not know the email went out, the reply lands in a mailbox nobody owns, and the salesperson calls a customer who has been receiving emails from the store all week without knowing it. When the drip runs inside LeadLocate CRM, every send is a line in the lead's communications log next to the calls and texts, every reply threads under the lead, and the notification goes to the assigned user. The what to expect from car sales leads page explains why a customer who goes quiet for two weeks is still a real buyer, which is exactly the customer a drip is built for.

All three tools are part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only at $199 a month up through the lead plans, with no separate automation tier. The pricing page has the details.

Automated email earns trust or loses it at scale, so the rules are simple and worth stating. Drips go to leads and contacts who gave the store their address by asking about a vehicle, submitting an offer request, buying a car or opting in on a form. When a customer asks to stop, a manager removes them from the process and the campaign list and notes it on the record, and the communications log shows the last message they received. Texting has its own consent rules, and the do not call scrub and blacklist page covers that channel.

Deliverability is the other half. A drip that sends thousands of emails a month from a shared address will eventually be treated as bulk by the receiving servers. Email domain authentication puts the store's own domain on every automated send, so the messages carry the store's reputation rather than a stranger's. Running a list through the Email Validator before it enters a sequence keeps dead addresses from dragging that reputation down. Both are neighbouring tools, not separate purchases.

Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes ship with a default set when the account is created, so a new store has a working first reply and a working sequence on day one and edits them into its own voice from there. The BDC manager or Master Administrator opens Billing and Admin, reviews the templates for each feed in the Lead Feeds Manager, adjusts the delays and wording in Follow Up Processes, and uses restore defaults if an edit goes wrong. Email Automation needs a campaign list to send to, so the first step there is building the lists under the Email menu or importing contacts.

Our team walks through the setup on the onboarding call and puts the store's own wording in place if a manager sends it over. Sending from the dealership's own domain rather than a shared address is set up on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. If you want to see a sequence run before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a lead arriving, the automated reply going out and the drip taking over.

Pair the email drip with Text Automation so the sequence alternates channels; a customer who ignores three emails often answers the first text, and the reverse is just as common. Pair it with Voicemail Drops for the step where a human voice does more than a paragraph. Pair it with the AI writing assistant when a manager is drafting the steps, because a sequence written in ten minutes with help reads better than one written in an hour without it.

On the setup side, pair it with the Lead Feeds Manager so every feed has the right template, and with the round robin so the lead the drip is warming has a person attached to it when the reply comes in. On the measurement side, the Reports dashboard on the dock shows email activity by user and by day, so a manager can see which step of which process earns the replies and rewrite the ones that do not. And when the drip does its job and the customer answers, the vehicle insert button in the composer, the appointment booking link and the desking tool are all one click from the same thread, which is the whole reason the drip lives in the CRM.

What is the difference between Email Automation, Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates?

Automated Templates is the instant first reply to a new lead, set per feed with a master set and an unassigned lead fallback. Follow Up Processes is the multi step drip per lead type with delays between steps. Email Automation schedules a send to a campaign list for a chosen delivery time. All three share the CRM's contact records.

Does the drip stop when the customer replies?

The reply lands in the CRM email inbox under the lead and notifies the assigned user, and the process is paused for that customer so the conversation is handled by a person rather than by the next scheduled step.

Can I schedule an email to a whole list for a specific time?

Yes. Email Automation, under Marketing Tools on the dock, takes a campaign list, subject, template, attachment and message, and a Schedule Time. The queued send appears in the Scheduled Delivery table where it can be edited or deleted until it goes.

Where do I edit the wording of a drip?

Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates are under Billing and Admin on the main menu. Each has a restore defaults option so an over edited sequence can be put back to the shipped version.

Is email drip automation an add on?

No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up, with no separate automation tier. The pricing page lists the plans.

Can the drip alternate between email and text?

Yes. Text Automation is the SMS counterpart under the same Marketing Tools menu, and sequences are built to alternate so a customer who ignores email can still be reached by text and the other way around.

Email drips, follow up processes and instant lead replies are part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. See a lead arrive, the reply go out and the sequence take over.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.