As anyone who runs an auction house probably knows, there's no use in having an auction event if you don't have anything for bidders to bid on. Auction houses are constantly on the hunt for unique and interesting items to sell - this process taking up much time and effort.
Is there a way for auction houses to obtain enough items to sell that is more efficient and quicker?
Why not try marketing automation?
By using a marketing automation platform such as the one that SimplyCast provides, with its built-in contact relationship manager, your auction house can benefit from your current contacts and send out specialty requests whenever you are running low on a particular type of item.
Surveys can help determine leads
Why not send out a survey to your supplier contacts in order to help determine who specializes in what kind of items, and who are prepared to make you some deals?
Surveys allow you to obtain this information in a quick and easy way, helping to make your buying process simpler and more efficient, which gives you more time to focus on promoting your event.
Make sure your survey is short and concise, asking only the essential questions. Keep your survey relatively generalized – your contacts will not want to answer 20 questions about the exact type of Ming vases that they carry. Your contacts will more likely fill out the survey if they do not have to scroll far to reach the end.
Take advantage of the CRM
Once you have collected the information from your survey, with the help of SimplyCast's marketing automation platform, you are able to create custom email campaigns where you can ask these suppliers for products when it comes time for your next auction sale.
This is where the CRM comes in.
With Simplycast's CRM, any contact information obtained, whether through a signup form, survey, or other means, will be automatically added to a personal profile of that contact in the CRM, where the information can then be used in creating future communication campaigns requesting products.
For example, say you asked your contacts what kind of antiques or art they specialize in during your survey. The information you obtained from this survey was added into the CRM and now you are looking specifically for Tudor era antiques for an upcoming auction. Now, armed with all this information in your CRM, you are able to target only the suppliers who you know deal in these products.
You are able to use a process called conditional formatting in which you can use a tagging system that will automatically determine which contacts to send this message to within your contact list. If a particular contact has no association with the Tudor era, the platform will recognize this and the contact will not receive the message, sparing them an irrelevant, thus annoying, email.
This saves your auction house a lot of time you may spend cold-calling various suppliers trying to remember who deals in what kinds of products. This way, you know that you are reaching the relevant suppliers the first time, increasing your efficiency and ability to focus on other tasks required leading up to the auction date.
Try for yourself
If you are interested to see how easy it is to contact the appropriate suppliers for the items you want for your auctions, try our 14-day free trial of the SimplyCast 360 marketing automation platform!