SMS for car dealerships works best in three places: a fast first reply to new internet leads, appointment and status texts from the service drive, and two-way conversations with buyers who already asked to hear from you. It works badly as a way to market to people who never opted in, so this guide covers what to send, what consent you need, and what the texts cost.

Dealerships have a timing problem. A shopper fills out a form on your site, a listing marketplace or a manufacturer portal, and then submits the same form to two other stores. The store that starts a real conversation first usually gets the appointment. Texting is the fastest channel you have, because most people read a text within minutes and few answer an unknown number. This post covers the sales side, the service side, copy-ready templates, the compliance basics and the per-segment math.

SMS for car dealerships: what to text and what to skip

Sort your texts into two buckets, because carriers and the law treat them differently.

Conversational and transactional texts:

  • First reply to a lead who submitted a form asking to be contacted
  • Test-drive and appointment confirmations
  • Service appointment reminders, "your vehicle is ready" notices and repair-order updates
  • Trade-in follow-ups the customer asked for
  • Reply threads that the customer started

Marketing texts (need clear opt-in to marketing, and get filtered more often):

  • Inventory promotions and sales events
  • Lease-end and equity outreach
  • Service specials and coupons

Skip texting purchased lists and old CRM records with no record of consent. Reach cold contacts by phone and mail. Send SMS only to leads who consented or who replied to you.

Speed to lead: winning the first five minutes

Most of a lead's value goes to whoever responds first. A text gets there fastest, and then a phone call follows up while the shopper is still at their screen.

A sound setup looks like this:

  1. The form submit triggers a text right away. In GoHighLevel, a workflow sends it through Ready. If you build your own stack, your form handler calls the API:
POST https://api.tryready.com/v1/messages
X-API-Key: <key>
Idempotency-Key: 3f6c1a2e-8b4d-4e2a-9c51-7d0e2f1a9b33
Content-Type: application/json

{"to": "+12125550199", "body": "Hi Dana, it's Mike at Lakeside Toyota. Got your request on the 2024 RAV4 XLE. Still available. Want to see it today or tomorrow? Reply STOP to opt out.", "consent_attested": true}

The Idempotency-Key stops a retried request from texting the lead twice. Twice looks sloppy at a dealership. Docs: messages API and quickstart.

  1. A salesperson calls from the dial pad within minutes. The Ready Dialer offers click-to-call from the dashboard or from inside GoHighLevel, with consented call recording and transcripts. It is billed at $0.025/min, and each started minute counts as a full minute. A 3-minute-10-second call is billed as 4 minutes: 4 minutes × $0.025 = $0.10. The Ready Dialer does not auto-dial new leads, drop voicemails or transfer calls. A person clicks to call.
  1. Replies go to one inbox. Replies land in the Inbox (and in GHL for connected accounts), in the same thread as the first text.

Ready's AI message writer helps you draft and spam-check templates. Ready no longer lets accounts create AI agents that answer leads on their own, so on a new account a person writes every reply.

Service department texts

The service drive is where texting tends to pay off without controversy. Customers want to know when their car is ready, and a text saves your advisors a round of phone tag.

Texts worth automating:

  • Appointment reminder the day before and the morning of. Timing details are in our appointment reminder guide.
  • Check-in confirmation with the advisor's name.
  • Repair-order updates, such as "tech found X, approve?". The approval itself should go through your DMS or a call, and the text prompts it.
  • Vehicle ready notice with your pickup hours.

Register this traffic honestly. A "marketing" campaign that actually sends reminders, or the reverse, is a common reason for throttling. Our use-case picking guide explains how to match the use case to what you actually send. Dealers that send both sales promos and service notices usually need a mixed or separate campaign.

Templates you can copy

Keep each one under 160 plain characters so it stays one segment. Name the store, and include opt-out language in the first message.

New internet lead

Hi {first}, it's {rep} at {store}. Thanks for asking about the {year model}. It's on the lot. Does today at 5 or tomorrow at 11 work for a look? Reply STOP to opt out.

Missed call follow-up

{first}, {rep} from {store}. Sorry I missed you. Easier to text? What questions do you have on the {model}?

Test-drive confirmation

Confirmed: {model} test drive at {time} {day}, {store}, {address}. Bring your license. Reply C to confirm or R to reschedule.

Service reminder

{store} Service: reminder for {vehicle} tomorrow at {time}. Reply C to confirm, R to reschedule. Reply STOP to opt out.

Vehicle ready

{first}, your {vehicle} is ready at {store}. Service drive is open until 6 PM today.

Trade-in check-in (only if they asked)

Hi {first}, {rep} at {store}. You asked us to keep an eye on trade values for your {vehicle}. Want an updated number this week?

Leave public link shorteners out of these templates. Shared shortener domains are a known filtering trigger. Also skip "FREE!!!" and all-caps urgency in marketing texts.

Consent, quiet hours and the TCPA

TCPA exposure runs $500 to $1,500 per text, so a dealership that texts a few thousand records without consent is taking a serious risk. Good practice:

  • Capture consent on the form, with clear language that the customer agrees to texts from your store, and store the timestamp, wording and page URL. Ready records your attestation for each bulk send and each API send that sets consent_attested (who sent it, to how many, and when). It does not keep a per-contact consent record, so your CRM or website has to keep that record. Our post on documenting SMS consent explains what holds up. (A contact who signs up on a Ready-hosted opt-in page is the exception: Ready stores that sign-up, with the time, IP address and exact wording, and support@tryready.com can send you a copy.)
  • Honor STOP everywhere. On Ready, an inbound STOP is suppressed across every campaign, and later sends to that number are refused up front and not charged.
  • Respect quiet hours. Sends outside permitted local hours, based on the recipient's area, are held and go out later. You are charged only when they send. Campaigns, drip campaigns and automations wait up to 24 hours for the window; a one-to-one or API text is held only if the window opens within 6 hours, otherwise it is refused and must be resent; a one-to-one reply to someone who texted you in the last 24 hours goes out at any hour.
  • Scrub before marketing pushes. The standalone TCPA & DNC Litigator Scrub costs $0.005 per contact and checks known litigator and DNC-complainer lists. You can also switch on in-flow scrubbing at $0.003 extra per segment. It is off by default.

None of this makes a dealership lawsuit-proof. Compliance remains the sender's responsibility, and these steps lower the risk.

What it costs: worked examples

Ready's Standard rate is $0.0075/segment plus a $0.0045 carrier fee. Received replies are billed at the same rate. The figures below are all-in except for the optional compliance surcharge.

Example 1: one store's service drive. Assume 2,000 reminders a month at 150 plain characters each (1 segment), and about 600 single-segment replies. The reply volume is an assumption.

  • 2,600 segments × $0.0075 = $20 at the Standard rate, plus 2,600 × $0.0045 in carrier fees
  • Registration: $25/mo for registration and $2/mo per number. The $25 charged at submit covers the first month.

Ready's all-in prices per segment include the carrier fee but not screening: Scrub lists and Number validation, the two switches in Settings under Compliance, each add $0.003 per segment when switched on, shown as screening on your bill, and both are off by default. Unless you turn the opt-out footer off, the first text to each contact, and one again from time to time, also gets "Reply STOP to opt out" and your business name if the message does not already have them, so a text close to the segment limit can bill one more segment.

Example 2: the emoji tax on a sales promo. A 175-character event text to 1,500 opted-in customers:

  • Plain text: 2 segments (153 characters each in multipart), so 3,000 segments
  • Same text plus one 🚗: unicode, 67 characters per segment, so 3 segments and 4,500 segments
  • The emoji adds 1,500 × $0.0075 = $11 at the rate plus carrier fees.

Throughput is limited too. A fresh standard campaign usually gets about 1 to 4 segments per second. At an assumed 2 per second, 4,500 segments take about 37 minutes to send.

Full pricing is at tryready.com/pricing.

Where Ready fits and where it doesn't

Fits well:

  • GoHighLevel shops and agencies serving dealers. The native OAuth integration syncs messages both ways and keeps each GHL location's sub-account isolated.
  • Dealer groups with several rooftops. Each store can have its own numbers. Local presence, which has a listed price of $0.0015 for each segment of a delivered text, sends from the number closest to the customer's area code. Every number still sits on the registered 10DLC campaign.
  • Software companies building dealer tools. Give each dealership its own sub-account and registration through one API. See the sub-account and quickstart docs.
  • Stores that want iPhone shoppers to see a blue bubble. A blue line costs $99 a month plus 6 cents a segment. It can start up to 50 new conversations a day, needs no 10DLC registration, and doesn't send campaigns. Details are in the blue line guide.

Honest tradeoffs:

  • On per-message price, Twilio (~$0.0083/segment) and GoHighLevel's LC Phone (~$0.0083/msg, ~$0.0128 all-in) cost less. Ready's case rests on self-serve registration (most approvals take 2 to 7 days), compliance features built in, and the inbox, CRM and automations included.
  • If your dealer CRM already texts well and your consent records live there, keeping it is a reasonable choice.
  • Ready has no auto-dialer. If your BDC depends on queue dialing, Ready doesn't do that.

The practical takeaway

Text new leads within seconds of the form submit and follow up with a human call. Automate service reminders and "ready for pickup" notices. Keep templates short and free of emoji. Text only people who said yes, and keep your own record of that yes. Register before you scale, because unregistered traffic gets filtered. If you want to test, the first 20 one-to-one texts are free with a card on file, so use them before you register. You can sign up here.

FAQ

Can we text leads from third-party car listing sites?

You can text them only if the lead agreed to receive texts from your store. Check the source's consent language. If consent isn't clear, call or email first, and text once they reply.

Do dealerships need 10DLC registration?

Yes, for any real volume. On Ready, an account can send up to 500 texts a month before registering. After that it needs a registered brand and campaign. Most approvals take 2 to 7 days.

Can each rooftop text from a local number?

Yes. Give each store its own numbers. Local presence (listed at $0.0015 for each segment of a delivered text) picks the number closest to the customer's area code.

Does Ready auto-call new leads?

No. The Ready Dialer is click-to-call at $0.025/min, with recording, transcripts, inbound calls and a Missed call card in the Inbox thread for each missed call. It has no auto-dialing or voicemail drop.

Is Ready the lowest-cost texting option for a dealership?

No. Twilio and GoHighLevel's LC Phone cost less per message. Ready charges $0.0075/segment plus $0.0045 and bundles registration, STOP handling, quiet hours and an inbox.