I just came across DealerRefresh few days ago and wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the time and effort it must take to keep it up and running.  I’ve been involved in the car business now for almost 4 years and have been on the Internet side of it for all but about 5 months.

For the most part, everything has been a self-taught or at best a trial and error experience.  It’s nice to have a resource such as this one to turn to for thoughts and opinions from others in the industry that are in a non-competitive situation.  I’m working now for a family owned business that has been in business for a little over 58 years.  It was started as a Buick dealership back in the day.  We are now a 4 franchise group, Buick, Isuzu, Mazda and BMW.  We are in the process of becoming only a BMW dealership, that along with the used car department which will expand by adding a high-line section to our current, mostly GM and other domestic inventory.

We now use Reynolds both for our web site design and our CRM tool.  I used AVV at my prior dealership (Honda) for about 3 years.  I can’t say that Reynolds Contact Management is any easier to use, but it does seem to have much more capability and the support folks at Reynolds are outstanding.  With the upcoming new changes in mind, would you have any advice to offer as to a web provider? Reynolds is a bit limited in the template offerings they have available and they only have one template that is BMW compliant in their super premium package.  It’s in use by a BMW Center about 225 miles away from us and I am afraid the same template might be a bit confusing to our clients.  If you had the opportunity to start over with your website, what would you do?

If you have taken the time and effort to read this far, I truly appreciate it.  As well as any opinions/suggestions you might have to pass along to someone who wants to get better and dominate this market area.  I am a full time Internet Manager here and have a pretty free hand as to how I run the department.  It is me and I generally receive and work the leads myself, except the BMW leads which I divide out among 4 Client Advisors.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Sincerely, Ray

-Per Ray’s request, I was asked to remove his full name and dealer info.

Buying leads at their origin versus buying them from one of the big third-parties.

Now that I’m about to bring on my third lead generating vendor, I thought I’d probe the DealerRefresh community for their thoughts on the choice between buying leads at their origin versus buying them from one of the big third-parties. I’m very much on the fence myself, and usually it just comes down to whether or not I think the vendor’s program works for me.

For those of you, who have never bothered to consider the pros and cons of each camp, let me present some ingredients for the debate:

• Lead generators have a web site- or network of sites- that reel in consumers via SEO, PPC, and other advertising, and subsequently sell that lead to a dealer.

• Lead aggregators buy leads from the premier sources in the industry, like Edmunds and KBB. While most aggregators also generate some “original” leads of their own, purchased leads constitute the majority of their business.
• Most generators will sell you their lead exclusively, as opposed to aggregators who are usually going to sell their acquired lead to several dealers. This sounds like a great benefit, until you consider that consumers often submit leads to several sites. So that exclusive customer information you think you have could easily have already gone to your competition a few days ago via a different web site. Think about the  brand awareness of consumer sites and you’ll quickly understand how a consumer could go to Edmunds or KBB first to submit their lead, and then decide later on to google “Honda dealers in NY” and end up at one of the other lead generators’ sites. So in theory, if your generated lead isn’t the only lead that customer sent, it’s probably old information to your competition.

• Lead costs should hypothetically be lower coming from a generator, because there’s one less middleman to get paid. However, depending on the vendor’s program, you could easily pay more for generated leads than aggregated ones… I pay anywhere from $16 to $21 for my generated leads. There’s really no consistency here, as the primary factor in lead cost is the intensity of the program (i.e. closing ratio guarantees, buyer status updates, 800# tracking, etc). Nevertheless, if you have a fetish for paying the lowest possible price for a customer’s information, a lead generator is the way to go.

Anyone have some experiences to share? While I believe it all depends on the vendor, part of me wants to be able to say that one of these sides of the fence is greener than the other.

Mitch Turck
Internet Director – JelMAC Auto Group

Is a direct link from the Manufacturers Website a must-have?

As a large dealer family with multiple franchises (including GM brands), we have a non-Cobalt website, which means that when prospects hit our GM brand websites, our dealership location is listed, but without a live link to our website.

I certainly understand the value of having a live link to our website at the OEM level, however, we have to balance this value against having another website vendor that can better meet our needs.

My question is this; Is having a direct link at the OEM level for GM brands a must-have?

Is it worth the price of paying for a basic template website with Cobalt just to get that live link and have that additional site complement our primary site?  For those of you that have a Cobalt website and get this live link with GM, have you measured the traffic clicking through from GM to your website?  I would appreciate any input, many thanks!

Kevin Frye
eCommerce Director – Jeff Wyler Automotive Family

Are any of you using embedded video clips within your emails for your internet sales process?  If so, where are you hosting the videos?

Are you running into problems with spam filters?

What do you put in your videos?

Many thanks for any insight!

Kevin Frye
eCommerce Director – Jeff Wyler Automotive Family

I’m curious as to how various dealerships are counting Internet deals for pay?

We use a simple system:  If a customer submits an Internet Inquiry, we require either a direct phone conversation with the customer be logged into our CRM or have two email responses from the customer.  We also count phone calls that originate from various web sites/lead generators as deals worthy for compensation in the Internet department.  Basically, it is an Internet deal when either two emails or a phone call are logged in the CRM.  My staff is only paid on sold units that they had a provable hand in selling, and we audit the inputs into the CRM.

From speaking to many other dealers over the past few years it sounds like we are a bit more stringent in this area than others.

Alex Snyder
Director of eCommerce – Checkered Flag Motor Car Corp.

We are looking closely at using either iMagicLab or Higher Gear for our CRM.

Is anyone using the iMagicLab CRM that has also used Higher Gear?

Which did they like better?

Is there anything you did not like about the iMagic’s DealerCRM or Higher Gear?  We have been told that the Higher Gear system communicates better with your Reynolds DMS than iCar, is that true?  I would appreciate any input…

Kevin Frye
eCommerce Director – Jeff Wyler Automotive Family

Our three-location dealership family is in the process of switching websites.  After a bit of research, I’ve categorized our web options into three groups:

1. All-inclusive website/online marketing/CRM tool
2. Standalone website
3. Local web design/host service

After considering cost, functionality, relevance, and flexibility, we have decided to pursue a standalone website.  We all use Autobase as our CRM, ADP WebSuite internally, and our IT manager (who is VERY sensitive to Can-Spam requirements) requires Mozilla (and his watchful eye) for our email campaigns.

Out of our standalone site options, we are considering two.  ADP Dynamic Web Premier and Dealerskins.  Two locations (our MB-Volvo-VW store and our Audi-Nissan-Subaru-Toyota-VW store) have decided on ADP and our Dodge store opted for Dealerskins.  Ownership would like to use only one vendor, so we have a dilemma.

As an ADP advocate, here is my argument.  I believe there are three main differences between the two.  Here are two.

1. The look.  In my opinion, ADP offerings are clean, fresh, and plenty flexible for our needs.  With a few small icon changes on the inventory pages, I think ADP would be a homerun for an Import store.  Inventory is represented well, and the media gallery (with int. and ext. spins) is very impressive.  I think Dealerskins sites are naturally too busy.  Both have good navigability, but seeing through the clutter is a bit trying.

2. Calls to action.  Dealerskins uses too many calls to action that require giving up gross.  In a market where most of our OEM lines are exclusive to the area, I don’t believe such a plan is needed.  ADP uses well-placed, relevant calls to action throughout all pages of the site.  I can see the benefit to a Dodge store, but I don’t know if the average Volvo buyer would necessarily respond to a $200 Internet coupon.

Which finally brings me to my question.  I believe that compatibility with our current inventory database is another very important difference. Since we use ADP already, our compatibility with Dynamic Web regarding inventory polling should be seamless.  And I have heard that Dealerskins uses a 3rd party program to link ADP inventory to the site.  I have also heard that ADP considers any non-ADP polling as hostile, and treats it differently.  From what I understand, some manual input is necessary.  Is this true?  Is there a distinct disadvantage to Dealerskins because of this?  With the exception of photos, I would prefer to be hands-off when it comes to inventory updates to our site.

Sincerely,

Eric J. Deising
Internet Sales Manager

Hello,

As a 22 year industry pro I took the past 4 years off from the auto biz.  I have been lured back in by a great dealer with a big sales slide problem.  I agreed to come in and help build his internet department.  What I am hoping you can help me find is some stats that show some industry averages on the internet such as:

• Lead to Appt ratio%
  
• Appointment Kept %
  
• Appointment to sale ratio

I know I need something to base projections on, and I need help gathering some number

Your time and assistance is appreciated.
Jon Hageman II
Internet Sales Manager

I’m completely new to the internet side. I’m the first person in this position at a Toyota Dealership. So I’m carving the way here but not sure steps I should be doing. I know we need an ISM tool ASAP but I don’t want to make a mistake on what one to choose. I have been looking at:

• icarConnect
• AVV Webcontrol
• Rey Rey Contact Management

I have heard that AVV doesn’t have the best support when you run into problems. To be honest I’m really not sure exactly what I should be looking for in a tool, because any tool would be better then no tool at all, which I’m at right now. Any help would be great. Thanks!

-Josh Couzzo

Hello Jeff and DealerRefresh readers,

My name is Nathan Trimble, I am currently working with a Chevrolet – Cadillac dealer in Monmouth, IL.(a rural city of aprox. 10,000) where we are in process of establishing an Internet sales dept. along with a crm/bdc dept. also.  In my quest for help in accomplishing this I came across your website.  There are so many companies available to assist in a project of this sort that it’s overwhelming!

I have found that there are companies that exist just to help implement and train you on this process; i.e. Dealer Synergy & Mosley Auto Group. Then you have companies that provide websites, ilm and crm/bdc solutions.

Finally there are those few companies that seem to provide all of the above; i.e. BZ Results, Higher Gear, etc.

Would you please be as kind to help advise me in this situation? With so many companies to choose from which way should we go? Possibly hire a few like Mosely for set up and training, then iMagicLabs for
web, ilm & crm, or hire one to do it all? By no means am I asking anyone to endorse  specific companies, just hopefully point me in the correct direction!

I thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter and look forward to hearing from you soon!

My Best to You,

Nathan Trimble