Of course you didn’t think we would close out the year without a post to sum up what happened here on DealerRefresh in 209, did you?

With the introduction of the new Dealer Forum, It’s been one eventful year to say the least. We had several goals mapped out for the first 6 months to a year for the Forum and have succeeded or better each one we set out to hit.

We added a Facebook Fan page where we currently have over 300 fans. Become a fan if you haven’t already!

Lets get started with the Top Blog Posts..

An Interview with Nathan Scripps of Rapleaf

2009 is starting to close, two years after talking about social media for car dealers, and I would like to talk about a new way to look at and leverage social media. No, I am not going to say build a Facebook fan page, nor am I going to talk about the value of Twitter. In fact, this is not about you or your dealership actively participating in social media at all… this post is about learning from your customers that are using social media every day.

I spoke with Nathan Scripps, the automotive industry lead at Rapleaf, a social media research company based in San Francisco. I first met Nathan several years ago while he was working at Jumpstart (now Jumpstart Auto Group after merging w/ Car and Driver, Road & Track). The following is a summary of a conversation we had recently:

Jeff: What is the elevator pitch of how you became the auto lead at Rapleaf?

DealerRefresh Automotive Business Twitter Lists

Twitter just introduced their new Twitter Lists where you can create public or private lists under your profile and add users to your lists, so I figured we would give this a sh0t and build DealerRefresh Automotive Business Twitter list.

This works similar to creating groups in TweetDeck but now this feature is built in by default to Twitter Web Site.

Twitter Lists make it much easier to segment out your personal and professional twitter affiliations and even allow you to group companies and users into separate categories.

Who makes up DealerRefresh Automotive Business Twitter Lists??

“Car Bomb: variation of the infamous “boilermaker beer cocktail.  Made with Guinness, Baileys Irish Crème, and Jameson whiskey.  Found to be most tasty by those in the “car” industry”…..   More on that later, but let me just share that this shot tastes like gasoline mixed with cottage cheese and nitroglycerine…  Another fun time was had by all at the 7^th Digital Dealer Conference which was held in Nashville, and yes, a few “car-bombs” were enjoyed after a great day of sessions.

Kevin Frye, Alex Jefferson, and Jeff Kershner

I started Sunday with Brian Pasch’s session on how to “Move Ahead of your Competitors with Content Based SEO Strategies”.  Brian has earned a well deserved reputation at being great at automotive SEO (he DOMINATED Cash for Clunkers!), and his presentations are well attended as they are “rich in content”.  What do I mean?  While many other presenters might provide some tidbits of info as a teaser to hopefully hire them later, Brian shares the actual strategies of what he is doing for his automotive SEO clients.  His approach is that he knows there will be folks out there who do not have the time to implement these strategies themselves, and will then hire him.  Sounds like “transparent selling” can pay off…  Brian shared that “the most important hire in 2010 for a large dealership will be a full time content writer” and that this move would be the greatest ROI decision large dealers would face.  With the 2 major Google algorithm movements this year, I agree wholeheartedly.  Of note, at the end of the conference, Brian gave his “Award of Excellence” to DealerFire after completing his review of all of the major automotive website providers – congratulations!

More photos and Video after the break

Over morning coffee, doing research on visual information (infographics), came across this chart that totally nailed the internet shopper experience.

I about fell out of my chair.

An image so simple sums up the Internet Shopping Experience (regardless of industry). It’s a cornerstone in my internet marketing efforts.

THERE ARE 2 SLOPES, a down slope and an up slope.

• Emotion rules the shopper on either slope.
• Gathering of Information and consumption of time are directly correlated. (same axis)
• Shoppers on the down slope are seeking “information satisfaction” (the apex)
• Patience is the enemy of the shopper on the UP slope.
• Shoppers on the up slope have passed “information satisfaction”, are now seeking an exit

Give me Mr. Up Slope!

Wherefor art thou Mr Up Slope? Hmmm…a cookie based system to tailor a custom message based on the number of visits, or, the time since last visit… hmmm…need more coffee…

Reference: Indexed Blog Archive Needles and haystacks and such.

Comments are closed here on the blog. Please comment on the forms…

AutoTrader.com’s Vehicle Purchase / Trade-in Program (VPP)

AutoTrader.com is currently testing an on-line trade in service in hopes to streamline the process of trading in or selling a used car with participating dealers (90 day pilot in Kansas).

The service allows consumers/sellers to get an actual offer for their vehicle rather than an estimate or range of potential values that many of the other trade-appraisal services provide.

In “3 easy steps”, AutoTrader makes it easy to get cash value on your vehicle.

1. Tell AutoTrader.com about your car and get your online offer.
2. Go to a participating trade-in or buying center to verify your cars condition.
3. Trade-in your car or redeem you offer for cash.

Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail may all seem the same but are their users?

MailChimp helped with an eMarketer study on the engagement of email users across the different major email service providers and according to the study, Gmail users are more likely to Open and Click on your emails. I think this could be due to the “trust” factor that Gmail users have with NOT getting Spam. I have been using Gmail since it was introduced and I know if an email makes it into my in-box, there’s a 99% chance that I want to read it or have opted-in for it at one time.

When asking your customers for their email address, ask them for their Gmail address!

You might want to read this if your dealer is marketing via automated phone calls / robocalls.

Dealers / Telemarketers Must Obtain Prior Written Approval from Consumers Who Want to Receive Such Calls

Beginning September 1, 2009, prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls to consumers – commonly known as robocalls – will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls, the Federal Trade Commission announced today.

“American consumers have made it crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year,” said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. “Starting September 1, this bombardment of prerecorded pitches, senseless solicitations, and malicious marketing will be illegal. If consumers think they’re being harassed by robocallers, they need to let us know, and we will go after them.”

Jeff and Alex want to thank Joe Pistell for designing this survey.

Joe is the Marketing Director for the Sun Auto Group and a BIG participant on the DealerRefresh Blog. He is also one of the Moderators for the Inventory Control and Display section of the DealerRefresh forums.

This survey is designed to create factual environmental impact figures based on actual dealership business.  When completed, it will become a press release, so be sure to get your Dealership’s name in for some SEO exposure!

Over a year ago Jeff told me about a website called Woopra that allowed me to watch site traffic as it was happening on Checkered Flag.com.  I was able to see what search phrase each visitor used to find us, where in the world they were, the configuration of their Internet connection, browser, and operating system along with many other things.  I was immediately hooked!  The learning experience from seeing things happen in real time is much stronger than viewing reports about what had already happened.  Instead of all visitors being looked at on one page of report stats, I was performing tech-psychology on each person.  How long did they spend on the finance application?  What piece of inventory did they look at before submitting that finance application?  Did they click the finance application link on the inventory page or from the nav bar?  Did they use Google to find that piece of inventory and how much did they misspell things when they entered that search query into Google?

To the casual reader, these might sound like silly questions but they’re incredibly insightful to have the answers to when you’re building your website, SEM campaign, or BDC.

Unfortunately, a short time after installing Woopra, we discovered they were installing some sort of feeder on each of our visitors browsers that pinged back all Internet-surfing histories to Woopra.  We quickly yanked the code and went without the live analytics for a while.  EDIT: Woopra has commented on this – be sure to read the comments from this article.