Best PracticesDealership Communication Tools

Looking for Alternative Ways to Stock Used Vehicles?

When it comes to stocking used vehicles at your dealership, dealers today have multiple options. But one option seems to be underutilized by a majority of dealers – acquiring vehicles from private sellers. Of course all dealers take trade-ins, but that is not a proactive strategy. That is a conversion strategy. Traditionally dealers have relied …
Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership Marketing

Apple and Google: Mobile Apps Now a Significant Part of SEO

Apps have been a long, contentious conversation in automotive retail. While there is no doubt that the smartphone and mobile is the future communication channel, the question on the minds of today’s marketers has always been ROI.  Will investment in mobile strategies impact today’s buyer? Thanks to Google and new mobile search criteria, if you …
Dealership Communication ToolsIndustry News & Trends

Adding Monitoring Systems to Vehicles. Good or Bad?

“That’s nothing to worry about Mr. Kershner, that light don’t mean a thing.” If my car actually told me why the check engine light came on I’m not fully convinced I would believe it. Beginning in this month, Lexus will begin offering a monitoring system for customers to be contacted by their dealerships to tell …
Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership MarketingDealership Operations & Processes

Put Some Life in Your Lifecycle

As dealers, it seems we often find ourselves so busy evaluating the performance of our third-party lead providers that we neglect to really examine how we handle those leads once they’ve entered our CRM, specifically the automated email follow-up (often referred to as the “lifecycle” or “action plan”). That’s extremely unfortunate, as a carefully crafted …
Best PracticesDealership Communication Tools

Seven “MUST ASK” Questions Regarding Your Dealership’s Data

When I speak with dealers, CFOs, CEOs and legal counsel for major dealer groups, these are the questions that arise most frequently: Do you have the visibility of where your data is going? Are you indemnified from your third-party solution providers? Do you have any form of cyber-liability protection from your providers? Are your vendors …
Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership Marketing

How My Bad Email Advice Almost Ruined a Friendship

A friend of mine called to pick my brain on email marketing. His company has about 70,000 subscribers and their open rates were getting WORSE with each new campaign. In his testing, he saw that a lot of their emails were getting delivered to the spam folder. He was looking for changes they could make to improve their …
Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership Marketing

Wanna Chat? What about Now? Now? Now? How about Now?

Is your website turning into the Times Square of today’s website homepage? A constant barrage of invites to chat blinking away, distracting your attention. Is it noise? Is it just smart conversion tactics? Chat is getting a bit gratuitous. While speaking at a NADA 20 Group last week, I was live reviewing dealership website experiences, along …