Industry News & Trends

Dominion Enterprises Acquires AVV and its WebControl ILM / CRM

Jeff Kershner
Posted onJan 25, 2008 at 12:36 PM
Updated onUpdated on Oct 23, 2008 at 11:59 AM

Webcontrol_logo
AVV’s Internet Lead Management tool "WebControl" has been bought by Dominion Enterprises.

I’m sure most readers already know who Dominion Enterprises is. They own AutoTrader, DealerSkins, AutoBase, XiGroup, AutoRevenue and Data One software, just to name a few. Well it looks as if AutoBytel has finally made the step to dump and it’s WebContol ILM / CRM tool. I had heard this was in the works for sometime but was not aware that Dominion was a possible purchaser. The purchase price was $22.75 million, dammnnn!!

"Ed Braunbeck, vice president and general manager of AVV, will continue to lead the business. “We are delighted to be part of an organization that recognizes the potential of our employees and products and has shown such strong commitment to the automotive industry. Dominion Enterprises will be the perfect place for us to take the Web Control solution to the next level,” said Braunbeck."

If you’ve been on the internet side of the car business, chances are you’ve heard of or have even used AVV WebControl. It was one of the first ILM (Internet Lead Management ) tools available to dealers. I was at a Mazda dealer when they had first signed the contract to exclusively use WebControl and that has been at least 5-6 years ago. Even to this day, I think it’s still one of the better ILM tools.

I’d like to see Dominion financially support AVV allowing them to take WebContol to the next level. I overheard a few rumors about 2 years ago that AutoBytel was going to bring WebControl over to a .net platform but that obviously never happened. Well either way, this should be a decent move for AVV since AutoBytel never did anything for AVV or Webcontrol.

  1. Have you used AVV WebContol?
  2. What did/do you think of it?
  3. What do you think of this Acquisition?

Here is the full press release Dominion Enterprises Acquires AVV, Inc. Assets

Jeff Kershner
Founder of DealerRefresh - 20+ Years of dealership Sales, Management, Training, Marketing and Leadership.
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Has Dominion ever improved on a product after purchasing it? Or do they just leave it alone to slowly become antiquated?
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    Jeff Kershner
  • January 27, 2008
Autobytel Sells AVV Business for $22.75 Million in Cash - this is the <a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080124005278/en" rel="nofollow">press release from the other side.

Here is a quote taken from the press release. "The sale of our CRM business continues our strategy of divesting our non-core operations as we complete our transition to a media-centric business,” said Autobytel Inc. President and CEO Jim Riesenbach. “We continue to sharpen our focus on our recently-launched flagship website, MyRide.com"

Flagship? I don't know about you but MyRide drives me crazy. I find myself easily lost on the site and always clicking on the main logo to get back to the home page. I can't seem to grasp exactly what the site is for?...community networking, vehicle data base for search, vehicle research or what? I don't see how they could possibly fit any more ads on the site.

Hopefully they will use some of that money they made selling AVV and hire someone to fill in their description tags for some improved SEO.

____________________________________

&lt;title&gt;= "New, Used Car prices, reviews and dealers at MyRide.com"&lt;

&lt;meta name="description" content="YOU MIGHT WANT TO PUT SOMETHING HERE!!"&gt;
____________________________________

Pitiful.
J
MyRide.com = YACWSTTLC.
You can just feel the Suits at autobytel.com running it. It lacks "attitude".

YACWSTTLC
Yet
Another
Corporate
Web
Site
Trying to
Look
Cool

http://www.dealerrefresh.com/my_weblog/2007/07/the-thursday-re.html

Gotta love DR!
Joe
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    Chris
  • January 28, 2008
Nobody has yet to produce a lead management tool that truly serves the needs of an Internet Sales Manager. The single most important component by far is the ability to drip information and stay in front of that prospect for months! Someone, someday (maybe me) is going to create a simple and effective lead management tool and make it actually affordable - $20 to $50 a month, or even free. Not only that, but if you can include let's say 100 effective email templates that can be modified, it'll be a hit. I have used AVV and it's mediocre at best.
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I have to agree with Alex's sentiment. When companies get purchased by Dominion there doesn't seem to be much that happens. Improvements are wishful thinking.

It would appear that you can look at the releases differently too. I'm writing a current blog post now to talk about it, but I would say that Autobytel and their focus on MyRide is a ruse for the fact that they probably spent too much on MyRide and that hurt their core business. Does anyone know anyone that goes there nowadays when searching for a new car?
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    Matt
  • January 29, 2008
Boy it would have been nice if this sale would have happened 3 months ago when the company had their last RIF, costing 40 people their jobs.

It's no secret Autobytel is losing money every quarter so this sale will give them a few more quarters in which to continue losing money. MyRide was a catastrophe last summer when they tried to launch it. A perfect case of how outsourcing ends up costing you more money than you could have ever spent doing it right the first time.

Jeff, you're spot on when you speak to how frustrating the MyRide site is. They so want it to be the next Facebook. Plus how is it supposed to drive more traffic when no one outside the industry knows about it. They spent 10's of thousands of dollars promoting it in the automotive press, but none of those eyeballs are going to ever be an organic Autobytel lead.

In any event, hopefully this will prove a good move for AVV.
J
myride = myouch

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myride.com+edmunds.com+kbb.com/

Bet there is some boardroom drama goin on over there.
The suits who pushed this MyRide drivel thru are now backpeddling and talking about "longer time lines" to mature.

Actually, I havent been to myride in months. Looks like they're sheding the street attitude community angle and going more corporate. It's a better fit for them. The Problem is that this space is quite full. (kbb, edmunds, etc..)

We had Eric Cotter, Product Manager of MyRide weigh in before, Eric, you still with us? Where are you taking MyRide Now?

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    Hewlett P
  • January 30, 2008
myride.com, should be mymynoaudienceatall.com

To think autotrader.com was scared of this concept! Shows you how in tune they really are! LMAO!
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    Jeff Kershner
  • January 30, 2008
Lets try and keep this thread about Dominion buying AVV WebControl. <br />

I posted another
<a href="http://www.dealerrefresh.com/my_weblog/2008/01/autobytel-sells.html" rel="nofollow">
thread about MyRide.com here</a>.
I also carried over a few comments. It seems as if I'm not the only one that has
some feedback about MyRide.com.

So if you would like to share your opinion on MyRide.com
<a href="http://www.dealerrefresh.com/my_weblog/2008/01/autobytel-sells.html" rel="nofollow">
jump over to this thread</a>. If you want to comment about AVV Webcontrol, your
in the right spot!

Jeff
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I would have to disagree with you Chris. iMagicLab has an awesome ILM. I may be accused of being a homer, even though I am not associated with iMagic anymore, but their ILM is hard to beat.
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    Bill Banks
  • January 31, 2008
Well Gil it doesn't matter because they are closing with Salesforce.com buying them anyway. I agree they were good but the sold out anyway
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    Bill Banks
  • January 31, 2008
Sorry but to be clear imagiclab was sold to salesforce.com not avv
A
How many times has iMagicLabs been sold now? I've lost count!
C
Chris,

I understand -- or at least, sympathize with your pain about the high cost of ineffective software or solutions you guys have to put up with, but I'm curious as to why you expect something like AVV to be free -- or at most, $50 a month?

Aren't vendors allowed to make some money?

Cliff Banks
G
Bill, I don't know where you got your information from, but iMagicLab has not been sold to Salesforce.com or any other company. It is still an independent company.

Cliff I agree with your comment.
D
Seriously.....What the hell happened to this post???? Did you hear that AVV was sold to Dominion? HAHAHA Seriously, how did AutoTrader and iMagic Lab get brought into this?
G
Dave,
They are just such popular topics that they pop up on every thread!
LOL!
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    Steven Alexander
  • February 22, 2008
I have been watching the Whole purchase of AVV web Control. I used it 7 years ago and it couldn’t keep up to demand then. I think it was more of a purchase of customer base??? what else could it be they bought a dyeing horse.

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    Andrew DiFeo
  • February 22, 2008
Does anyone here on the forum use Grant Cardone's Epencil CRM? We have had good results at our dealerships with Epencil and are looking at cancelling our ADP CRM and using Epencil's CRM. I know it is just a reskin of dealerpeak but it seemed simple to use and cost effective.

Thank you in advance for your input.
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    Andrew DiFeo
  • February 22, 2008
Does anyone here on the forum use Grant Cardone's Epencil CRM? We have had good results at our dealerships with Epencil and are looking at cancelling our ADP CRM and using Epencil's CRM. I know it is just a reskin of dealerpeak but it seemed simple to use and cost effective.

Thank you in advance for your input.
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