MarketVision

I reference Marketvision quite a bit but it's been a while since I blogged on it. Here's some quick info-for those of you who haven't experienced this technology yet.

What is it?

Marketvision is a computer kiosk that comes with every mailer we provide. It's delivered a few days before your sale in a black crate, then picked up a couple of days after your sale. Setting it up is as easy as: 1. take it out of the crate, 2. put it on top of the crate, 3. plug it in & turn it on.

What does it do?

Quite a bit actually.

On the front end it:

*Tells customers what they won (replaces the prize banner) *Collects customer data (phone, email, trade in, etc)

*Helps manage traffic *Provides a final closing tool with a voucher with additional trade in money

*Gives salespeople an easy way to collect email addresses

On the back end it:

*Links in real time to our website-you can log in 24 hours a day to view up to date data

*Provides reports on zip code response, lead contact lists, leads by salesperson, and an easy format of all leads to export to your CRM.

*Shows you exactly the response rate you received off the mailer and/or other advertising

*Allows you to capture not only ROI but missed opportunities

Why should I use it?

All the reasons above are many of the reasons our dealers choose Tri Auto. The largest gain we see from clients using Marketvision is our zip code analysis. After 3-4 sales with the technology Katy is able to perform an in depth look at what areas are performing best, we can then narrow in on those zip codes eliminating the ones that don't do well. This has allowed us to double response for the same (or less) budget with several of our clients.

Current clients-why do you use MarketVision? What should other dealers know about this program?

What is a landing page?

Here at Tri Auto we are constantly looking for additional tools & resources to help make dealership marketing stronger. What we realized a year or so ago was that to improve something you have to be able to measure it...which is why MarketVision was born. Now that we can measure every angle of our direct mail scientifically (foot traffic, phone traffic & web traffic), we're trying to help dealers measure all their marketing in an effort to get the most bang for their buck with their ad budget. This is where Landing Pages come in. A landing page is a simple website that's name typically matches your store name or the name of the promotion you are running. When someone goes to this website it prompts them to enter their contact information in exchange for some kind of reward (service coupon, raffle entry, etc). Find an example here. They are then redirected to YOUR website. In essence, it does three things for you:

1. Captures contact information for follow up (and building email databases for future marketing).
2. Allows you to track what forms of advertising are working and what aren't.
3. Drives additional traffic to your website.

For the first time ever--yes ever--I'm offering a blog special. If at the time we start your next mail job, you mention this blog post, I'll hook you up with a FREE landing page to use on your mailer or on any other form of advertising you're running that month.

Recent Successful Sales

In the midst of everything that's going on in the automotive industry and the country in general--I feel very positive right now. Now, more than ever, I feel like Direct Mail & one to one marketing (emails, purls, etc) is helping car dealers bring in more traffic and sell more cars. We have a higher response rate now (actually double from 1.5 years ago) than we've ever had-an average of 1% across all mailers and an average of up to 2% on several specific products. The national average for mail is .5%. Here are just a few stories from sales in the past few weeks...

• In Elizabeth City, NC one dealer sent out 30,000 mailers at the end of April and had 866 people in-that's 2.9% foot traffic.
• In Kansas City, MO a large Metro Chevy dealer sent out 43,000 pieces and had 599 people in the last week of April.
• In the Dayton, OH market a Dodge store had 492 ups off of 20,000 mailers.
• Cincinnati, OH a Ford dealer experienced a 3.3% response the end of April-having 660 people come in off of 20,000 pieces.

All of these stats are not guesses or estimates, they are the number of people that scanned in to MarketVision-these dealers are able to see exactly how many people have scanned in, where they are coming from and what sales person spoke to them...along with all their contact info--whenever they want on our website. PS: Yes, I know my posts are typically not "salesy" in nature...with results like this I'm getting to the point where I feel guilty for not sharing the huge successes that are happening out there. If you want more info on our mail contact me so we can help you with traffic at your store.

Missed Opportunities

Monday Pop Quiz-

1. How many total ups did you have in your dealership last month?
2. How many (that didn't buy last month) have been followed up on this month?
3. Who is holding the sales team at your dealership accountable for continuing to follow up with the valuable leads the dealership paid for?
4. How many opportunities is your dealership missing every week?

Do you know the answers to these questions? Do you want to know? NADA recently released a stat-

"Over 90% of people that visit a dealership are never followed up with."

Really? Think of all the time & effort, not to mention money that is spent on the marketing of a dealership every month--and then only 10% of those leads are followed up with--even once.

If this is an area you'd like to see some improvement with please give me a call. This is one of the central ideas behind our ADvantage plan and we do have solutions that will help with this tremendously!

How do you know what Automotive Marketing is Working?

We are in the midst of launching our Dealer ADvantage program this month. I'll start a series of posts on it after I've had a little more experience with it. Here's the basic foundation though: How do you know what automotive marketing is working...and what isn't? If dealers knew the answer to that--they could start cutting what isn't working, increasing what is, causing a better response for less money. Is it possible? IT IS! We're doing it with mail right now using MarketVision, and I can now start helping you track your other marketing as well.

Contact me if you want a more scientific approach to the following:

• Tracking all foot traffic-capture their contact info, find out what message brought them in and add them to your CRM
• Tracking all phone traffic-know your call volume, what marketing produces them and what doesn't and use recordings for future sales training opportunities
• Tracking hits to your website-you can probably already see how many hits you are getting-but how do you know what's driving traffic? Figure out what is sending people to your website AND capture

How to use MarketVision Part 3-Improving Future Events

How to use MarketVision Part 3-Improving Future Events

Early this year I did a post on how to use MarketVision to lower your cost & increase response, this is the way MarketVision can best impact your ROI and the total value of your mailers. Below is a Cliff's Notes version of a few things to make sure you take a look at before your next event. 1. Log on to the Tri-Auto website to access your total MarketVision report from your last sale or sales. 2. Take a look at how your traffic was spread out. Were you slammed the first 2 days and it slowed down later, or vice versa? We suggest certain things when it comes to mail drops, but every market is different. On the next sale we could look at dropping a little differently to get more even traffic throughout. 3. Check out how much traffic each salesperson handled. There tend to be a lot of variations on this part of the report. Dig in a little on closing ratio & days worked. This is a great opportunity to give positive recognition to those that took full advantage of the traffic and coach those that did not. 4. Take a look at your zip codes. Katy will put together a full Zip Code Analysis for you after a couple of sales, but just get familiar for what areas did well and which did not. This can help tremendously on increasing response for the next sale. 5. Add the lead list to your CRM. If you need help converting it to a specific file just let us know. 6. Reference your vehicles sold to the lead list from MarketVision to determine your true ROI on the sale. 7. Take the time for a 15-20 minute conversation with me to go over what you found and let's discuss ways to make your next event even more successful!

Cut your advertising budget!

Things seem to be a little tight with everyone right now. Even dealers who are still growing are probably watching their budgets a little more than usual. One of the first places to cut seems to be the ad budget. I say - go to town!Cut all the advertising that isn't working. You don't even have to wait for an economic downturn to do this! That brings up the million dollar question (literally for some of you)-how do you know what to cut?How can you track all your different types of marketing? Here are a few ideas, and if you work with me, I can help you out with several of them for next to nothing. Just ask! 1. Add a different call tracking number to every form of advertising you do. Then (here's the hard part) take the time to look at the reports and see what type of call volume is coming in from each marketing form. 2. Add a landing page to everything too! A "landing page" is a fancy name for a website. It might be something like 'www.abcford.radio.com' (this is not a real site!). When people go there it will take them to your website, but now you'll be able to pull a report and see how many people went there off your radio commercial. 3. Don't assume! Set a system in place to spiff your sales people or someone working as a greeter to really ask each person how they came to be at your store that day. Sometimes, you've done such a great job with name recognition that they really did just stop in, but a lot of the time, they've recently seen, read or heard something that made them choose you over the dealer down the road. 4. Use MarketVision on your mailers, almost 90% of our clients do! If you work with Tri-Auto and aren't taking advantage of this exclusive technology to track who is coming in, where they are coming from and what sales rep they are talking to...you are missing out! We make mail the easiest marketing to track. After you know what's working, and what isn't. Why not cut your budget by eliminating the things that aren't producing for you, and taking some of the extra money you are saving to beef up the forms of marketing that are. How do you track!?

So excited about MarketVision!

I'm so excited today that I just had to share! I'm not sure how many have you have heard about MarketVision, either from me or your friends in the industry. BUT, it's doing much more than I ever expected. The quick story on MarketVision is...it's a technology Tri-Auto Enterprises has developed over the past two years. A kiosk is shipped to the dealership a few days before the sale starts. It's a touch screen computer terminal. Instead of the ups checking a prize banner to see what they've won they scan a bar code on their mailer at the kiosk. It captures their name, address, phone number and email address along with trade in information. Then a receipt is printed for them telling them not only what prize they won, but also offering them an extra amount on their trade in. MarketVision then compiles the data for you! There are real time reports that show how many ups have come in, plot them on a map, tell you what salesperson worked with them and also shows you the percentage of return from each zip code. Finally we know what zips are worth hitting, and what aren't! This "real time" feature just went live last week. It was especially exciting for me as one of my event teams had a sale going in Lancaster, Ohio that was really kicking butt. It became addicting as I logged on every 30 seconds to see how many ups they had that day. By the end of the week they had 909 people in off of 30,000 mailers! It was so exciting to be able to see the success as it happened. In addition to that, all 909 of those people will receive an additional, First Class, follow up letter the week after the sale inviting them back in. They're free to the dealer as a part of the MarketVision program. Finally, there is something new in the direct mail marketplace! Tri-Auto offers this program along with many of the mail houses and event teams that partner with us. Ask your direct mail consultant if it's something they offer--if you like being able to track your ROI, the success of your sales people, and what areas are truly your market--I have a feeling you'll geek out like I have been too! If you're curious, here's a quick video showing how it works: http://triauto.com/marketvision.php And, here's the daily up totals from that sale I mentioned: Daily Analysis Date # of Ups 9-13-2008 246 9-12-2008 197 9-11-2008 248 9-10-2008 168 9-9-2008 41 9-8-2008 9 Total Ups: 909