Many of the conversations we get on the DealerRefresh forums are about dealership CRM choices and practices.  With all the different conversations cycling around this topic, I have to assume that many dealers are changing or signing up with a new CRM company.  I'm very glad to see the industry taking this extremely important technology more seriously, but I wonder if we might overlook some things during a change.

When changing CRM or ILM companies, you have to change your Internet lead address.  It is a seriously major pain in the ass if you have a lot of lead providers (OEM's, third-party, freebies, classified sites, your own site, etc.).  If you've made a change, did you forget a lead provider?  Did you remember to inform CarFax, Vast, Google Base, or one of those other sites that you don't pay directly for leads?

I have a suggestion that will make this change only take 5 minutes and open up many more opportunities for your leads:

Make 1 email address that is salesleads@yourdealershipname.com and have all your lead providers send to that address.

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Do the same for your other profit centers:  serviceleads@yourdealershipname.com, partsleads@yourdealershipname.com, etc.  Then you control where things forward to off those addresses.  If you ever make another CRM or ILM change, then you're just changing the forwarding address instead of having to contact all your lead providers.

Some other benefits of controlling your lead delivery address:

1.  You can have backup systems in place
I have all of our leads sent to each member of our BDC, the ILM tool available in our website's backend, and to our CRM.  If the CRM is lagging on showing the lead, the BDC knows about it immediately.  If something crashes with our CRM, we can still respond to leads through the ILM in our website's backend.  And I can quickly check to see that all leads are always coming into the CRM.  After being on numerous different CRM & ILM products, I've learned that lead forwarding for backup purposes is absolutely crucial.

2.  Lead Analytics
If you ever hire a company to grade or build reports around your leads, you can just add that company to your email distribution rules without having to have your CRM or ILM company set it all up.  This is more of a convenience.

3.  Reporting Systems
If you're like me, you can't always trust the CRM reports because your staff is working in the CRM; tainting the data.  Let's face it, you're never going to get an entire staff of sales people to understand why they should enter data and update data appropriately in the CRM.  Because there is a human "taint" to the data, I have to use an outside system to get accurate reporting on certain things.  Again, this is just another way to quickly and easily control where your leads are going.  Your reporting system can also work as your backup communication product.  In our case, we use an ILM.

4.  Never losing Leads again!
If you always use the same email address for where your leads are going, you never have to worry about whether you're missing leads (unless the lead provider just isn't sending - that's a separate issue).  This is especially good when you do a lot of free trials or submit your company for various endeavors.


Each CRM/ILM is a little different and none are perfect.  When you control your lead routing, then you have the peace of mind to know you can catch issues quickly and not miss any business.  Just remember to use your new lead routing address forever, and get it to ALL your lead sources.

<< Example of Checkered Flag's Lead-routing setup

I know of quite a few dealerships who already practice this, but if you don't feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

How is your dealership setup for Lead Routing?

IRVINE, Calif. — Kelley Blue Book is adding a Certified Pre-Owned Value to its Web site next month to educate consumers about the benefits and value of CPO programs.

Basically, KBB calculates a specific model's CPO value by adding an appropriate certified premium to the vehicle's Blue Book Suggested Retail Value.

KBB processes recent certified vehicle transactions through a statistical model and analyzes discrete CPO program costs to calculate specific vehicles' CPO premiums.

"Publishing the Kelley Blue Book CPO Values will help promote manufacturer based certified programs as well as the value and peace of mind it affords consumers," shared Paul Johnson, president and chief executive officer of KBB.

"Kbb.com will also have comparisons of various OEM programs which will help educate the consumer and showcase the benefits of each OEM program," Johnson added.

Essentially, the KBB Certified Pre-Owned Value is a suggested retail price that is reflective of dealers' asking prices for CPO units, considers the dealers' profits, advertising costs, sales commission, any other business costs and any value association with the CPO program.

"Dealers have welcomed this new value as a way to help educate the consumer about the benefits and value of buying a CPO car," Johnson continued. "By making this information available it potentially makes the sale of a CPO car easier because a third-party independent source like Kelley Blue Book can verify the program details and the vehicle's value for a consumer even before visiting a dealership."

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The KBB CPO Value will be next to the existing used-vehicle values within the Used-Car pricing path on Kbb.com in early December. There will also be a Blue Book Certified Pre-Owned Value "hub" page.

And sometime in 2010, KBB is planning on integrating its CPO Value into many of its industry products and services, officials shared.

A big thing that is going to rule the future of online solicitations is OPT-IN.  Have you read anything about it yet?  If you haven't, let's start with a guy named Seth Godin:

Every year, tens of thousands of people die because organ donor status in the US is opt in. If you want to be an organ donor when you're dead, you need to go through steps now to opt in. The default is "no."

...401 (k) plans tend to be opt in. If you do nothing, you get nothing.

Talking to the police after getting arrested is strictly opt out. Nothing to sign, you just talk.

Cheese on your pasta used to be opt out, but now it appears to be becoming opt in.

....So, I'd make organ donation opt out, public religious observance opt in, newsletters opt in and smart financial choices opt out. Anything that tricks a consumer into paying for something ought to be double opt in. And without a doubt, email (and commercial transactions of all kinds) are opt in. Smart for both sides.

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What is opt-in email marketing?

It is getting permission to send an email to a customer.  We have a lot of permission systems in our industry typically in the form of Internet leads from third-party sources and our own websites.  But, are you (or your third-party sources) informing the customer you will be marketing to them beyond that first price quote they requested?

• Are you sending a newsletter to your entire database?
  
• Are you sending promotional email blasts?
  
• Are you calling customers after 90 days who didn't respond to one of your emails or submitted another fresh lead?

Let's forget the law for a minute, and just consider the ethics of this.  I guess we say it is perfectly okay to send a bunch of stuff to anyone you have information on because everyone else does it.......right?

According to reporting in iMakeNews, the national average for automotive newsletters opened is 17% and the national average for clicks (conversion) in your email is 5.1%.  If you send one newsletter to 10,000 people that means 1,700 will actually open the email and you may convert 500 to visit your website.  I'm not going to go into all the details of the conversion to a sale stats because I want to ask the question - What about the other 8,300 people who didn't open your email? This has absolutely nothing to do with iMakeNews or any other email follow-up - it has everything to do with YOU!

• Are you sending the right message?
  
• Do your customers even want to hear your message?

Dealers (and manufacturers) like SPAM

I have come to the conclusion that dealers are desensitized to spam.  We love it!  And we think everyone else does too.  Let's send them a mailer, let's send them an email to back-up the mailer, and let's have all our salespeople call the customers who got the mailer and the email to make sure they received the mailer and the email!  Recently, 3 of our manufacturers at my dealer group have asked us to do this around their own promotions.

I don't know about you, but if Best Buy sent me a piece of mail, an email, and called me about the same promotion for the weekend I would immediately have them remove all my information, and IF I continued to shop there, I would do it anonymously.

I might be a little extreme in my mail, email, and call example but I hope it gets you thinking the next time you think of your direct-marketing campaign methods.  We are in a world where the consumer has the choice.  If you want to continue to be a choice you have to play by their rules.

What can you do?

1. Stop sending email blasts to customers who came from third-party sources unless the third-party source told the customer they were opting-in
   
2. Add an opt-in message to your own website
   
3. Inform the customers who buy or service cars with you that you will be sending them additional information in the future
   
4. Target, Target, Target - if they bought a car yesterday, don't tell them they can trade it in tomorrow
   
5. Make your messages consistent with your brand/image/reputation - don't have a brand?...how did Obama build his brand quickly?
   
6. Have a landing page on your website for the email campaign that entices the customer to move to other areas of your site.

I'm guilty of all this spam-stuff myself.  It has actually worked, but is it the best way to market your brand?  What do you think?  Got any other pointers?