The end of ADF via Email is upon us

[Collin Pedersen]

Just got this notification from DealerFire, looks like vendors will soon be required to send leads via SFTP? June 9th is an aggressive deadline as well. Anybody else have updates on this lead routing change coming up?

IMPORTANT: LEAD DELIVERY NOTIFACTION UPDATE FOR DEALERFIRE WEBSITES

As you may or may not know, when someone fills out a lead form on a DealerFire website, that form gets sent via email to your CRM, unless you have DealerSocket or ELeads as your CRM.

In order to be compliant with GLBA regulations, we will not be able to send leads via email after June 9th, 2023.

This does not affect DealerSocket CRM customers or ELeads customers.
No action is needed if you use either DealerSocket or ELeads CRM.

If you use another CRM, and are getting leads from your DealerFire website sent to that CRM, please provide us with your SFTP credentials. Email us at EMAIL, with the following information:

• Subject Line: “SFTP credentials”
• SFTP credentials should include:
  • Host:
  • Port:
  • Username:
  • Password:
  • Directory:

Please work with your CRM company to ingest the leads that we will be sending to your SFTP.

For questions, please reach out to website support at PHONE_NUMBER or email us at EMAIL

Best,
The DealerFire Website Team

 

[Ryan Everson]

Just got this notification from DealerFire, looks like vendors will soon be required to send leads via SFTP? June 9th is an aggressive deadline as well. Anybody else have updates on this lead routing change coming up?

"Email is not secure!"
-DealerFire

"Send us your FTP username and password via email."
-Also DealerFire

 

[Tallcool1]

Or better yet, have the CRM providers generate the webforms and give that code to the website provider to install on the dealership website.

I would guess this to be the reason that Dealer Socket and E Leads users are unaffected but I am not sure.

@Ryan Everson , your brand of humor is entertaining to say the least!

 

[Ryan Everson]

I would guess this to be the reason that Dealer Socket and E Leads users are unaffected but I am not sure.

More than likely DealerFire is "sending" leads to DealerSocket and E-Lead via API, so the FTP route is unnecessary.

DealerSocket makes sense since they are the same company, but I'm not sure why they've integrated with E-Lead and not other CRMs like VinSolutions that also offer a decently robust API.

@Alex Snyder may be able to provide additional insight, as this is the first I've heard of a vendor announcing a sunset date for ADF/XML leads via email due to GLBA. Either DealerFire is being overly cautious, or other vendors are severely late to the game, especially considering the original deadline was December 9, 2022.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Or better yet, have the CRM providers generate the webforms and give that code to the website provider to install on the dealership website.

Good idea, but have you seen the UI/UX of automotive CRMs?

They are the last people that I would want to design my dealership's consumer-facing website lead forms. Our salespeople suffer enough; let's not make our customers suffer too.

 

[Alex Snyder]

More than likely DealerFire is "sending" leads to DealerSocket and E-Lead via API, so the FTP route is unnecessary.

DealerSocket makes sense since they are the same company, but I'm not sure why they've integrated with E-Lead and not other CRMs like VinSolutions that also offer a decently robust API.

@Alex Snyder may be able to provide additional insight, as this is the first I've heard of a vendor announcing a sunset date for ADF/XML leads via email due to GLBA. Either DealerFire is being overly cautious, or other vendors are severely late to the game, especially considering the original deadline was December 9, 2022.

Cox products now come with a hefty price tag for integrations.

 

[Ryan Everson]

Cox products now come with a hefty price tag for integrations.

Makes sense, but any insight into why we're not hearing similar requests from other vendors? How is FrikinTech planning on sending leads to dealership CRMs in a GLBA-compliant way?

 

[Alex Snyder]

Makes sense, but any insight into why we're not hearing similar requests from other vendors? How is FrikinTech planning on sending leads to dealership CRMs in a GLBA-compliant way?

I'm actually thrilled to see DealerFire step it up. It has been radio silent up until now. 8 minutes after this thread was posted, I sent it to my CTO:



We are very excited to pass more information than what an ADF via email can contain. Of course, we will have to follow the CRM providers schema on how the data is shared.

 

[Tallcool1]

Good idea, but have you seen the UI/UX of automotive CRMs?

They are the last people that I would want to design my dealership's consumer-facing website lead forms. Our salespeople suffer enough; let's not make our customers suffer too.

Here's one that I don't think is too bad. I've seen worse!

Credit Application

Clock Tower Automall offers financing on all cars, trucks, vans, crossovers and SUV's for all credit types!

www.clocktowerauto.com

 

[craigh]

@Alex Snyder may be able to provide additional insight, as this is the first I've heard of a vendor announcing a sunset date for ADF/XML leads via email due to GLBA. Either DealerFire is being overly cautious, or other vendors are severely late to the game, especially considering the original deadline was December 9, 2022.

In my conversations at NADA it became clear that vendors are very confused about how to become compliant.
Based on the letter of the law, almost no vendors can actually be compliant without severely compromising their functionality.

I am very curious to see how this is going to proceed. We can encrypt every piece of data about every customer, but if we can't transfer it between vendor APIs or send it to the client's screen in bulk, then it's going to make every day tasks much more difficult.

In the VIN Solutions example, I don't believe their API has encrypt and decrypt built in, it just encrypts the entire communication channel.
What I am hearing, is that this is not sufficient under the new law and the information must actually be sent as encrypted data only, not just over an encrypted channel.