hero

Why Your Dealership Should Embrace the Credit Union

By Staff Writer on February 27, 2018

There’s something about a credit union. Known for their local presence and ability to provide a better, more-personalized banking experience, credit unions are well-positioned to provide a higher level of …

READ MORE

Why Your Dealership Should Embrace the Credit Union

By Staff Writer on February 27, 2018

There’s something about a credit union. Known for their local presence and ability to provide a better, more-personalized banking experience, credit unions are well-positioned to provide a higher level of …

READ MORE
OneClick Loyalty Blog
Reset Filters

How to Win Customers in the Concierge Economy

By Staff Writer on November 20, 2017

Consumers want what they want, when they want it. They want personal service and the want it now. This is the concierge economy. And while the concept of personalization is all the buzz nowadays, it’s nothing more than the 2017 version of Burger King’s 1970’s slogan “Have it your way” — a slogan that lasted over 40 years.

A big driver in all of this is the prevalence of smart phones to order what they want and have it delivered wherever they are. Smart phones are always an arm’s length away encouraging immediacy and on-demand delivery of information, products and services, pushing companies to create a seamless experience from the phone to real-life. Whether it’s burgers or coffee or airline seats, customers are increasingly becoming used to the seamless experience from mobile to real life.

As a dealership, it’s critical to jump onboard this concierge economy to build a relationship with your buyers and show them that you’re here to help them “have it their way”— digitally.

So, how do you do it?

Digital Convenience is King

According to a Cox Automotive survey of over 4,500 U.S. consumers, 14 percent of service consumers booked their appointment online. Organizations like Westside Lexus in Houston strongly encourage their customers to book online, even enticing them to do so with rewards. By actively pushing customers in this direction. They have seen online appointment booking skyrocket from 10 percent to over 30 percent in just a couple years.

The benefits are two-fold: The customer is able to conveniently schedule their appointment quickly and easily, and the dealership operates more efficiently guaranteeing additional bookings.

The Days of Spray-and-Pray are Over

Customers are inundated with all sorts of marketing messages across multiple channels and devices. They’re aware of being marketed to and take appropriate measures to remove these digital distractions from their life. They only way to cut through that clutter and generate ROI is through personalization. By utilizing and understanding data, a dealership can deliver the right messages at the right time to the right customer.

The fact is, personalization generates revenue. “Studies show that 48% of shoppers will spend more when the digital shopping experience is personalized.”

Make It Available and Make It Easy

Being online is all about convenience. If it’s just as much of a hassle to schedule a service appointment online as it is by calling, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. The concierge economy is all about making daily life easier.

It’s crucial to let your customers know what tools you are making available to them because it’s likely almost half probably don’t even know that online scheduling exists.

Also, people are distracted easily so if you make it difficult to schedule an appointment, get more information or learn more about products or services, the customer is likely to abandon you and your site without any guarantee to return.

Let your customers know what is available and remove as many obstacles as possible.

Buyers have so much information and tools at their fingertips that comes with a level of personalization, convenience and availability like never before. This puts enormous pressure on today’s dealership to perform at the level of the Amazons and Starbuckses of the world. When shoppers know what they want, and they come to you for service, make sure you’re ready to meet their needs by providing a seamless experience from the smart phone to the service bay.

Want to personalize like the pros? OneClick Loyalty is a retention platform designed by dealers for dealers. By utilizing personalized messaging and delivering the right message at the right time, dealerships have the opportunity to truly engage with a customer and drive behavior. Let your customers have it their way and turn every vehicle buyer into a customer for life.

Read More

Do Women Trust Your Dealership?

By Staff Writer on November 6, 2017

Let’s start off with some statistics on women and their dealership experience:

  • 50% are dissatisfied with the car they end up purchasing
  • 77% feel they need to bring a male with them to the dealership
  • $500 more money is paid for their vehicle compared to men

What are you doing to gain the trust of women — a combination of 85 percent of those purchasing new vehicles either for themselves or directly affecting the choice for the household?

Both online, and in-person, there are changes big and small a dealership can make to cater to women and to make them feel more comfortable visiting your business.

When over ¾ of women feel they need to bring a man with them to be treated fairly, getting them to trust you is critical for long-term success and to help drive revenue.

How does a dealership gain trust?

Reviews

Did your female customer have a good experience at your dealership? Encourage them to write an online review about their purchasing or service process. According to CBT Automotive News, “Women are 50% more likely than men to rely on dealership reviews and they prefer reading reviews from women.”

Women are loyal to good service, a study by Erasmus University found, whereas men are more brand-loyal. If a female customer had a satisfactory customer journey and writes a positive review, more women are likely to be persuaded to give that business a try.

Build a Relationship

Every customer looking to purchase a vehicle or is in need of service, deserves respect. Regardless of gender, customers simply gravitate toward those they deem trustworthy. When sales or service representatives take the time to listen to a customer and ask the right questions, it increases the likelihood of higher satisfaction and revenue.

  • 73% said they will service their car at that dealership in the future if they received excellent service
  • More than half said they would bring their car back for service at the dealership where they purchased their vehicle

Relationship-building starts before the point-of-sale and continues well-after. This drives retention and increases dealership revenue without the cost of conquest.

Connect

Most vehicle research is completed online, and yet most dealership websites are built to sell cars with marketing strategies that lack emotion or connection. Showcasing vehicle inventory and listing the number of vehicles you have available will hardly build trust or show any real benefit to visiting your dealership for a test drive. What’s the difference between your 100’s of vehicles and your competitor’s 100’s of vehicles?

Sharing why your vehicles are safer and stronger, and built with features that highlight what matters to women, will indicate that your dealership is ready to connect with women and their needs.

This includes the service center. What amenities do you offer to ensure women will want to return to you for service? Do you have a children’s area? Free rental? Shuttle service? What magazines do you have out in the waiting room? It’s important to communicate to your customers, and potential customers, what sets you apart from other service centers.

Referrals

People talk. If your dealership becomes known as a trustworthy place for women to shop for and service their cars, they will share. Referrals not only show that your dealership is catering to their customer, but it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to acquire and retain new customers.

 

OneClick Loyalty has been able to connect dealerships with their customers and provide a journey that builds trust and establishes a relationship with female customers. By encouraging referrals and reviews, sharing information about the dealership amenities and connecting with relevancy, OneClick Loyalty can drive retention and revenue from female customers.

Guided-Selling has found that “Women are more likely to respond to email marketing” making it the best way to reach this demographic. “Educate, empower and provide reassurance,” and you’ll see more women eager to visit your dealership for sales and service.

Read More

What’s More Profitable than Selling Cars?

By Staff Writer on October 30, 2017

What’s more profitable than selling cars? F&I

“Without a doubt, dealers are doing a much better job in selling product than what they used to,” says DealerStrong President Greg Goebel. This has led to consistent growth in profit this year and remarkably exceeding vehicle gross profit by more than double in some areas.

2015 was the first year in which F&I exceeded vehicle sales, however, the trend reversed last year. But, in 2017, F&I has retained its ability to outperform vehicle sales profit throughout the year due in part to shrinking margins.

Why the trend?

Goebel continues, “The dealers are becoming much more proficient, and finance companies are allowing much more significant F&I profit.”

Aggressive sales tactics are a thing of the past and many in the Millennial generation, as well as Generation X, will no longer accept it as part of the car buying experience. So, how does a dealership add to their bottom line via the F&I office without turning away customers?

According to Lloyd Trushel, F&I trainer, “The 1970s strategy of simply overcoming objections doesn’t work anymore.”

These old-school tactics are met with well-informed and skeptical customers. Trushel suggests personal engagement. Building trust is key to providing great service and retaining customers (and customer retention is far more cost-effective than conquest).

What happens if the customer purchases their car and leaves without an extended warranty, protection plan or other F&I product or service from your dealership?

Don’t consider it a lost sale yet.

By continuing to interact with your car buyers after the sale you can entice them to return to your dealership for service. As they do so, your dealership brand builds trust, opening the door to suggest the products they neglected at the time of sale.

It’s never too late to increase profits through F&I even after the sale because continuous, positive engagement increases the likelihood your buyer will return to your dealership for their next car and, therefore, meet with the F&I rep once again.

With OneClick Loyalty, you’ll have a platform designed to engage the customer and forge a relationship throughout the entire ownership lifecycle. Based on industry-leading customer experience algorithms, your dealership can strategically target the right message, at the right time to the right customer. This means you can market your extended warranty or service contract products, add-ons and additional F&I services even after the customer has left the lot and at times in the lifecycle in which they are likely to purchase.

Best of all, this level of engagement gives you the opportunity to turn a car buyer into a customer for life.

With almost 8 in 10 Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, the idea of a $1,000 repair bill is crushing. Your F&I department can help ease the burdens of unexpected car repairs as the power of OneClick Loyalty continues to build trust between you and the customer.

Read More

How to Find Alternative Revenue Sources Amid Slowing Sales

By Staff Writer on October 23, 2017

Manufacturers are already pulling back inventory, how will your dealership maintain revenue with less vehicle sales?

Recently, General Motors announced its plan to lay off employees from its Detroit-Hamtramck plant starting Oct. 20 with a full shutdown commencing Nov. 20 until the end of the year. Shuttering a factory for five weeks is GM’s way to control inventory.

While September was a great month for vehicle sales boasting a 6.1 percent increase from September 2016 figures, estimates are mixed on vehicle sales projections for 2017 with a consensus showing 17.6 million; or just about as many sold in 2016.

If your dealership relies on new vehicle sales for revenue generation, there may be headaches in the forecast. Areas in the south, especially in the Houston area where Hurricane Harvey totaled over 1 million vehicles, there will be a major uptick in new vehicle sales but in other parts of the country, the jury is still out.

The good news is all the new vehicle sold will need routine maintenance and repairs in the coming years. Even if there is a decline in new vehicle sales, your dealership can entice customers to return for after-sales service; a crucial step in increasing retention.

But expecting the customer to show up is not a given. Less than half will maintain their vehicle at a dealership more than two times, and considerably less will stick around after the warranty expires. Research shows that the average dealership could generate over $100,000 more in gross profit simply by improving the customer experience.

Now is the time to build a true relationship with your buyers and create a positive experience to ensure they choose your dealership for their vehicle servicing as opposed to an independent shop.

But spraying-and-praying emails or blasting commercials in hopes it will drive customers into your dealership is an expensive game and far from an “experience.” A broad approach does not offer the customized or personal solution customers now expect from every company they interact with.

How do you make a personal connection with a list of thousands of people? With OneClick Loyalty™ we use industry-leading customer experience algorithms designed to hit the customer with relevant content at just the right frequency.

The result?

Dealerships avoid over communication and communication fatigue while delivering the right message, to the right customer at the right time turning dealership data into a comprehensive customer experience.

When customers are engaged with relevant content, they feel they have a better connection with the company in which they do business. In fact, customers are twice as likely to return for service and six times likely to purchase a new vehicle if a dealership interacts with them just five times.

Vehicle service is a $99 billion business with just 30% going to dealerships. It’s time to maximize the power of service retention.

Learn more about OneClick Loyalty at www.OneClickLoyalty.com.

 

Read More

Is Your Direct Mail Going Directly to the Garbage?

By Staff Writer on August 15, 2017

You hire a team to design a letter enclosed in an envelope with the recipient’s name. It gets mailed out. The recipient receives it and opts to open it up. Discovering the special sales promotion, they bring their vehicle to your dealership and trade in for a nice, new car.

Or, most likely, throw it in the garbage without even bothering to open it.

It’s not to say direct mail marketing doesn’t work, it’s just that to make it work in today’s digital world costs a bundle.

And when compared to the advantages of digital, well, the average rate of return for…

  • …email is $38 for every $1 spent
  • …direct mail is $7 for every $1 spent

The best practices for emails are also changing.  So, methods used just a couple years ago may now be a red flag for the recipient. They simply delete the email without opening or send it to the spam folder.

One of the key changes to digital marketing has been the expectation of consumers. They want information you send to be relevant, personal and viewable on their mobile device.

It is imperative that your emails work across devices because you never know how, when or where your customer will be viewing it.

Just six years ago, nearly three-quarters of emails were opened on a desktop computer. In 2016, that rate diminished with 45% of emails being opened on desktops versus 55% on a mobile device.

Dealerships must adapt to how customers are consuming their information and content in a digitally driven world.

According to Experian, personal emails receive 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates.

Personal engagement leads to stronger ROI and higher retention rates.

Just by having the recipient’s first name in the subject line will increase open rates by nearly 20%.

How do you ditch the direct mail and move to a more rewarding platform? A platform that is responsive, offers 1:1 personalization and can build loyalty?

OneClick Loyalty is a software-as-a-service solution designed for easy implementation and to make sure you’re engaging with the customer strategically and not just marketing at them. With a personal message and relevant content geared toward their behavior, your dealership can provide a greater customer experience leading to higher retention rates and increased revenue.

Read More

Your Customers Don’t Need You Anymore

By Staff Writer on August 8, 2017

The keys are handed over. The customer drives off the lot. The sales team celebrates another sale.

For most dealerships and customers, that’s the end of the relationship because, unless there is warranty work or a recall, the customer doesn’t need you anymore. At least not for 6 years, which is how long the average person keeps their car.

Within those 72 months, other dealerships will market to them and online car shopping will become a more practiced mode of car sales.

Will you see them for service? Probably not. Car buyers are happy to take their vehicle for service at one of the 250,000+ independent or chain service shops available across the U.S.

In fact, retention rates are 49% after just 1-2 service visits and drop off by 40% after the warranty expires.

In the past, radio and TV spots as well as direct mail, would help drive customers back to the dealership when it was time for a new car purchase. But in the new digital economy, 88% of dealers say they can no longer rely on traditional marketing to deliver customers.

How can a dealership sustain business in a world where conquests are harder to come by and service shops are on every corner?

Loyalty via aftersales service.

If the relationship between customer and dealership ends at the point-of-sale, the dealer is leaving behind $1,000s in aftersales service and the opportunity of enjoying true customer loyalty.

Customers want interaction and, in today’s digital world, it’s never been easier to engage with them in a personal way to make them feel valued. A little engagement goes a long way. With just 5 interactions a customer is:

  • 3x as likely to refer a friend
  • 6x likely to purchase a new car
  • 2x likely to return for service

Part of the solution is to give customers relevant information and messaging at the right time. What good is blasting a coupon for an oil change if most people won’t use it?

Strategic messaging encourages a customer to take advantage of dealership incentives and educate them on the benefits of bringing their car in for service at your dealership – including readily available maintenance records for a higher trade-in value. But you can also inform them about amenities exclusive to your dealership such as a clean and comfortable waiting room, shuttle service, free WiFi, kid-friendly waiting areas and more.

With a platform like OneClick Loyalty, the process is automated so you won’t have to consistently manage your customer communications.  Relevant messaging entices the customer to return by building a relationship versus generic direct mail and batch-and-blast emailing.

Your customers don’t need you anymore, that’s true. But by adopting OneClick Loyalty, your customers have a higher probability of coming back to you for service and future new car sales.

Read More
Home | Blog | Twitter
© ChannelNet, 2017 Privacy Policy