Unlock the Profit Potential in Your Marketing Automation

where is ecommerce today blog image

Introduction

The right automotive marketing strategies can boost your business’s profitability. We’ve identified several best practices for success: personalizing customer interactions, integrating multi-channel approaches, and continuously analyzing performance metrics. By focusing on these, you can unlock the true profit potential of your marketing automation tools. Let’s dive into these practices and see how they can transform your marketing efforts. 

Connect Your Digital Marketing Solutions to Your Marketing Strategy

Failing to fully integrate your digital marketing solutions with your overall strategy can spell disaster. A disjointed approach risks missed opportunities and crippling inefficiencies. Don’t let your business fall behind—ensure seamless integration now. 

Align Goals and Metrics: Ensure that your digital marketing KPIs are in sync with your overall business objectives. This alignment helps in tracking performance and making data-driven decisions. 

Unified Platforms: Use unified marketing platforms that bring together various digital tools such as CRM systems, email marketing, and social media management. This will allow for a more cohesive strategy. 

Cross-Department Collaboration: Encourage collaboration between your marketing, sales, and service departments. For instance, integrating fixed operations into your digital strategy can significantly boost profitability, as highlighted in the DDC Managed Services document. 

Connect Consumer Behavior Using Data

Understanding and leveraging consumer behavior is fundamental to creating a personalized shopping experience. Here’s how you can do it: 

Data Activation: Utilize activated data to tailor personalized experiences for each lead. Whether it’s through targeted ads, personalized email campaigns, or tailored website content, data-driven personalization can capture both the consumer and the deal. 

Behavioral Insights: According to the 2022 Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey Research Summary, consumers are eager to do more online. Use these insights to enhance your online presence and provide a seamless experience that meets consumer expectations. 

Predictive Analytics: Employ predictive analytics to anticipate consumer needs and behaviors. This can help in crafting more effective marketing messages and offers. 

Turn Your Data and Insights into Actions

Data and insights are only valuable if they lead to actionable strategies. Here’s how to turn your data into impactful actions: 

Real-Time Decision Making: Implement AI tools that allow for real-time analysis and adjustments. This agility will enable you to respond quickly to market changes and consumer behavior. 

A/B Testing: Continuously test different strategies to see what works best. This iterative approach can lead to significant improvements in your marketing efforts. 

Performance Metrics: Track key performance metrics to evaluate the success of your campaigns. Use this data to refine and optimize your strategies continually. 

Build Trust and Transparency Through Data-Based Decisions and AI 

Building trust and transparency with your audience is essential, especially when leveraging advanced technologies like AI. Here’s how you can achieve this: 

Transparent Communication: Be clear about how you use consumer data. Transparency builds trust and fosters a positive relationship with your audience. 

AI-Powered Personalization: Use AI to create personalized experiences that feel genuine and tailored. This can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Ethical AI Practices: Ensure that your AI practices are ethical and unbiased. This will not only build trust but also enhance your brand’s reputation. 

Conclusion

Unlocking the profit potential in your marketing automation is not just about implementing the latest technologies; it’s about creating a cohesive, data-driven strategy that aligns with your overall business goals. By connecting your digital marketing solutions to your marketing strategy, leveraging consumer behavior data, turning insights into actions, and building trust through transparency and AI, you can transform your marketing efforts and achieve unparalleled success. 

Ready to take your marketing automation to the next level? Don’t miss out on our Bridging the Gap series for more tips and best practices. Watch the series now 

Sources: https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/2022-car-buyer-journey-study/  

Dealer.com + ActivEngage Partnership

Integrated Messaging Software for Unparalleled Customer Experiences

ActivEngage Messaging Software revolutionizes your website by effortlessly integrating live messaging, providing endless opportunities for customer engagement. This integration goes beyond the surface, as it is intricately woven into the entire Cox Automotive suite of web applications and services, ensuring a comprehensive approach to digital customer experiences.

Imagine your website visitors being warmly welcomed by well-trained experts around the clock, offering personalized assistance and guidance. With ActivEngage, there’s no need to worry about frustrating chatbots or impersonal automated responses. Each interaction is managed by highly skilled professionals, guaranteeing a fulfilling interaction experience for every shopper. Get ready for unmatched engagement possibilities!

Interested in learning more? Contact us: www.dealer.com/contact/

How to Connect Your Plan to the Future of eCommerce 

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While many dealerships work hard to reach shoppers, there are three compounding challenges that leave profitability in a dangerous place.   

But when you know what the gaps causing potential problems are, as well as how to bridge them in today’s times, you’ll be able to plan both around and for them as you work towards building a solid foundation for how you’ll do business with the future of eCommerce.  

The Main Gaps

It’s not always easy seeing gaps in your business and strategy, but most profitability gaps in the eCommerce landscape fall into one of these two categories: 

Disconnected Solutions: Complex and misunderstood digital solutions need to be connected to truly unlock their full power. When this isn’t done right, you’re only getting a fraction of their intended impact and intended use, making it near impossible to personalize your marketing and experience.  

Data Insights and Actions: We all want, need and use data to make critical decisions about marketing and our business – but it’s important to remember data is just numbers. Often times insights are not used to their full potential and aren’t activated, which severely limits your ability to effectively engage and convert shoppers into buyers.   

When you connect both your data and your digital solutions, you can ultimately build a better shopping-to-buying journey and overall experience for both the consumer and your internal organization. And with consumers continuing to show that what matters most to them is a seamless, personalized experience, it’s time for dealers to plan for a more connected future in order to meet that demand.  

 

more than a catch phrase

In a recent learning series we released “Bridging the Gap” (you can register to access all sessions of the series here) we spoke of revolutionizing how you did business to prepare for the eCommerce future that was already knocking on your front door.  .

Disconnections in personalization, 
data, and solutions are leaving 
money and opportunities on the table.  

The strategy behind bridging the gap and changing how you do business online refers to connecting your data and solutions to your consumer experience is to build that seamless, personalized journey we mentioned consumers wanting above. And the good news is once you learn how to do this, the end results are immediately measurable – your dealership should be able to see improvements in ROI in your marketing spend, higher customer satisfaction and CSI scores, and overall profitability.  

Connecting the Dots: Keep the deal moving

In order to keep the deal moving, and help consumers connect the dots that hopefully lead them to you, dealers must plan and strategize for a connected eCommerce experience. Especially as it relates to their online to in-store experience.  

As dealers, like you, move more of the automotive buying experience online, it’s important to keep the deal moving—even as consumers move from online, to offline, and back online again. Each time there’s a transition in the deal, there’s an opportunity for your customer to be captured by your competitor. And there’s an equal opportunity for you to capture what should be your competitor’s consumer if they’re not providing a personalized frictionless experience.  

If a consumer experiences disconnection during the deal, they are likely to completely stop the deal. Bottom line: If your digital solutions are disconnected, and your data doesn’t sync, you won’t build the seamless shopping experience necessary to succeed in today’s times.   

However, a transition in the deal also represents an opportunity to secure the deal.

Stay on Track with the Following Strategies

Consumers have come to expect personalization, especially in our highly targeted online world. It’s what builds, or breaks down, trust. And it’s what will capture their attention in a crowded and noisy online space – someone that knows who they are and what they want.  

Personalized experiences are a part of everything modern consumers do. During the pandemic businesses had to raise the bar to connect with consumers virtually – and it drove significant change in nearly every industry. The automotive industry is no exception.   

The bar was set high. And as we all know and have experienced ourselves… once the bar has been set high, there’s no lowering it. Each and every time a consumer has an interaction with you either online or in-person they have an expectation of it being better than the last.  Connected data and solutions can help you meet that demand and continue to have the ability to raise the bar.  

  • Connect Solutions to Your Marketing Strategy: Make sure your messaging meets the right people, at the right time with connected digital technology solutions. Now take that a step further and make sure it’s done in the right way!   
  • Connect Consumer Behavior Using Data: Tailor a personalized shopping experience for each lead using activated data. Look and interpret your insights and the actions they’re mapping out for you to take to capture both the consumer and the deal. 

It’s Time to Supercharge your Digital Marketing

Your dealership either thrives or struggles with data. At its core, the information that comes from your consumer data platforms isn’t useful just in itself, it’s what you DO with your data that matters. How you read and interpret it.  

An important question to ask yourself is what solutions do you have that turn your data and insights into actions? Once you get those actions, how are they enacted on? Gaining these behavioral insights will supercharge your data into understanding and having the ability to market with focus on:  

  • • Who’s your shopper?  
  • • What are they interested in?  
  • • How likely are they to buy?  
  • • What is their budget?  

This information should inform your online messaging, empower your sales team for in-person interactions, and build a personal and relevant experience for potential and existing customers.  

Plan to Increase AI

The connected experience goes way beyond traditional, and even non-traditional, car buying. Efficiency for the dealership depends on your ability to build trust and transparency through data-based decisions.   

While digesting insights via multiple data sets grows more and more complex, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more promising. AI can help you connect the most important behavioral insights to the needs of your sales team. This will not only help your sales team take more targeted actions that matter to drive business but help them get a more complete picture of the consumer to get them in the funnel faster.  

When planning your eCommerce strategy for the future, look for connections and actions AI can help you make, especially when bridging online and in-store experiences to fast-track them and make them more personalized. 

For the Road Forward

Technology is designed to deliver data to drive your business forward. But it’s very likely that your dealership solutions are disconnected, not capitalizing on what they were truly built for… to power your business and fuel your marketing. If they’re not set up to deliver the data in a way that is useful to your sales staff, it’s time to take a step back and do a hard reset.   

As you do, you’ll have a huge opportunity to ensure that the level of personalization you’re bringing to the table is meeting your customers’ high expectations. Not just now, but into the future. The bar has been set very high, and there’s no reason not to aim to exceed it when you have the ability to by connected your solutions, data, insights and actions.    

Cox Automotive has the most connected and comprehensive view of the automotive industry and offers unmatched data and insights into consumer behavior, automotive trends and operational best practices. Whatever your goals, we can help you get there faster to stay a step ahead and successful in today’s marketplace.    

For more insights on activating these capabilities and a deeper dive on unlocking the profit potential in your marketing automation, watch the full Bridging the Gap video / audio series. 

Sources: https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/2022-car-buyer-journey-study/  

Progress, not Perfection. How to Take Your Advertising Up a Notch.  

Author: Shane Unrein

Advertising SME Blog

Listen, I get it! Staying on top of all-things advertising can be a daunting task. This is a fast-moving space that seemingly evolves daily. From Google rolling out new campaign-types each quarter, like pMax+, to Meta offering verified business checkmarks that help customers feel confident they’re dealing with a legit brand, all these changes affect your advertising in very real ways. We constantly see new advertising capabilities surface that can help dealers reach their customers in what can feel like an endless space.  

However, taking your advertising to the next level does not have to be a massive, time-consuming evolution. It is worth remembering that there is no such thing as “perfection” in this sometimes-confusing space – that is an illusion – we aim for progress! 

Something I’ve learned in my years as Director of Advertising at Dealer.com is that many dealers are only on the cusp of what their advertising strategy can do. Excuse me for taking advantage of a few overused clichés, but there is almost certainly some low-hanging fruit that could mean more traffic on your website and your showroom floor. I’m not talking about reinventing the wheel here or buying a whole social media platform just to change the name to a single letter for the sake of headlines.   

A stale strategy is paramount to failure. But there are steps you can take to beef up your advertising strategy, small things that we can do today can have an impact. 

As we have known for decades, most organisms will grow to the size of their environment, reaching out towards the limits of their domain and then slowing their expansive growth at the edges, becoming rigid – a marketing campaign is no different. Like most successful species, innovative advertising strategies need to be elastic, have room to flex, and be ready to push your boundaries with a diversified media plan.   

Allocating just 8-12% of your monthly advertising budget to evolving your marketing and communications channels can reveal a lot about the topography of your space. You’ll get a better view of what works for you – and what doesn’t – and how much room you have to grow.  Try something new for 45 to 60 days, assess the results, and pivot accordingly.  Avenues that you wrote off a few years ago may prove fruitful, or perhaps a channel you hadn’t considered is now blowing up because of technological strides in targeting or audience capabilities.  

 

Ip targeting

While doing channel discovery testing (which is distinctly different than traditional A/B asset testing) it is important to note that what works for some advertisers doesn’t always work for everyone. And what worked in the past won’t always work in the future!  So many external factors affect the market and buzzy trends tend to capture industry headlines.  But continued and repeated channel testing can often lead to breakthroughs, even on a seasonal basis.  

Why are you not using data?       

In today’s ecosystem, the key to staying in front of high-value car shoppers is with first-party data and audience targeting is the keystone. First-party data allow you to: 

  • Predict Auto Shopper and Consumer Behaviors 
  • Gain Audience Insights 
  • Personalize Content and Advertisements 
  • Define and Map Out the Customer Journey 

First-party data also gives you valuable insights into audience demographics, product-interest engagement metrics, lease or financing options, and service specials, just to name a few. This data also informs us on what customer behaviors are prevalent within an individual’s web activity, which gives you the ability to not only understand more about your consumer but have a clearer picture of how you can effectively reach them at the right time.  These are insights that third-party cookies or purchased list data just can’t compete with. 

 

3rd party data

How many of you are using your own data?  

There are three areas that immediately come to mind when thinking about how to activate the first-party data that you probably already have at your dealership, information you’ve been collecting since the first day you opened your doors.  

Your CRM – This is direct access to your customers’ behavior and can help you with lead management and marketing. Your CRM can be a treasure trove of information on your customers that you can harness to get your message in front of the right people.  

Your Website – Uncover the pages that shoppers have visited on your website, what specific offerings or vehicles they’ve looked at, when they signed up for email specials or price alert notifications, or any of the other ways they’ve engaged with your site.  

Your Email Engagement Strategy – Your consumer emails give you insights into what your target audience engages with. You’d be shocked if I told you most dealers don’t focus on analyzing and activating these insights. You can have a clear picture of what that consumer is interested in so you can use it to tailor your marketing to them and create those critical personalized experiences.  

If you’re already advertising with Cox then you have access to our huge dataset, hyper IP targeting, and cookie-less household addresses. But setting aside just an hour per month to format and upload the info you already have, which we layer onto our own data, can help give a more accurate picture of your customer’s path to purchase, and that’s something we can really use! 

We live in a visual world, now more than ever. 

 

Gosling meme

You heard about Barbenheimer, right? 

Here’s a secret; every agency uses the same providers. Google, Facebook, Instagram, CTV/OTT, etc. are essentially the same platform no matter who is at the wheel. What sets agencies apart is their data – which we talked about above – and the ability to manage creative, especially when it comes to visual mediums like CTV/OTT and Display ads, and creative collaboration is a big part of any successful equation. Fresh, professional-looking creative can make or break the success of a campaign.   

One thing we’ve seen over the years is that, despite best intentions, visual assets often become an afterthought for many clients.  The focus of strategy discussions invariably drifts to campaign budget allocations, search ad copy, or keywords, but these things are slowly disappearing as our world increasingly becomes more bite-sized and visually oriented.  Google’s Performance Max campaign type relies heavily on custom static creative and video messaging, as does CTV/OTT, and Cox’s proprietary audience-targeted display and dynamic remarketing.   

Evergreen Visual Assets – In this new world, it has become imperative that dealers have evergreen assets that act as an anchor for these newer, visually engaging channels.  Crafting an overarching message about your business, that speaks to the customer not about individual products but branding of the buying process, must be the core of these campaigns.  From there, we can build on the message for more seasonal messaging that is more surgical in nature; monthly specials, limited-time deals, or rare inventory, to name just a handful. 

Whether you supply your own custom assets or have our Content and Creative teams build them out, it is important not to let this slip through the cracks. 

Build on momentum.  Finding what works for your business can be uniquely individual. We can analyze broad consumer data to get the broad strokes, but identifying what has worked for your dealership, in your market, is the key to unlocking the inertia within the data.  Using the Email Engagement Strategy above as an example, we can see what types of imagery and verbiage worked well to guide our digital strategy.  Did people respond to a specific deal or phrasing, did they respond to a specific product image or color, or is the market culture focused on a specific topic that is locally relevant?  

Our Barbie meme above show just how much outside “momentum” can affect outcomes. 

With a little coordination, the momentum you get from a well-crafted marketing blast, physical mailer, or even signage can all be reproduced in your digital campaigns, especially as the industry moves quickly towards a more-visual mindset. 

At the end of the day, though, the best way to find success is to test, fail, and test again.  And make no mistake, just because an idea isn’t a homerun this time doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it!  Frequent testing and refinement, combined with continually evolving audience data, is the new normal for digital advertising.  

Cox Automotive Channel Intelligence

Channel Intelligence uses Cox Automotive’s vast consumer dataset to provide tailored recommendations for automotive advertising to targeted audiences.

How does Channel Intelligence work?

By analyzing consumer behaviors, our advanced machine-learning algorithm identifies the most effective advertising channels. This personalized approach optimizes channel performance, resulting in more leads and cost efficiencies. By reallocating advertising funds based on recommendations, businesses can maximize marketing efforts and achieve better results, reducing the need for ineffective strategies.

Interested in learning more? Have a look at our Channel Intelligence infographic:

Meet EV Shoppers

As different as electric vehicles are from traditional internal combustion models, it’s not surprising that EV shoppers have different motivations and preferences compared to other car buyers. Cox Automotive studies show that EV shoppers spend more time researching their next vehicle and tend to be less brand loyal. It is critical that shoppers are provided relevant and compelling information about EV and hybrid offerings at the national, regional, and local level.

As different as electric vehicles are from traditional internal combustion models, it’s not surprising that EV shoppers have different motivations and preferences compared to other car buyers. Cox Automotive studies show that EV shoppers spend more time researching their next vehicle and tend to be less brand loyal. It is critical that shoppers are provided relevant and compelling information about EV and hybrid offerings at the national, regional, and local level.

As different as electric vehicles are from traditional internal combustion models, it’s not surprising that EV shoppers have different motivations and preferences compared to other car buyers. Cox Automotive studies show that EV shoppers spend more time researching their next vehicle and tend to be less brand loyal. It is critical that shoppers are provided relevant and compelling information about EV and hybrid offerings at the national, regional, and local level.

As different as electric vehicles are from traditional internal combustion models, it’s not surprising that EV shoppers have different motivations and preferences compared to other car buyers. Cox Automotive studies show that EV shoppers spend more time researching their next vehicle and tend to be less brand loyal. It is critical that shoppers are provided relevant and compelling information about EV and hybrid offerings at the national, regional, and local level.

What does Cookieless Future mean to Dealer.com Dealers

Cookieless Futures

One of the many benefits of digital marketing is the ability to track and measure. Tracking has always allowed marketers to optimize the consumer experience and better understand behaviors to deliver more relevant messages. There are changes coming to how we track and measure online behavior, and you may have already heard about the “cookie-less future” and “updates to third-party cookies.”

First, let’s explain what a cookie is, what will change and how those changes will help automotive dealer in the US.

What is a cookie?

Technically, cookies refer to files or bundles stored on a user’s computer that hold data. They are two types of cookies

  • First-party cookies are unique to a specific website, and user data can only be collected and activated on that one specific website.
  • Third-party cookies are added to a device by other parties in agreement with the website they are visiting. Third-party cookies allow marketers to follow users around the internet to learn about their behaviors, and, in many cases, retarget them and build custom audiences.

As a marketer, the more we know about behaviors online, the more relevant ads we can present. 

What is changing with third-party cookies and how it affects dealership marketing?

As consumers have expressed increased concern over personal privacy and data, and as new regulatory laws have been passed, companies have had to adjust. Apple sparked the beginning of the end when it started blocking third-party ad tracking to protect its users. Google followed suit, it is currently set to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024.The new changes to stop supporting third-party cookies are designed to benefit the consumer.

These changes will have a major impact, though audience size may decrease, audience quality will increase. Placing third-party tags all around the web, to make a bunch of guesses about human behavior, is a poor way to build an audience. This practice can waste time and money and is not very effective. 

In reviewing many automotive data companies, there seems to be a lot of guesswork when building marketing audiences that are being resold. This system doesn’t help the car shopper or the marketer and can waste a lot of money — quickly.

And as you’re building out your audience strategy, there are some important questions to ask your potential conquest/big data partner. Make sure your potential partner can answer these questions with facts, stats and deep knowledge.

  • How are you collecting or buying data?
  • How are you activating on an audience?
  • How are you identifying in-market car shoppers?
  • How often are your consumer insights updating?

Differentiate Your Digital Buying Experience

The pandemic drastically changed the habits and expectations of car buyers. With shoppers spending more time online, it’s becoming harder to differentiate your business from the dealers down the street. To keep customers—and their dollars—coming your way, you’ll need to adapt and implement new digital shopping experiences that your competitors can’t match.  

During this session, we’ll share key insights and best practices for creating easy, fast and frictionless car buying processes. You’ll also learn how to market and communicate those experiences with a multi-channel digital marketing strategy. 

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Operations in a Lean Inventory Environment

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the industry faces significant inventory shortages that threaten your dealership’s profitability. With fewer cars to sell, you’ll need to adjust your dealership operations by developing a comprehensive, cross-departmental strategy for thriving in a lean inventory environment. As a centralized force for dealership change, operational staff can help guide and implement that strategy by encouraging departmental collaboration, improving dealership-wide processes, and providing helpful metrics and reporting.

Encouraging Departmental Collaboration

Lean inventory environments present unique challenges that demand increased levels of inter-departmental collaboration. To thrive within such environments, you’ll need to tear down the traditional silos that keep departments operating independently. Important communication and collaboration between the service and sales department will be necessary to source used cars from service customers and to find sales opportunities. Your sales and marketing departments will also need to work closely to segment, target, and close on high-potential opportunities for selling and sourcing vehicles. Operational employees will have the important job of ensuring that everyone within your dealership is connected, communicating, and capturing necessary data.

Improving Dealership-wide Processes

During periods of lean inventory, it won’t be enough to simply improve communication within the dealership. Your dealership’s operational employees will need to develop and refine important internal processes. In many cases, you’ll need to abandon the status quo and adjust processes, adapting them to fit the unique conditions created by inventory shortages. Most importantly, you’ll need to align around an internal process for bolstering inventory by purchasing cars from customers and from vehicle owners in your service lane. Determine the right pay structure for vehicles acquired out of the service lane. Consider paying customer pay rates vs. internal rates for recon of vehicles purchased out of the service lane prior to being serviced. Decide who will approach those customers, what they will say, and how employees will be rewarded for sourcing and selling cars.

Reporting and Analytics

Because your dealership will be shifting many of its strategies, operational employees will also need to carefully track and report performance. You’ll want to keep a close eye on key metrics that indicate whether or not new tactics and processes are actually working. Provide regular reports to each department, allowing them to evaluate their individual performances and adjust their approaches.

Of course, reports aren’t just about looking backwards. Operational employees can also play an important role in achieving the dealership’s forward-thinking goals, including sales and inventory sourcing. For example, a simple sales trend report for used vehicles can help the dealership determine which models are in high demand or are bringing in high gross profits. Using that information, all departments can solicit trade-ins from customers that own those cars. Website analytics reports can provide similar information based on search volume and VDP views for specific vehicle types.

Enduring and overcoming inventory shortages will require strategic adjustments from every department of your dealership. Those charged with managing dealership operations will have an especially important job—one that requires them to bring all departments together through communication and collaboration. By sharing information and improving processes, your dealership’s operational employees can put every department on the path to success while helping the entire dealership to navigate these challenging times.

To learn more strategies for thriving in the current inventory environment, check out our free Lean Inventory Playbook.

Power Consumer Experiences from Anywhere

Sell everywhere your customers want to shop with a partner that can turn data into digital marketing that actually works. Create conversations relevant to wherever your customer is in their car buying journey, or in the world, when you unlock the power of Cox Automotive data with Dealer.com.  

It takes powerful data and expertise to truly personalize the digital car buying experience.  

Watch the video to learn how you can deliver the right message from your digital storefront to every customer, everywhere.  

Ready to demo? Reserve your spot at the Cox Automotive Sales Event.