Featured Guest: Angela Drake, Director of Research and Market Intelligence with Cox Automotive gives a behind-the-scenes look at the new findings from the Evolving Consumer Study, which took a close look at those evolving behaviors and uncovered some key finding that are important for dealers, OEMs as well as the automotive industry plan and take pro-active actions on in order to have continued success on winning the sale.
NADA 2025 sets dealers like you at the forefront of technological advancement. This new year, your business stands to uncover trends that can potentially change forever how you interact with consumers, sell cars, manage your business and earn even more profit.
Experience Seamless Customer Journeys with Omnichannel Technology
Today’s consumers want a consistent, connected car-buying journey. In fact, according to Cox Automotive’s Car Buyer Journey study, 43% of recent car buyers used an omnichannel approach, and 71% are likely to do so in the future. That means more than 7 out of 10 shoppers will use multiple channels—online, in-store or some combination—to make their next vehicle purchase.
Omnichannel technology brings together connected dealership solutions to enable every path to purchase (from sales to service). It creates a consistent customer journey with data that follows customers as they shop online and in-store.
Embracing a multichannel experience not only facilitates unforgettable customer experiences but also empowers your dealership to build strong, profitable, and simplified workflows that boost operational efficiency. By leveraging omnichannel technology, you can seamlessly integrate online and in-store interactions, ensuring that data follows customers throughout their purchasing journey.
At NADA 2025, you can experience omnichannel technology with connected Dealertrack solutions. With Dealertrack, customers can start the deal online and not have to repeat steps when they come in-store. And, because data flows directly from the DMS, it streamlines the entire F&I process for faster funding.
Maximize Profitability with Real-Time Predictive Insights
The more you know about your customers, the better experience you can give them. This has always been true in automotive sales, but with the advent of AI automation and the ability to track shoppers online, insights are more powerful than ever before.
In 2025, predictive consumer insights will allow you to maximize the profitability of every interaction in several key ways. They will help you pull accurate data and build convenient automations in real-time, customize processes for out-of-state transactions, access deal insights and historical transactional data to help customers manage the deal-completion process, and much more.
At NADA 2025, you can experience predictive insights in action through several innovative Dealertrack solutions.
Automations
Advanced automations are streamlining the path to purchase and powering profitability for dealers. By enhancing productivity, streamlining processes, and reducing manual tasks, F&I technology ensures a simplified and efficient path to purchase.
Deliver Next-Level Service Backed by Unmatched Industry Experience
With so much customer information to keep track of and so many solutions to consider, having a trusted partner—one with unmatched industry experience—can give you a real competitive advantage in 2025.
As you consider the latest trends, look for technology that includes experts behind the scenes who relentlessly deliver customer experience infrastructure that no one else comes close to. But this is only the beginning. Make sure that you select a technology partner that can grow with your dealership, not one that you’ll quickly outgrow.
As the leader in automotive technologies, Cox Automotive continues to invest in client experience, speed to response, connecting solutions, training and more. At NADA 2025, you will have a chance to meet with DealertrackPerformance Management experts with an average of 10 years dealership experience each, who are committed to keeping your team and technologies on track and up to speed. It’s just one way Cox Automotive and Dealertrack are staying a step ahead of the technology curve.
Schedule a Dealertrack demo at NADA 2025 to experience omnichannel technology, predictive insights, and unmatched industry leading expertise.
In automotive sales, the tools, technology and insights that help your sales professionals understand your customers will make the greatest impact on your business. Keeping up with emerging automotive tech trends not only changes how your sales team interacts with customers but also has the power to streamline the entire experience for consumers—from online interest to in-person and everything in between. Understanding how to work these trends into your workflows could help you outsmart and outsell the dealer down the street.
Enhance the customer experience with omnichannel technology
With new technologies emerging, consumers will likely explore different methods of buying cars. Your next buyer is already taking some mix of traditional in-store avenues, more modern online methods, and usually some combination of both.
Today’s consumers want a consistent, connected car-buying journey. In fact, according to Cox Automotive’s Car Buyer Journey study, 43% of recent car buyers used an omnichannel approach, and 71% are likely to do so in the future. That means more than 7 out of 10 shoppers will use multiple channels—online, in-store or some combination—to make their next vehicle purchase.
Meeting this new omnichannel car buyer will demand technology and tools that create a seamless experience by leveraging consumer insights and allowing customers to pick up right where they left off during their most recent shopping experience.
At NADA 2025, you can experience omnichannel technology with VinSolutions Automotive Marketing Platform.
VinSolutions Automotive Marketing Platform lets you leverage actionable consumer data and insights to implement dynamic automated marketing campaigns across multiple channels.
Boost sales opportunities with exclusive predictive insights
Cox Automotive’s exclusive predictive insights, powered by artificial intelligence, give dealers more information about shoppers—their interests and probable purchase decisions. Implementing these actionable insights into your sales processes can allow your sales professionals to better understand your shoppers’ next moves and personalize each step of the purchase journey.
AI-led automations are helping dealers to deliver the right marketing messages to the right shoppers via text marketing and special-order parts notifications. Knowing more about shoppers, beyond what they submit online, and proactively reaching out to them at every purchase step can help you to maximize the profitability of every interaction.
At NADA 2025, you can harness this power to identify shoppers 8X more likely to buy. With technologies like GenAI, Deal Central, VinSolutions’ Virtual Assistant, and VinSolutions Predictive Insights, you can personalize every customer interaction and turn your data into more deals.
GenAI gives your team the tools to quickly generate engaging, personalized communications for your customers using VinSolutions Predictive Insights.
Deal Central empowers your team to close deals faster and increase back-end profits through a modern deal-making experience.
VinSolutions’ Virtual Assistant helps you to recognize returning customers through their inquiry details when chatting online.
VinSolutions Predictive Insights allows you to pull information, such as vehicles of interest, trade-ins, and more to create customized, personalized proposals that lead to more profitable deals.
Harness industry-leading expertise to out-sell the competition
Even as technologies like artificial intelligence continue to evolve the automotive sales landscape, strong, trusted partnership is still vital for dealership success. In fact, in 2025, industry-leading experience can help your dealership to take full advantage of the latest tech trends.
As you implement new technologies, make sure that you have a partner working relentlessly behind the scenes to deliver customer experience infrastructure, a commitment to speed-to-response, connecting solutions, training and more. In other words, make sure that your technology partner is committed to and capable of growing with you.
At NADA 2025, you’ll get a chance to meet with VinSolutions Performance Managers—real industry experts with real industry experience—to help your dealership’s sales personnel identify every opportunity and maintain healthy client relationships. As part of Cox Automotive, VinSolutions is committed to developing innovative automotive technologies that move your dealership forward, into 2025 and beyond.
Schedule your VinSolutions demo at NADA 2025 to experience omnichannel technology, powerful artificial intelligence and automation, and unmatched industry leading expertise.
Technology moves fast. Every year, new innovations in automotive sales take the industry by storm and help dealers give their shoppers a more modern experience. They also help you to future-proof your dealership and stay on the cutting edge.
No matter how your customers approach their individual purchase decisions, omnichannel technology allows you to enable every purchase path and create a consistent experience for every customer.
Specifically, omnichannel technology allows you to:
Connect with shoppers using advanced digital marketing and deal-building solutions that work in tandem to deliver better leads and better sales.
Create fully digital consumer experiences using connected end-to-end tools that deliver a brand-new experience.
Utilize deep consumer insights to help shoppers pick up right where they left off in their last search.
At Nada 2025, you can experience the innovation of omnichannel technology with Autotrader’s intelligent Market Extension. This new technology is built to deliver better leads for your dealership and help you close deals 47% faster by auto-listing your inventory where demand is high.
Predictive Insights
When you know your customers’ next moves, you can be there for them at every step of their purchase path to deliver a personalized experience. You can also predict their next moves to beat your competition to the next sale.
Predictive insights leverage AI automation to deliver the right marketing messages (via text marketing) and special-order parts notifications to interested customers. They also allow you to maximize the profitability of every interaction to see beyond the information would-be buyers submit online.
At NADA 2025, you can see the power of predictive insights on full display with Channel Intelligence from Autotrader and Enhanced Accelerate My Deal.
Channel Intelligence from Autotrader analyzes the performance of your advertising channels and provides recommendations to capture more leads for your campaigns.
Enhanced Accelerate My Deal helps ready-to-buy shoppers progress further down the purchase path and into your dealership faster.
Unmatched Industry Leading Expertise
Expertise is nothing new to the automotive industry. But with so many dealership-changing technologies emerging at such a rapid rate, having industry-leading expertise on your side can give your dealership a real competitive advantage.
Partnering with professionals—who have real dealership experience and know how to leverage the latest technologies—can help your dealership to grow alongside new technologies. Look for technology that includes experts behind the scenes, who relentlessly deliver top-tier customer experience infrastructure that goes beyond mere support.
As the industry leader in developing innovative automotive technologies, Cox Automotive continues to invest in client experience, speed to response, connecting solutions, training, and more—all to help dealership partners like you.
For the Road Ahead
Consider this only the beginning. New technologies that benefit your dealership and your customers are always right around the corner. In fact, keeping up with new technologies is part of the fun of running a successful dealership. It’s also the best way to stay a step ahead of change and keep your dealership from falling behind.
With every Autotrader listings package, you’ll gain access to nVision, an invaluable tool for dealers and their professionals. nVision provides online training, industry insights, key reporting tools, shopper behavior data, and more. This comprehensive resource ensures you have the knowledge and tools needed to leverage the latest technologies effectively.
Autotrader provides you with qualified leads for people who want cars. We have the data that connects and activates your data, and we have the shoppers. We know what they want, and our goal is to match them with our dealer partners, driving quality leads that have the highest gross profit on average industry wide. We connect you with customers virtually, to move shoppers to you, so that you can focus on building and letting your brand shine.
Schedule an Autotrader demo at NADA 2025 to experience omnichannel technology, predictive insights, and unmatched industry leading expertise.
Featured Guest: Bethany Johnson, Director of Strategic Planning for vAuto live from the Used Car Week stage in Arizona, discusses highlights from her keynote sharing the five key areas Dealers should focus on in the coming year if they are looking to capture more profits, scale their business, and capitalize on incremental revenue opportunities.
Featured Guests: David Lumpkin, Senior Director of Inside Business Development, and Micah Tindor, Senior Director of Strategy for Kelley Blue Book ICO share what are likely outcomes and things dealers, and our industry need to face and prepare now that the election is over, representing a different view for Franchise, Independent, and OEMS, with a Sales and Fixed Ops perspective.
The data your dealership collects can be one of its most valuable assets. It can tell you things like:
What someone is interested in buying,
How much they’re willing to spend,
Which F&I aftermarket products make sense for them,
How much equity they have left in their vehicle, and
When they’re due for service.
But to use that data to close a profitable deal, encourage a trade-in, or get a customer into the service bay, it needs to be accurate, complete and accessible.
Here are some ways data inconsistency can torpedo your sales and marketing efforts:
Duplicate Records
Let’s say you have a partial customer record for John Harris and another for John J. Harris, but they’re really the same person. If you’re unable to sync records, there’s a chance that he’s receiving double the sales and marketing outreach he should. Depending on what types of contact information you have in each record, he may be getting one type of message via text and a conflicting or irrelevant message via email. In either case, there’s a chance that you’re undermining the customer experience, wasting resources, and potentially costing your dealership revenue.
Inaccurate or Outdated Data
If you can’t count on your data due to errors or because it isn’t updated often enough, your dealership may fall into similar traps. For example, Jennifer Jones started her buyer journey looking at compact cars but has since switched to shopping for an SUV. If a data lag means that you keep showing her the small hatchbacks you have in stock, her likelihood of trusting your dealership enough to buy from you diminishes with every contact point.
And if you’re sending maintenance reminders for a vehicle a customer used to own and for the one they have now, you’re diminishing your return on investment before the emails or postcards even arrive.
Data Inaccessibility
When the data you’ve collected from a customer isn’t available to other dealership systems, there are several potential issues, including:
Increasing wait times for customers
Irritating customers by making them repeat information they have already provided
Introducing the potential for error as information is re-keyed, which can be a particular problem during the contracting process
All of these can negatively affect the customer experience and data re-entry is a leading cause of errors that can lead to re-contracting.
Your Data Consistency Solution
Dealertrack makes data consistency a priority by creating a single customer record across your entire dealership. For instance, data that starts out in the CRM automatically updates across accounting, F&I, and your service department so you can be confident that each customer record is accurate, in sync, and up to date.
Featured Guests: Autotrader power couple, husband and wife Nathan and Christina Jordan, Client Success Managers for Autotrader & Kelley Blue Book, talk about what they’re seeing work across their top-performing clients when it comes to leads: how to stand out to your ideal customer, get the enhanced lead and convert to a close.
Featured Guest: Shaun “Niff” Kniffin, Retail Solutions Moderator and Consultant of NCM Solutions discusses the evolution of new car sales in the automotive industry over the past four years and reveals predictions for how it will change further outlining the steps dealers need to take to stay ahead of the curve in the coming year.
Featured Guests: Kirk Preiser, SVP of Business Development at LeadVantage and Micah Tindor, Sr. Director of Strategy at Kelley Blue Book ICO, share what they’re seeing across their top-performing clients when it comes to successful lead handling. Learn the many advantages of using AI, but also some of the pitfalls and how to overcome them.
