NADA, Dallas 2023 Recap Part One: Digital Marketing

Published: February 2023

Our Chief Executive, Jeremy, was over in Dallas last month at the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show 2023! After sitting in on several sessions, Jeremy was able to feedback on what the state of play is over in the US and how we can apply any learnings to support our UK dealers.

What’s in your Digital Blind Spot? – Erica Siestma, Chief Strategy Officer at Digital Air Strike

In this digital marketing session, Erica presented mystery shop data captured in an Automotive Customer Experience Trends Study recently commissioned by customer engagement specialists, Digital Air Strike.

Lead Response Time and Quality

The overriding message in this session was Lead Response. Erica stressed how important it was for dealers to leverage technology to provide shoppers with a better and faster lead response. Furthermore, the content within the response should be high quality and include information such as price, alternative vehicles, customer reviews and special offers.

From our own experience, we know that often, website enquiries – such as Vehicle Valuation requests – will trigger an automated response from a ‘noreply@’ email with minimal information and no call to action. Although potential customers may receive the valuation information they are after, dealers are missing a core opportunity if they fail to utilise this customer touchpoint.

The ideal response to a Vehicle Valuation request would at least include:

• Vehicle Valuation Figures
• New Vehicle Offers
• Latest Stock
• Part Exchange Incentives
• Offers or USPs
• Call To Actions

We also can’t stress enough how frustrating a ‘noreply@’ email is for customers. We gain valuable insight from customer replies daily. We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: noreply@ emails are bad for business.

How can we help?

Our Stock Alerts email solution can be triggered by a simple website form submission or from a logged enquiry in a dealer’s DMS. These emails contain up to seven suitable, available vehicles from your current stock, with an image, price, and brief description which link to the Vehicle Details Page – and is fully trackable on Google Analytics.

What’s more, our algorithm checks the stock feed every three days to identify new vehicles or price changes to keep customers up-to-date and engaged. Stock Alerts can also include what we call ‘secondary sections’ that can highlight offers, testimonials and any additional information necessary – such as Vehicle Valuation data!

Additionally, when a customer clicks on a vehicle within the email, we trigger an alert to the dealership instantly with their key contact information to help with a quick and accurate follow-up.

All our emails contain buttons and call to actions and can be tailored to suit each of our client’s individual needs; but most importantly, they come from a monitored email address meaning customers can reply straight to your inbox!

The Importance of Online Reviews

Another interesting result showed that 93% of vehicle buyers said online reviews helped with their dealership selection process. Although this survey was conducted in the US, we typically see trends evolve over there before reaching the UK and, therefore, believe these results provide valuable insight.

How can we help?

As part of our VoiceBox Sales and Aftersales eCRM suite, we send customers a ‘Post Delivery Thank You’, or ‘Post Appointment Thank You’ message that contains a consumer satisfaction index (CSI) form to capture positive feedback and reviews. We can then encourage customers to share this praise on dealers’ Google My Business profiles or other chosen review platforms.

From the initial enquiry to aftersales appointments, our customer marketing solutions have been developed exclusively for the automotive sector with email, SMS and social media communications that are automated, dynamic, and personalised.

Whether it’s improving the speed and quality of your lead response or encouraging your satisfied customers to leave positive online reviews, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today for a no-obligation demo of our VoiceBox platform.

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