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  1. JesseJ

    New Car Specials - What REALLY Works?

    It's no secret that customers love specials. It's not about the deal they're getting, it's about the deal they think they're getting. We get the rare customer we make 50 cents on who leaves thinking we got one over on him and we might never see again after all the back and forth. Then we have...
  2. JesseJ

    TrueCar now masking customer email addresses

    I don't want to hijack this thread but Jeff's post about Nationwide reminded me of another TrueCar gripe. I don't know how many of you are affiliated with Ford stores or familiar with x-plan pricing. X-plan is a set price by Ford on a given vehicle. There are many ways to qualify for x-plan...
  3. JesseJ

    Facebook Business page reach

    I figured that much. I just would be surprised if 1800 of our 2000 likes hid our posts.
  4. JesseJ

    Gift Cards as a Dealership Visit Incentive

    We have been using Hook Logic for about a year. There is no denying it drives showroom traffic but I'm still having a hard time assessing the quality. It is truly amazing to me that half a dozen people a month seem to show up to the dealership looking for a gift card and shamelessly admit they...
  5. JesseJ

    Facebook Business page reach

    This is far from an emergency but I just noticed that our Facebook business page is showing an extremely low number of "views" per post compared to the number of people who actually like our page. A typical post now tops out at around 150 views despite having 2000+ followers. I'm guessing this...
  6. JesseJ

    My entire dealer group just canceled Cars.com. More lead providers to come!

    Just curious, those of you that are reporting success from canceling Cars.com, Autotrader, etc, what have you invested in that has worked?
  7. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    Oh yes and also I added the "want more pics?" button. We can't move it directly next to the pictures which probably cuts down on the leads from that but we do get inquiries.
  8. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    @ Joe Well I got my hopes up a bit on the added budget. We did finally cancel our print advertising contract which was a big budget drain but I have yet to make any progress on getting those funds reallocated to something useful. Part of the problem here is that we are a small dealership, yet...
  9. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    Joe, This is an awesome bit of insight. I can't thank you enough. I think your lead generating idea for vehicles without photos is phenomenal. I'm going to get that implemented asap. Great guidance as well on which vehicles to highlight as far as photos and video go.
  10. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    I do. I basically just do it myself through Homenet.
  11. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    Small world. I'm also a UAlbany alumni.
  12. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    @Bill The monthly budget is my one hang up as well. I'm not sure where the cap is going to be yet but I'm sure it will be on the very low end of these type of programs. @Joe Great ideas. I wonder if I can implement any of that without spending extra $. The new car photos probably wouldn't be...
  13. JesseJ

    Freed up some budget, what should we add?

    I am finally on the same page with the GSM at our dealership. We are going to scale back our print advertisement greatly in the next couple of months and reallocate those funds back into the Internet Department. Music to my ears. :) We recently added Hook Logic but we've had the same base now...
  14. JesseJ

    Great Subject Lines!

    There has been absolutely no increase in open or read rate. The claim they make is that a phone number helps dodge spam filters. I have no idea how accurate that is but it sounds questionable. I've dropped the phone numbers from my subject lines for awhile now.
  15. JesseJ

    TrueCar's New Write Off Policy

    Hmm, yeah I think it might be time to cancel. We have been with True Car for several years and we have done quite well with it but this is not going to work. I had one issue with a customer who has literally bought a dozen vehicles from us. He still does his research and negotiates his price...
  16. JesseJ

    Great Subject Lines!

    Old thread but I have a question related to subject lines. I work for a Ford Dealer and Ford's Digital Team is absolutely adamant that all subject lines should include the dealership phone number. I've heard a wide array of explanations for this but I've never seen anyone else advocate this...
  17. JesseJ

    Tracking the Used Car Reconditioning Process

    As the guy who takes the photos for our dealership, I feel your pain. My General Manager in particular seems to think that my SLR Camera makes me some sort of wizard and that I can just wish a dirty car into looking clean in a photo. I think it's better to have no photo than a photo of a car...
  18. JesseJ

    DealerRater Credibility

    I think the last part of what you said is interesting. We have a phenomenal body of reviews on our DealerRater page at this point. I tend to think it almost looks phony. Every single one of those reviews is authentic. I pretty much use the strategy you touched on to moderate my reviews. If I...
  19. JesseJ

    Twitter is a waste of time, right?

    Thanks Nick. I'll check it out.
  20. JesseJ

    The Internet Director's Role - What should it really be at a dealership?

    ddavis - Just to clarify, I agree with you. That is the general perception and a very tough mold to break.