Automotive Industry Benchmarks and where to find them

[Rick Buffkin]

Guys, I'm wondering where / what are your go to's for the most current Automotive benchmarks. I would like to get a good informative thread going so users can find / add informative benchmark data. I was recently looking for Paid Search benchmarks and I found this thread on Searchengineland.com. It has info on it from this wordstream page. I found some of it interesting.



@Alex Snyder, at one time I think I read that based on your studies, customers are contacted 4 or 5 times before the first FQR (First Quality Response) goes out. Is that still true or has it gotten any better?
Is the data still true for Sales Appointments? Of the appts set, half show and half buy?

Thoughts?

 

[Alex Snyder]

@Alex Snyder, at one time I think I read that based on your studies, customers are contacted 4 or 5 times before the first FQR (First Quality Response) goes out. Is that still true or has it gotten any better?
Is the data still true for Sales Appointments? Of the appts set, half show and half buy?

Thoughts?

Love the idea behind this thread. Before I jump into your questions, I'll add another few sources we look at often at FRIKINtech for our automated emailing:

Email Marketing Statistics & Benchmarks | Mailchimp

There are lots of numbers, like open rate, in Mailchimp's reports. Are you wondering how your stats compare to others in your industry?

mailchimp.com

Average industry rates for email as of December 2022

Average open, click, and bounce rates of Constant Contact customers by industry Each month, we gather and examine the data from over 200 million emails sent from Constant Contact customers who...

news.constantcontact.com

Email Open Rates By Industry (& Other Top Email Benchmarks)

Knowing email marketing benchmarks by industry can help you analyze your campaigns’ performance and devise strategies to optimize them. Learn yours today!

blog.hubspot.com

Unfortunately, car dealers are mostly absent from these results as bulk emailing is mostly done through car-dealer-specific CRM systems. But I do like to compare our results to industries that are more receptive to consumers receiving emails from

Rick - the fundamentals of the car business remain as constant as the consumer's desire to buy a car from a PERSON they like and trust. What has slipped over the past three years is car dealer performance. Many more leads are unanswered than before, so performing like it is 2019 will be a crushing strategy for the next few months.

And yes, appointment ratios still stand. Half of confirmed appointments show and half of those buy.

 

[ryan.leslie]

Hey @Rick Buffkin and @Alex Snyder - Hope you and yours had a terrific Thanksgiving!

I have data that I can add to the conversation from Foureyes. This is more along the lines of "what happens once that ad converts."

We've been publishing a benchmark report for 5 years now. It is cool to see the trends from year to year, but leaning into '24, the real value may be in predicting where improvement will be critical, but that may be another thread...

Here is the most current report for aggregated data from December 2021 - November 2022, which included more than:

• 700 million dealer website visits
• 11 million unique pieces of inventory
• 21,500 automotive dealership websites (including group sites)

This report filters out website activity from bots, solicitors, job seekers, service customers, and other non-sales leads that dealers nationwide received.

Hope this is helpful, or at the very least, an interesting read.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Thank you so much @Alex Snyder and @ryan.leslie. Very helpful info. Heres a link that I look at from time to time that was shared with me a little while back. It's market data on LotLinx site. Being able to filter down New / Used, DMA's, Sales or Stock or Demand is fairly helpful.

Weekly DMA Update

 

[Rick Buffkin]

CDK Friction Points 2.0 Study 2023

https://www.cdkglobal.com/sites/cdk4/files/CDK_Friction_Points_2.0_Study.pdf

 

[joe.pistell]

@Rick Buffkin your research info is AWESOME! Keep it coming!

THEME:

IDEA: Create dedicated space on site for 1st time buyers. Create dedicated rep to this space (6 car Tommy should be a great fit). Empower the Rep to create helpful videos and man the Chat. etc...

 

[jakehughes]

For reputation benchmarks the rep index we built is a great tool. at the bottom of each column is a the average for that rep metric. What's particularly unique is that dealers can get benchmarks for any and every local market of use to them using the filtering. So if you're a Ford dealer in Michigan you can filter by the state and by brand (ford) and find the benchmarks at the bottom of this table for the filtered data. Rinse & repeat for any market or combination of filters across the US.

 

[Alex Snyder]

We can add FRIKINtech to the list of benchmark stats. Equity and service spending are worth taking a look at: 2023 Automotive Dealer and Consumer Benchmarks Report | FRIKINtech