Big Al,

I can be a little crass for sure, but I got to call 'em like I see 'em. The questions are asked and I have to give my answer and sometimes they are as blunt as a sledge hammer. I will chill out, but if its a fire brand question, you know I can't always hold back.

Gary,

Thanks for your comments. I agree with some of the things you're saying, but not the way you're saying it. Would you mind keeping posts constructive?

Thanks!

Autotrader.com used to be worth the ROI received from it at the previous rates from 2 years ago but is hardly worth the price increase justifications they now attempt to get from us now. We generate more & more ROI from our website and SEO thru our manuf on new & pre-owned vehicles than we ever did before. How to they actually expect the price increases to be justified when those of us paying attention to the performance metrics now it's all double speak? They tout themselves as "marketing" and not "lead generation" well guess what? if you're not generating any "leads" for us in comparison to the price of the products, we're going to spend the money elsewhere to "market" our vehicles & dealership. They've put the horse way ahead of the cart this time around. Anyone also notice they're looking for sales staff all over the place these days? not to hard to imagine seeing how things are going w/them.

What is the saying about a fool and his money? Any Jack Ass foolish enought o spend a dime on with AutoTrader/AutoMart.....etc..deserves to lose it. Who in their right mind would do it? Justify it any way you want, but AutoTrader and their ilk suck.

Last year with Autotrader.com premium top tiered listings ran a rate of $2900 a month. This year it's $5600. Same size audience, same response metrics as others have mentioned, some bells & whistles but ROI has dwindled. They must've penetrated the market pretty sufficiently and are looking strictly at raising revenues from existing dealers willing to pay except many in our immed area are not willing to pay exhorbitant rates for the top tiered products anymore. Who's stepped down to the middle tirered products with them and noticed little or no change in call rates/ROI? Tell us your experience in this please.

Each of us has a limited "pot of gold" to spend each month towards our marketing efforts, and selecting the best source of leads that lead to sales is the ultimate goal - correct? To do that, one must measure their ROI each month on their lead sources, and identify what marketing efforts work, and which ones do not. For us, AutoTrader performs the same as Cars.com (almost dead on for leads, calls, and views/impressions), yet AutoTrader costs 3-4 times more than Cars.com. Do we get 3-4 times better performance with AutoTrader? No. Does AutoTrader and Cars.com perform better than several other lead providers? Yes (especially AutoMart, which ranks almost dead last for us with year to date results). AutoTrader has also barraged us with "take your newspaper money and spend it with us". More than ever, our marketing dollars are a limited resource, and smart dealers must spend them wisely. The problem is that most dealers are not "smart" - ask your typical dealer what the top 10 auto websites are with the most hits? Most will answer that AutoTrader is #1. WRONG. End of year results for 2006 show that eBay Motors was number one by a huge margin, and that AutoTrader was #4. Understanding that, we want to have AutoTrader as part of our equation, but the price must be right for the results. Our smaller rooftops (with a smaller budget) use Cars.com over AutoTrader, because it gives them the same results for a MUCH lower price. I will say on AutoTrader's behalf that installing CRM's at our locations has helped us track the "walk-ins" that result from AutoTrader. It is not a huge number, but this allowed us to better measure the overall ROI for AutoTrader. Conclusion - if you want to sell us on higher rates that are 3-4 times higher than other providers that can give us the same results, you need to to show us how your service will give us 3-4 times more benefit... - Kevin Frye

Come on you guys! AutoTrader needs to increase your rates, so they can continue to sponsor NFL half-time shows and cool stuff like that.

What's that saying...? "Better products through marketing."

Just like Bose speakers sound great in the specifically designed room at the mall store, then not so good in your house. AutoTrader leads come from a popular, well known brand, but when you close 2% of $2500 worth of leads, you're really paying $2500 to waste 98% of your time.

Ahhhh finally free from the spin, greed, and corporate B.S.

I use to work for AutoTrader.com and have read this blog for the last year and half agreeing with 99% of what was said but never had the chance to finally express how right all of you are. The funny thing is without your inventory there would be no AutoTrader.com. However, they (they = AutoTrader.com Mgt./corp) only care about making more money every year.

Is this a bad thing.. not really we all want to make money right? But they have done it in such a way that they could care less if you cancel because "you will be back" and "your business will hurt without them". Guess what. Pricing will continue to rise more and more, bells and whistles will be added but will not increase your sales as much as the rate increase. Also, expect new products or solutions that ask for "Newspaper money" you are currently spending.

Another thing.. Cox owns AutoTrader.com and... guess what else they own that has been a great topic of discussion recently (Automart.com). (Coincidence that all of sudden they are now appearing as high as they are on "J.D. Power" hmmmm.. that's interesting... And don't leave out AutoExtra.com (look at the bottom of the home page and click careers- says "Cox AutoTrader), Manheim Auto Auctions, Cox Radio, Cox Media, Atlanta Constitutional Newspaper, AutoTrader Mag and the list goes on. So when you look at your advertising mix and how many times is Cox getting your money over and over again every month from all of these "separate" acting entities?

Yet.. let me guess what you will hear from your Reps... Exposure, Exposure, Exposure.. when at first it was leads leads leads and how they can track everything (except Walk ins right?). Sounds like when the newspaper went from Circulation, Circulation, Circulation to now "Readership"

Welcome to the spin factor and get ready and be prepared for rate increases every year... This is coming from a rep that was there for almost 2 years. Of course, my opinion... and admittedly left because I as an employee went from a first class citizen to a lower class, order taker, and renewal/contract robot.

If you ever get sick of spending thousands and thousands a month there are many other internet related initiatives you can take. One of which is pay per click campaigns with Google which I'm helping dealers with currently.

Your website is your highest rate of return typically, why not invest in that. And before I get the "autotrader.com, cars.com drive people to the website" yes I agree they do. However, they also go to your competitors sites that are on there, and if you took half of what you spend monthly with these sites and strictly targeted keywords your clicks would be double, triple, sometimes even more and they are only going to your website and inventory.

How many more years will they/can they continue to increase the price they charge and add little or nothing new to the game except a little hype and new skins

If they are going to continue to raise prices they must offer somthing worthy of the increase.

They need to move their operations to another country where there are less expensive operational costs and roll back their prices to the clients

Many people list their vehicles for sale on autotrader.com. They spend time and money then receive phone calls from other companies offering to sell their car for a fee. So they pay Auto Trader to list their car for these other companies to see and call to solicit.

This is a complaint you hear a lot.

At some point Autotrader will just run out of room.

I know Im really late to this conversation, but isnt the easiest way to see if your emails are having an impact is if someone replies to them or mentions it when they come into the showroom?

It doesnt look like anyone has answerd the question about "opened email" tracking... I am not sure all that have this feature and those that do not... but Imagic and DealerSocket do for sure.

Welcome aboard Dave,
I am sure you'll enjoy the talent, experience and ideas roaming in these halls. But, I do have a reccomendation.

If ever you see a thread that proposes that "Jeff Kershner is a Booth hottie", consider it SPAM, as Jeff is known to login as an alias and write nice stuff about himself!

Glad to see you made it over here Dave - I think you'll find Dealer Refresh to be an invaluable source!

I am new to Dealer Refresh and found the responses to this question to be very useful and well-written. Alex Snyder told me about this site and I'm pretty impressed.

Thanks,
Dave White
DARCARS Automotive Group

I agree with what Jeff states. Also you must follow up on a regular basis with a mystery shop, use 3 of the majors, a hotmail, Google and yahoo email address and include these in the mail out. This way you know what is going on. You need to have email addresses anyway to Mystery Shop your competitors...Don’t you?? I also always place the name and phone number in the subject line. The majors like this as most spammers do not know the correct name and number combination of the client. Plus as Jeff points out use the CRM tool for communicating important client/ store information, product updates, newsletters, soft sell news releases, community projects etc. There is an old, wise Chinese saying "don’t cook your food in the bathroom" Use an email campaign program for your hard sell if you need to hard sell.

I do not know many consumers swayed by the $500.00 coupon these days, you may find a few. Most Internet shoppers avoid this "gimmick" and are more intelligent. I know BZ Results thinks the sun rises and sets on the program which is an indication of where their thoughts are.

Umer, these are great sources.

True, as Laura points out, "email authentication" has become a necessary step for more successful email campaigns these days. There are two main authentication standards to support called Sender ID and DomainKeys. Problem is, not all email servers support this so depending on how your CRM spools email this may or may not be possible for you.

Email deliverability can be affected by all of these factors:

a) Reputation of sending domain

- Sending emails to bad addresses repeatedly - When the emailer sends repeatedly to bad addresses, ISP’s record this and subsequently block the sender. It looks like the sender is trying a dictionary attack. You must clean your email list, taking out email addresses that bounce.

- Sending emails to spamtraps. These are traps set up by blacklists to catch spammers. The addresses are never given out, so sending to them will immediately land you on a blacklist.

- How quickly/slowly emails are sent (throttling). ISP’s frown upon messages sent in large bunches. It’s also better to have spam complaints trickle in rather than come in large bunches.

- Users hitting the spam button. ISP’s take this very seriously. You can usually sign up for a feedback loop that will send you this information so that you can clean those addresses off your list. Failure to do so will rapidly deteriorate your deliverability.

- Sending architecture (SPF records, DKIM, etc.) that identifies sender properly – without this there is no reputation, and no reputation=bad reputation.

- Challenge-response system responses: the ISP sends a response requiring the sender to reply before the email will be sent on to the recipient.

- Communication between servers (Brightmail). Brightmail servers share info about spammers.

b) Content of the email message

- Criteria varies by filter (SpamAssasin is one example), includes things like verbage in subject line, excessive graphics or scripting, large bright colored fonts, certain keywords, cleanliness of code, etc.

c) Blacklists

- Blacklists are lists kept by independent organizations or internally by ISP, that record IP/domains of known spammers. ISP’s often consult the blacklists of independent organizations. There are many of them. Whitelists are the antithesis of blacklists. There are whitelists managed by independent organizations or managed internally by ISP.

Most important of all these, is the reputation of the sending domain. It used to be that ISP's filtered based on the content of the email. But more and more, ISP's are focusing on the reputation of the sending domain (or IP). Given the complexity involved, and the fact that reputation is the most important factor, if you do any sort of decent volume of outbound mail, you probably SHOULD be outsourcing your email delivery.

Check your computer or CRM provider mail server on RBL blacklists...
Blacklist check can be done at... IP-Address 209.237.238.224

Need to check the email content for spam... send a sample email to [email protected] then go to Dealer Website Design, Online Marketing, CRM & Inventory Management | AutoJini
enter your from address and it will tell you the SPAM score and spam rules applied.

something of further interest to read... and to ask questions to CRM provider.

Regards,
Umer Farooq

Great input so far, but besides Jeff's comments, most of it has to do with the state of CRM tools... while that's important to discuss for the future of the Robert's dealership, I imagine his dilemma also needs a bit more immediate attention, and switching CRM tools is probably not a solution he can implement within the next few weeks.

1. Make sure you know what you're doing in regards to sending HTML-based email. If someone in your dealership is creating the emails in-house, then you're probably doing it wrong... even if you've employed a young "web guru" to create the emails, they might not know the ropes of html-based email.

2. Go sign up for the usual webmail accounts (web-based mail is what most of your prospects will have, and the email providers are strict but also predictable, unlike a corporate email system which could either be totally uncontrolled or controlled so specifically that you don't stand a chance of it getting through). Pick up a Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail account, and mystery shop yourself. See which of your emails get through, which don't, and which get mauled on their way to the inbox. No better way to gauge what your customers are seeing than to actually become one.

3. As mentioned by many, try not to use your CRM tool to blast out mass emails... and if you must, use discretion. $500 coupons to your entire customer base don't do much for your business besides getting you flagged for spam.

Hopefully others can provide some additional advice on an immediate fix... and at the very least, if you take all these preventative steps and your mail still doesn't come through, you've got a much stronger case for switching CRM tools.

Exactly the same issue we have been having, David, and we are partnering with Exact Target as well. Some of the best solutions for these challenges can be found in companies that may not necessarily be geared towards the automotive industry.

maybe just select the right tools, some crm products can do both deliver and measurement. it's never better to use a third-party delivery system unless your crm is unable to do the job. i guess that's the problem right there, most crm's in our space don't send email as a core value prop of their service. luckily we don't have that issue like many of the legacy systems (autobase, highergear etc). there is a change happening out there and the old tools just can't keep up....

Robert - first thing - at least you caught that your emails were not going through to your customers. Every time I mystery shop our competition, I find that many of their emails go into my spam folder, month after month, and I wonder if they are even aware that their emails never come through. We have a great CRM tool provider, however, I still test our emails myself on a continuous basis to ensure that our correspondence is going through, and, if we send any type of marketing emails, they are small, targeted campaigns that focus on prospects we have been working with in the last 90 days. Sending an email blast to your entire database is asking for trouble (and also asking much of the database to mark your emails as spam)...

I agree with Jeff's remarks regarding email delivery and tracking. There isn't a CRM system in our space that has a best-in-class email delivery system. We decided early on to take the responsibility of quality email delivery into our hands. We use a server -based CRM system (Autobase) so we set up a separate outgoing email server so that blacklisting, etc. wouldn't affect our corporate email setup. All of our images are set up on an FTP site so that our emails aren't "heavy". Then we started working with the ISP's so that our emails wouldn't be sent to SPAM or worse, blacklisting.

We thought that we were in the clear but there was one problem. Our CRM email set-up was incapable of handling the email campaigns. It takes hours to send out our email campaigns. Now, I will admit, we are power users and have a large database of customers and email addresses. Our group sent almost five million emails to customers last year so I am not sure if any system would have been equipped to handle it. What we did learn is that you need to align yourself with a company that specializes in email delivery. Luckily, our CRM company saw this too. We are partnering with a company called Exact Target. Instead of email going out through Autobase and our outgoing email server, the data gets passed through to Exact Target and they send it, report on it, and handle our subscription lists. After testing this for 2 months with random campaigns, we are able to send email in record time, see detail reporting broken out however we want, and still able to keep track of activity through our CRM system.

Don't rely on a vendor to do something that is not in their core competency. Go out and find the best and make your vendors integrate and partner with them. If they don't, switch vendors. I don't agree that you should have a separate system because I believe it is very important to have all of your customer info in one bucket. Just make sure that the one bucket doesn't have holes in it...

Rob,

I wouldn't be particularly surprised if your CRM sent emails were ending up in the trash somewhere. So many dealers use their CRM/ILM systems to send out unsolicited "email blasts" with no unsubscribe links or any other regard to spam law that i'm sure quite a few CRM systems have ended up on blacklists.