Most professional copywriters know that in a sales letter, the most important item after the headline is the postscript (P.S.) at the bottom.

Research shows that when people open a letter, they often scan to the bottom and read the P.S. before they actually read the letter itself. A good writer will take advantage of this opportunity to maximize their message with a strong P.S.

Do your salespeople know that including a P.S. in their emails is also incredibly effective?

It is such an easy way to increase the impact of your emails. That simple sentence at the bottom of a two or three paragraph email can help you increase urgency, reinforce your main message and add value.

Here are a couple of ideas on what you might include in your P.S.:
1. Main Theme with a Twist
Restate your main benefit from a different perspective. Whether or not they read the whole email, this gives you another chance to deliver your most important information.

2. The Time is Now
Use the P.S. to add urgency. Are the incentives expiring in a few days? Do you only have two left of the particular model in the color they are looking for? Let them know.

3. Add Social Proof
This can be a great place to add a customer review, especially if the review reinforces your particular offer or deals with a common objection or concern people have.

4. Sweeten the Deal
Is there a bonus offer you can add? Here’s the place to do it. For instance, “P.S. – Since it’s raining today and the showroom is a little quiet, my sales manager is including floor mats with the next vehicle sold.”

The P.S. should appear right below your signature line and should only be a sentence or two. Make sure it includes a call to action at the end as well.

Are you using P.S. in your're emails and if so, what are you using in your postscript? 

P.S.
If you want to see exactly how adding a P.S. to your email makes a difference, include a unique tracking URL in the P.S. so you can measure the clicks.

Last week, Autotrader.com announced they are filing for Initial Public Offering (IPO).  With a few days to examine the 250 page document, detailing the filing, the numbers are in.  What kind of profitability does Autotader.com have?  Revenue?  Expenses?  It is all out there now.  But we found more interest in what they paid for their last round of purchases.  Here are the numbers as best can be summarized:

VinSolutions was acquired for $134.6M cash and up to $15M in earn-outs with $13M paid as of April 2012

• VinSolutions revenue was $12.8M as of March 31, 2012
  
• $4.6M operations costs, $2.1M marketing, $3.3M general administrative

vAuto was acquired for $192.8M cash and up to $34.5M in earn-outs with all paid in full

• Revenue was $35M between Jan 1 - Oct 15, 2010

HomeNet was acquired for $61.6M cash

• purpose was to enhance internal technology development capabilities and not to provide revenue
  
• took goodwill impairment charges attributable to HomeNet of $36.4M in 2011 and a further $11.1M in Q1 2012
  
• intangible asset impairment charge attributable to HomeNet of $4.5M in Q1 2012 based on "events occurring in late April 2012": "significant customer migration issues during a late-April 2012" and higher costs from an "imminent data license agreement"

KBB was acquired for $532.4M in cash without earn-outs

Maybes based on two non-binding letters of intent for un-named companies in March of 2012 around $16M

• acquire the assets of a dealer inventory management tool provider?
  
• acquire equity interest in an online data provider?

For more information on what an Initial Public Offering is see the simple definition of IPO.  A colorful discussion is happening about this within the DealerRefresh forums right now:  Autotrader going public.

For the extra-diligent, faithful readers of DealerRefresh, I know I promised everyone a sneak preview of the Market Intelligence Report this month, but I’m going to postpone it until next month.  As you know, Jeff wanted me to talk about the cool things happening at Cars.com, but he also wanted me to dig even further into news and developments with our site and solutions that may be of interest to the DealerRefresh Community.  With that in mind, I wanted to address some fluctuations you may be seeing in your Cars.com VDP counts, which measure how many page views your vehicle details pages receive.

Before I get into the details, I’d first like to thank everyone who reached out to us with questions. We understand the importance of reporting, and as I mentioned in last month’s blog post here on DealerRefresh, one of Cars.com’s top priorities this year is better aligning the experience on our site with how consumers shop used vs. new vehicles and how dealers operate those two areas of their businesses. Evolving our reports to reflect these site enhancements is a big part of that initiative – more on that in a few paragraphs, but as the guy here in Cars.com who heads up the day-to-day oversight of our dealer reporting, I think it’s great to know that our customers are engaged with their metrics and track performance so closely.

The fluctuations you may have seen in recent weeks largely consist of activity from “spiders and bots,” which (apologies for my inevitably-simplistic explanation) are automated software tools intended to index webpages and retrieve information, usually much faster than is possible manually.  Search engines use data collected by these tools to optimize a user’s search experience, providing significant value to the consumer and increasing online visibility for brands.  Some vendors in our industry also employ spiders and bots to gather information off of our site to better serve their dealer customers.  And then there are also other companies and individuals that collect data for all sorts of other purposes.

Despite the upsides, one side effect of this activity is it can impact site metrics, whether you’re talking about Cars.com specifically or other sites like ours in the auto industry and beyond. Like any technology, spiders and bots evolve at a pretty fast clip, which is why we continually make investments to identify automated traffic and limit its impact on the reporting we provide.

The next wave of these investments, scheduled to go into effect sometime this summer, should take care of the fluctuations you’ve been seeing. After we flip the switch on some new software, your VDPs should stabilize, and the drop there will likely be accompanied by an increase in your lead conversion rates as automated traffic is eliminated. Metrics like leads, referral traffic to your dealership site and walk-ins shouldn’t be affected, as spiders and bots typically don’t take the time to fill out an online form, pick up the phone to call you (thank goodness), click through to your website or walk into your store.  Your Cars.com rep will be able to talk to you about the impact on your metrics specifically, since bot traffic varies greatly by region and the type of data being collected.

Whether we’re talking about spiders and bots or the proactive efforts we’re making on the reporting front, I can tell you that everybody here at Cars.com is dedicated to providing dealers with valid, actionable data about their performance on our site.  Given that, I do want to talk a little bit about the larger changes in store for your Cars.com reports, because I suspect that our tracking changes will be an intriguing topic.

The premise behind Cars.com’s new-car enhancements I shared last month is this: the selection criteria and process consumers go through to select a new vehicle is different than their consideration process for a used vehicle.  Likewise, if you’re a franchise dealer, the process your dealership goes through to sell new vehicles simply isn’t the same as the one for your used vehicles, whether we’re talking about the real world or the virtual one. In a world where new cars are shopped for, marketed and sold very differently than used cars, our goal is to align our site with that landscape, from the shopping experience we provide for consumers to the advertising opportunities – and reports – we offer our customers.

You may have seen that your June Market Drive report now includes SRPs and VDPs for used inventory only, as new-car metrics will be reflected in the new-car Market Intelligence Report you’ll receive next month.  I’ll discuss the MIRs in more depth in my next post, but the intent is to convey how a dealership’s performance with new-car shoppers stacks up against that of its competitors. We’ve also partnered with Dataium, a leading aggregator of internet automotive shopping activity, to provide key market trends and predictive data that can help dealers make more informed decisions about their forecasting, marketing investments and merchandising.

In both your Market Drive report and new-car Market Intelligence Report, you won't notice a few things because they're not there just yet, but they're coming. Throughout the rest of this year we’ll be making continued improvements to the report (as well as reductions – what DON’T you like?), including pulling in other data sources from our business partners that can provide even more insight into your dealership’s performance.  More on that to come, but in the meantime, I’m happy to share any information or answer any further questions on this point.

As always, your feedback is immensely important to our ability to do what we do even better, so please feel free to ask questions or make comments below or reach out to me directly at [email protected].

 

I don’t think I’m alone in viewing Apple’s rumored “iWallet” as a game changer.

The first iteration, released Monday, is called Passbook.  The concept’s simple. Right now you use your smartphone for phone calls, web search, directions, reminders – everything.  Just as we slowly eliminated the need for a phone and PDA or a phone and an iPod; the iWallet concept seeks to eliminate your physical wallet.

Let’s examine Apple’s version 1.0 of this concept, Passbook. Passbook is a new app that will be included with the iOS6 software for Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

What does it do? Passbook keeps all of your airline tickets, concert tickets, coupons, and giftcards in one convenient app. Its location based, which means when you arrive at the airport, your iPhone will automatically access your ticket and display it for you. A quick scan at the gate of your iPhone screen and you’re on board.

While you can quickly imagine the benefits for Starbucks, Delta, Target, or other large retailers, I’m here to talk to about your dealership.

In my opinion, Passbook’s effectiveness will really shine with retailers who rely on timing to engage their customer. While customers may go to great lengths of inconvenience to get that morning latte, we don’t typically have that luxury. For dealers, convenience and timing of the message is everything.

For instance, one of the biggest advantages of a dealer mobile app is quick access to inventory. We’ve found customers access dealer inventory more often during the purchase process via a mobile app.  It’s the simple convenience of an icon on their smartphone home screen that constantly reminds, brands, and permits quick access to the information they need. An app isn’t a better way to access inventory, its more convenient and quicker.


The same, I believe, holds true for Apple’s Passbook. With Passbook and your dealer mobile app, we have potential to geo-target customers near the dealership – placing a mobile coupon in their Passbook at just the right time. Geo-targeting doesn’t end at your dealer’s physical location. Imagine targeting your customer while they’re running errands, such as a near-by grocery or hardware store.   How about a targeted message when visiting your competitor?

The end goal of course is a showroom visit. A Passbook coupon or offer is tailor made for in-store redemption. The customer is already in the area at the time of the offer!

Passbook was unveiled Monday, so what I’ve laid out is very much in the experimental phase. It’s just a glimpse into what we at AutoMotion get excited about regarding the future of mobile and the dealer.

Are you excited about the potential behind the new iPhone Passbook?