There has been a policy change with a CRM we use that now states that if the customer does not have a an active relationship with the dealer it will automatically opt them out. Giving time frames for each instance. While I understand that spamming is never good, and you should scrub your email list removing hard-bounces, inactive, etc. I do not think the CRM has the right to hijack your data defining what constitutes an active relationship.

What are your thoughts? Should your CRM provider dictate how you can use your data?

Let's figure out what the average pay is for Internet Sales Managers and Directors at Dealerships. Please answer this anonymous poll. You might want to use the results to negotiate your next pay raise.

WHO IS KCAR? - POLL

If you've been part of the community for any time now, I'm sure you've asked yourself a few times or more "Who the hell is this Kcar guy and why is he such a numb?"

It's rare he adds any feedback of value to the community. Instead he's quick to troll a thread, take it down the a completely different direction. And let's not forget his eloquent words of affirmation.

Lets have a little fun -- take the poll above and let us know who you think Kcar is.

Feel free to sound off in the comments...

Given the choice, would you rather...

1. Pay a monthly fee for financing (or leasing) a vehicle, plus insurance and maintenance, and be locked into the vehicle for 3-5 years, or
2. Pay the same monthly fee, be at liberty to switch to and from any vehicle you like at any time with no mileage restrictions, maintenance or insurance fees, free pickup and delivery, etc?

Of course, everyone would choose Option 2.

But is this possible? Can these be achieved economically?

Fair is aiming to transform vehicle ownership with a new way to shop, get approved, and pay for a car for a low, all-in, month-to-month payment — right on your phone. And they just secured $1B in underwriting.

Does Fair have a feasible model?

With BOOK by Cadillac, members can switch between different Cadillacs to best suit their needs with this first-of-its-kind subscription service from an OEM.

What other vehicle subscription models exist?

Fellow Refreshers: Please help me out here - I'm trying to settle a bet. I need your honest feedback, please.

The entire question won't fit in the poll, so here is whole question:

If Craigslist offered an independent, third-party vehicle inspection service (perhaps for a $59 per vehicle fee charged to sellers) to supplement some vehicle classifieds, which of the following do you think would result (you may choose multiple answers):

At the beginning of this week, I was working with our sales rep to add another user. While I was talking to him, I was questioning how that price per user shows on the invoices. That is when I emailed my copy of an invoice over to him so he could see what I was referring to. He opened it up while he was on the phone with me and was confused by some of the items on there and told me that we are getting overcharged. We have EVO now and it shows charges on the invoice for EVO and NXT. Because the invoice descriptions for each charge are very limited detail, I had no idea that we were getting overcharged. This overcharge was also happening just before I started working at the company so I never bothered to look back until now. He told me that he is going to get together with his manager and will get back to me. He got back to me yesterday and told me he will reimburse for 24 months and told me the amount. This morning, I gathered the years of invoices since we have had Lightspeed. Needless to say, we have been getting overcharged for about 49 months. This has led to thousands of dollars of being overcharged. I am talking around $15,000 of overcharges. I asked him how far back he looked and he informed me that they can only reimburse for 24 months as that is when the "transition to CDK was in effect". I am now requesting to go to management. That is absolutely not acceptable. I don't see how or why they would have all of a sudden tacked on charges for two different programs. It makes me wonder how many others are getting double charged and don't know it. I am curious as to how many of us customers really know what all the different charges are on the CDK invoices to assure that there are no overcharges.

Are you attending the 2017 DrivingSales Executive Summit this year in Las Vegas, October 22-24? If so, then be sure to connect with DealerRefresh while there, whether it be for a brief meet and greet, interview, or simply to be in our video. Maybe we will even do a 'Fresh Dinner' event for True Refreshers!

The DrivingSales Executive Summit is the industry’s top venue to develop and grow high-performing dealership executives. The event is held at the Bellagio Casino & Resort.

Deal4Dealers - 20% Off Dealer Passes
If you need a nudge, check out the Deals4Dealers section (must be logged in) where Refreshers can get a 20% Discount on a Standard Dealer Attendee Pass.

Ticket Giveaway - FRI OCT 20th
Also, DealerRefresh will be giving away 2 complimentary Dealer Attendee Passes on Refresh Friday October 20th to one lucky dealership, or two lucky audience members. Sign Up Here Today!

About the Summit
DSES is an educational conference for Dealership Execs, where you will be challenged by experts from both inside and outside the industry to stretch your thinking and create value in new and exciting ways. Learn tactical strategies to implement from others who are in the trenches and delivering big wins at their dealerships across the country.

Sep 22, 8:24AM, UPDATE: James Grace has contacted Wikimotive and shared findings with us: "We've tracked down the source of this issue to a 3rd Party Integration with Edmunds.com that was active on approximately 16% of our sites. Edmunds pushed tracking code to these sites that was causing the Google session-ID to be overwritten with every "event" on the website, ultimately creating a new session for each event. This dramatically increased direct traffic in these clients' GA accounts. We've deactivated these integrations across the Dealer.com platform and the issue has been resolved. We will be communicating with Edmunds to discuss whether or not to reactivate the integrations. Dealers with questions or concerns should reach out to their Dealer.com Digital Advisor."

Thanks to James and his team for their efforts to bring transparency to the digital community. The dialogue I've had with James gives me hope that there will be more transparency to come and that digital agency's like Wikimotive will have better access to staff in a position to take action for the benefit of their dealer clients. Wikimotive will be meeting with James and his team next week to discuss other areas of concern regarding data integrity and 3rd party integration.

BREAKING Sep 21, 2:16pm: James Grace, Sr. Director of Analytics at Dealer.com has contacted Wikimotive and is looking in to this issue as well as original potential causes. We have a tentative meeting scheduled to discuss this as well as other data concerns for improving analytics data quality at dealer.com. See future article to follow.

FINAL UPDATE, SEP 21, 10:23AM: AT THIS TIME WE CAN CONFIRM THE ISSUE HAS BEEN RESOLVED. DDC IS NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THIS AFFECTED MULTIPLE WEBSITES. WE ATTRIBUTE THE ISSUE AS A SERVER/PERFORMANCE ISSUE.

Yesterday we were measuring site load times in excess of 50 seconds. Today we are measuring them at just above 10 seconds fully loaded. At this time we consider this resolved, however you should check for this issue if you are observing slower than normal site load times.

IMPORTANT: DDC IS NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THIS ISSUE IS AFFECTING THE PLATFORM GLOBALLY OR TO ANY DEGREE OUTSIDE INDIVIDUAL INSTANCES. THEY ARE NOT TAKING ACTION TO TROUBLE SHOOT THIS ON OTHER WEBSITES. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE AN ISSUE YOU WILL NEED TO CONTACT DEALER.COM DIRECTLY!

SEP 21, 9:19AM, UPDATEEALER.COM CLAIMS THIS ONLY AFFECTED A SINGLE SITE AND WAS DUE TO A ABD IMPLEMENTATION OF GOOGLE ANALYTICS. THEY CLAIMED THE ISSUE IS RESOLVED, HOWEVER WE STILL SEE THIS ISSUE OCCURRING. IT APPEARS THAT DDC HAS REBOOTED ONE OR SEVERAL SERVERS. THIS IS UNCONFIRMED. WE STILL SEE THIS ISSUE AFFECT SOME SITES WITH INTER-MITTEN REGULARITY - MORE NOTICEABLE WHEN WE OBSERVE WEBSITE FUNCTIONING SLOWER THAN NORMAL (IF YOU NOTICE YOUR WEBSITE LAGGING OR LOADING SLOWLY, YOU SHOULD CHECK FOR THIS ISSUE). OTHER SITES ARE STILL TRIGGERING THIS ISSUE ON EVERY SESSION REGARDLESS OF SPEED - THIS SEEMS LESS REGULAR.

12:23PM EDT, LATEST UPDATE: THIS ISSUE DOES AFFECT CHROME BROWSERS BUT IT IS LESS CONSISTENT WHEREAS IT CONSISTENTLY HAPPENS ON ALL OTHER WEB BROWSERS INCLUDING CHROME AND SAFARI IN MOBILE. THIS WILL LIKELY DIRECTLY AFFECT YOU AND YOU SHOULD TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY.

UPDATE: THIS MAY ONLY AFFECT SAFARI & INTERNET EXPLORER BROWSERS. MORE UPDATES TO FOLLOW.

Today at Wikimotive, we found an interesting development regarding analytics on Dealer.com websites while reviewing a client’s data. We noticed a 767.32% increase in their direct traffic, seemingly, overnight. At first we thought maybe a rogue email campaign was generating bot traffic, but instead we found something a bit more surprising. You can see this happen for yourself using the realtime tool in Google Analytics.

Search your dealership name and click the result which will take you to your homepage. From there, navigate to new (or used) inventory. Next, filter your results by make, model, body style or any available filter option. Once your filter is applied you will notice that your organic session has ended and you are now listed as a new direct session.

If you continue to refine filter options your direct session will bounce and a new direct session will be created. This is very concerning as the level of data corruption can be significant depending on user behavior. If your store’s IP is not filtered from your view and your sales people use your website to show different vehicles to customers in the showroom this will create substantial additional traffic that never really existed. In the most extreme case we found, one dealer went from 921 new (direct) users for 3,309 (direct) sessions to 7,988 new (direct) users and 10,435 (direct) sessions in just 30 days.

Worse still, this will impact all session data from other sources. If your referral traffic filters inventory that session data is lost form that point forward. If they visit multiple VDPs or other pages and submit a lead it will be sourced as direct instead of the true originating source – same for Organic, or any other traffic source. This has far reaching consequences and should be corrected swiftly.

I have confirmed that this was not a one off by testing this on multiple brands across multiple dealers. I would strongly urge that if your website is provided by dealer.com, that you reach out immediately and find out what they are doing to correct this. We have contacted dealer.com about this issue for our clients, but have not yet received a response.

Tell me what you find! Are you seeing the same thing? Did you have different findings? Be sure to check multiple browsers and check mobile vs desktop!

Dealers are always questioning the quality of most 3rd Party Leads and the providers they’re purchasing the leads from, OEM programs are NOT excluded.

BUT CAN the quality of 3rd Party Leads be IMPROVED? The better question might be, does anyone WANT TO IMPROVE THEM?

http://dlrfr.sh/trust-leadproviders

Pretty much every website for car buying today has some sort of "Fair Market Price" tool. I see graphs, charts, and calculations of all kind that all produce differing results but have one very common factor: No one pricing tool has been declared accurate by even a majority of dealers.

To me, it's impossible to have a computer determine value in a free market because in a free market value can only be determined by what each individual person is willing to pay. That being said where do these websites get all of their data? I know Truecar get's access to their dealers' actual figures but outside of that how do all of these other websites declare what cars are being sold for? Or are they simply taking listing prices and counting those as actual sales?

Award winning website designer and coder is looking to go out on his own and provide dealers with custom high quality websites. I have been involved in the OEM side of website building and designs the last 8 years and designed a few websites for dealerships back in 09. I recently stepped out on my own to bring a change to the auto industry and deliver quality user experiences for car buyers. I have the talent, energy and drive. I'm looking for feedback and beta dealers to help contribute to building better converting websites.

If you have ideas, opinions, or any feedback that is of value. Please send me a message.

We've had some success with the Hello Bar created by blogger and marketer Neil Patel, whom is one of the non-carbiz people I follow and try to absorb as much as info as possible. The HELLO BAR is very impressive and something for sure I wanted to share with my digital peeps here! It's cheap, easy and effective. What is very amazing and perfectly aligned to our business model peddling cars online, is that the whole concept behind Hello Car was positioned around conversion goals on your website, blog, whatever.

The free version is all I use, but the paid version is very cool and really cheap. You can have multiple Hello Bars working on your site. Here are a few of the things Hello Bar can do for you, however this is one of those tools you can tweak out and is only limited by your imagination and level of cleverness.

Promote a Sale/Discount
Point visitors to your latest deal, bargain, or giveaway.
Talk to Your Visitors
Encourage mobile visitors to give you a ring.
Grow Your Mailing List
Convert one-time visits into lasting connections.
Get Facebook Likes
Expand your social reach to maximize word of mouth.
Other
Don't see your goal? Customize Hello Bar to fit your needs.

Then comes the option to change your goals, change the style, modify colors, de-brand the bar, content, targeting.

In summation, this thing really works! - Go try it out and see how it can help push you towards your goals.

https://www.hellobar.com

Industry experts are continuing to push out data that point to a sales slowdown and much bigger challenges selling used cars. This Automotive News article talking about record numbers of car buyers are 'upside down' in their cars because of higher transaction prices, longer loan terms and dropping used car values combine to cause the situation.
What is your store doing to keep on track?

Referrals are 4x more likely to purchase (Nielsen) and have a 16% higher lifetime value (Wharton). Yet only 15% of salespeople ask for referrals (Texas Tech).

What tools/strategies are using to drive more referral and retention business into your store and what are the results you're seeing, how are you tracking these results and optimizing on them?

Simple Recon is delighted to reveal that the company’s Amazon Alexa Skill is now available to clients all over the world. Simple Recon is a trusted name amongst the automobile dealerships for their top-rated software for the tracking of used vehicle reconditioning process. The company strongly believes that their integration with Amazon Alexa Skill will make lives easier for managers looking to receive quick and reliable inventory updates.

Check out the link below to read more details
http://www.simplerecon.com/Recon-Blog/Simple-Recon-Amazon-Alexa.htm5

Click link below for video
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This article came up on Automotive News yesterday -

According to the article, "General Motors plans to make digital signage part of its dealership facility requirements for the first time, starting next year."

The article goes on to say, "...an ABN spokeswoman said most dealers who used the service spent $2,000 to $3,000 per month for a 36-month subscription"

So the question; Do you need 'digital signage' in the showroom to sell cars or is this an unnecessary mandate from the manufacturer?

Hey everyone,

I'm wondering what you have paid to have your dealer website created, or what you pay a third-party to maintain it.

One of my previous clients paid $40K for a fully-fleshed out Wordpress site, with a nice inventory plugin, and a thorough finance application that did "progressive profiling" to increase conversion rate. Since they are not sending adequate traffic to the site, the same inventory has been up for ages and they aren't moving any metal.

They could have pulled something from Themeforest for $80 and made the same amount of sales.

So I'm curious... what did you pay for your dealer site? Did you think it was a good deal at that time? Are you happy with it now?

I've created the poll above. If you have paid a one-time fee and you pay a monthly-recurring fee, then you may select both a "one-time fee" option and the "ongoing monthly fee" from the poll

PS. Welcome me to the forum! It's my first post

Looking at things from a national level it appears the effectiveness of getting a response from customers by...

• Email is less than 20% of the time
• Leaving a voicemail is around 20% of the time ...lower on home phones and higher on cell phones
• Texting or SMS is over 80% of the time

Are your people texting customers? If so, are they doing it from their personal phone number or are you tracking things through a texting tool your dealership provides?

I know that there have been other threads on this subject before, but I could not find them to bump back into discussion. I'm curious to see poll results of how many of us use our required OEM sites as the dealership's primary website.

In our dealer group, we have a mixed bag. Some of our stores use only the OEM sites and due to sales volume see no value in having the expense of another website. Other stores have the OEM site but do not support it and promote only their custom sites. Personally, I would prefer to see all of our stores have another site other than the OEM site. Some of the hoops we have to jump through to get custom content on the factory sites can be frustrating at times. For example, it took three weeks and many emails just to get Google Analytics code installed on two of our GM sites. Craziness.

What frustrations have you had using only the OEM sites? Are there pitfalls to having two websites for one location? How have you overcome them? Please share your thoughts on the subject and I hope we can all learn from the discussion.

This morning there was a sizeable cyber attack that took out major sites like Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Etsy and others. More info here - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-21/internet-service-disrupted-in-large-parts-of-eastern-u-s

I'm wondering if any dealers - particularly in the North East saw an interruption of their websites or system tools.

For dealers, holidays have traditionally served as important sales generators. Whether it’s Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, or Columbus Day, the three-day weekend is generally seen as a lucrative opportunity.

However, with recent dips in sales where we typically expect peaks, I can't help but wonder if DIGITAL engagement is changing seasonal shopping patterns?

On Thursday September 30 LotLinx will conduct a webinar where we will be exploring data we've gather on the subject, but I'm still interested in hearing directly from dealers about their recent experiences with sales during these big holidays.

I've prepared a brief 4-question survey that literally take 2-3 minutes to complete. Even if you've answered yes or no to the poll here, I'd still like to see your responses to the survey.

As an added incentive, the first 100 dealers to take the survey will get a free Starbucks gift card!

I hope you’ll take three minutes to complete the survey. Thanks.

Jon Berna and --- just published an article over on the blog - 3 Core Issues with Mystery Shopping.

The overall question, should Dealers and OEM's be mystery shopping their own dealers? And if so, it is enough to really move the needle?

What do you think?

I don't want to taint the poll with my opinion, but this is a debate I'm in at the moment. When the moon is full do you find car buyers to be a little more difficult to work with? Maybe even profit-affecting?

It would be cool to hear your thoughts and theories on this as well.

Did you attend the recent NADA Convention? If so please share what you learned. Any new ideas or processes taught in the sessions? What new silver bullets, tools, or shiny objects were available on the vendor floor that have value to you?

Unlike other industry conferences, there did not seem to be a lot of conversation from the event on Twitter or other social media channels. Would love to hear your biggest takeaway from the conference!

Hello Everybody, I'm am about to join a beautiful online platform that will allow me to advertise my cars online and manage my inventory and CRM effectively and efficiently, therefore I need to upload my inventory in their system but I have over 800 vehicles to register.

Does anybody know of a technology that will help me export my whole inventory at once to their system?