As EVs are getting more popular what impact are you seeing it make on your service dept revenues? The claim that EVs need dramatically lower service hold any weight? Is it translating to lower revenues? If so, how are you thinking about the future? I understand it may be too early to tell but what are you seeing on the front lines?

More people are taking on 84-month auto loans when it comes time to finance new and used cars. By the end of 2022, consumer credit agency Experian found that 84-month loans were underwriting nearly one-fifth of all new-vehicle purchases and 11 percent of used-vehicle purchases, according to Automotive News.

M&T Bank offers auto loans with terms up to 84 months, with 43.74% of loans having an original term of 77–84 months. The loans start at $2,000, and have an APR of 6.89%–15.89%. M&T Bank also offers relationship discounts for customers with qualifying consumer checking accounts.

WOW!!

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Did you know @joe.pistell is launching a new company?

If you know Uncle Joe, then you know it is inventory related. Supercharging used car listings.

We're going to get the initial scoop on what Joe's new company is and all the problems they're solving when it comes to used inventory merchandising.


Join us LIVE on Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube Friday at 1PM
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/dealerrefresh
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Equity Mining/Call Campaigns

Hey all, getting back into the car world after a few years of absence; and I'm working on creating an equity mining process. Does anyone have any thoughts/ success stories for having a sales team do single shot calls vs call, text, email follow up over a set time?

For the most part, we all know that mining needs a lot of labor to yield any results, and I'm curious if I'm better off maximizing volume of calls vs working the individual calls a bit further.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

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After selling Driven Data, @jon.berna is back with another valuable data business for car dealers. LVL UP Auto helps dealers track and find vendors.

This RefreshFriday will be a bit different than most. We will be talking about Jon's vision for LVL UP auto and formulating a combined vision for how it can help enhance DealerRefresh. We would love to get your comments during the show. Your ideas, thoughts, and concerns are all welcome!

If you are a vendor, you should pay close attention to this.


Join us LIVE on Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube Friday at 1PM
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Is there a great "sell my car" tool for dealer websites? CarMax's tool that generates an offer in minutes is fantastic and I'm looking for something along those lines. Every third party product I've seen for dealers pales in comparison. Surely there must be a decent product on the market?

Among all my spam I receive on a daily basis I was just delivered a second or third message about Hammer Corp's "Hammer AI" - whatever that is.

Is anyone using AI in the dealership or dealership software that is actually benefiting their sales?

I saw recently that both Edmonds and CarGurus are using AI to assist shoppers with a chat bots to answer questions:

I love the new AI as far as work flow time savers when it comes to generating content that is not intended for search engines.
But is anyone using AI technology in a creative way to build technological tools or increase lead volume?

Lot of dealerships we're talking with are seeing a total repeat of last year. Tax season cars just aren't selling, and for those that are selling they're finding it hard to acquire inventory. Not to mention, banks tightening their belts & subprime loans simply not being approved like they were before. Even nonprime is getting challenging.

What are you seeing in your market? If you can mention your state, and of course what you are seeing I think that'd paint a portrait for everybody.

Interior photos vs. exterior photos -- which are more important?

I've noticed dealers seem to put a higher priority on exterior vehicle photos rather than interior photos. They're putting all of their exterior photos at the beginning of their scroller. I'm trying to understand why.

I recently purchased a vehicle and found myself buzzing through exterior photos just to examine the interior of the car.

Please give some opinions!

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

We are constantly striving to get feedback as we build product. Considering the size and importance of CRM I thought I ask this community on some methods used to evaluate a good CRM. During my days as a GM I thought these basic KPI's (IRT, Connection Rate, Appt Set, Appt Shown and Close Rates) were good indicators. I know these metrics are also people and process driven, but curious beyond these old metrics if there are other ways you all evaluate a good CRM. Things like design, UI, etc are nice but tough to put a finger on the impact it makes. Appreciate the feedback and look forward to learning more!

Hey World,

Here is set of questions that I expect to receive super detailed answers in response to.

It is 2024 and it seems certain practices in the automotive industry are outdated, archaic and strenuous. My question is geared towards the marketing side of this industry. (Digital ad display, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, PPC, analytics)

We got on board with automated self-driving cars so why not automated digital marketing practices?

Is there something I am completely unaware of that is holding back the advancement of new technology, being created, to refine and automate the arduous world of digital marketing execution? Or does no one dare to take on such a daunting but yet very accomplishable feat in creating the ultimate solution?

Curious to learn if anyone in the DealerRefresh community has used TikTok in marketing/advertising campaigns...

GoTo, RingCentral, TotalCX, Nextiva, Momentum, and the list goes on. I'm currently in the middle of looking for a new business phone system for our 13 retail and service locations (run through 7 systems). I'm curious to know what the DR crowd is using at their retail locations and what experiences you've had. The plot thickens when adding a phone tracking provider like CallRevu, Purplecloud, or TotalCX for CRM integrations. Here are my current combination options:

- RingCentral plus CallRevu/Purplecloud/TotalCX connected to CRM
- GoTo highlights their relationship with CallRevu but Purplecloud has deeper integrations with some CRMs. Can work with TotalCX
- TotalCX (formerly InteractiveTel) can do it all (Phone system and tracking) without adding CallRevu or Purplecloud
- Nextiva plus CallRevu/Purplecloud/TotalCX but may not have an SMS API, which would kill that pretty quick for CRM integration.
- Momentum is our current phone provider but is built on the same platform as Nextiva so may have the same limited integration capability

The other variables:
How good is the app if the user doesn't really need a desk phone?
Can it play with Azure/Microsoft Office 365 for User management?
99.999% Up Time?
Cost?

What are you using?

We hosted Cliff Banks on RefreshFriday last week. He said there are only two questions worth paying attention to for the foreseeable future:

1. How will the EV be sold?
2. What will the connected vehicle be like?

On the first question, it is looking more and more like the EV will be a much tinier splash than what is being heralded. Here's a good synopsis of why:

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We are a dealer group with multiple vendors doing marketing outreach for us (elead, automastermind, impel, mailchimp, weststates, etc). I'm curious how other dealer groups are handling marketing opt outs. Are you getting monthly reports from your vendors and manually opting them out at all the other channels? We use comply auto for data opt out, but dont really have a solid process for marketing opt outs among all of our marketing channels.