D.R. Truth - ask him anything!

[Alex Snyder]

Big thanks to @jon.berna for being a resource to the DealerRefresh community. Jon is sitting on loads of data across many places that allows him to tackle topics and questions that were only doable on a store by store basis within the most complex of spreadsheets.

We are thinking of Jon as the Truth of DealerRefresh: D.R. Truth. And here's our first run of questions with him:



Please throw your questions into this thread too.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Here are some questions we did not get into in the video along with some asked by the Facebook audience:

• Is there a situation that causes higher lead closing rates
• Do the more cars you have in stock, or on your website, influence your online engagement? If inventory amount is changing, do the site stats move in accordance with those fluctuations?
• Do you see a difference in the customer lifetime values by brand? Especially for brands like Toyota and Honda.

@philipzelinger asked:

• Do you quantify ROI with attribution reports?

@Tim Martell asked:

• Are you providing multi-attribution data with weighting on influencing channels to help dealers manage their ad spend more effectively?

 

[Alex Snyder]

And lastly, to get this thread rolling, I want to plug @jon.berna for the marketing connections he is making on Facebook. I HIGHLY recommend asking him about it.

 

[Tim Martell]

Hey Jon. Sorry to maybe mention a competitor, but I just want to have some greater context... Would you consider yourself a direct competitor to Claivoy? How does your product distinguish itself from something like Clarivoy?

 

[jon.berna]

Hey Jon. Sorry to maybe mention a competitor, but I just want to have some greater context... Would you consider yourself a direct competitor to Claivoy? How does your product distinguish itself from something like Clarivoy?

No I do not see them as a competitor. Clarivoy is trying to answer the question "How do I measure my marketing's performance" They are doing great work in this space and I applaud their effort and innovation!

We at Driven Data are focused on doing 2 things.

1. Provide enterprise analytics platform that integrations with all of the core software dealerships use on a universal architecture
2. Connect our data to marketing to drive both loyalty and improve overall campaign performance through all marketing mediums

The definition of our company is a customer data platform or CDP

 

[jon.berna]

Do the more cars you have in stock, or on your website, influence your online engagement? If inventory amount is changing, do the site stats move in accordance with those fluctuations?

The short answer is yes. The correlation is 61% which means the strength of the association is high (anything greater than 50%). A correlation (good high level article here) goes from -1 to 1. There are other factors to consider. Inventory on the ground has a linear relationship with advertising expense, and although we are talking about engagement not traffic consider the cumulative effect marketing has on a customer reengaging on a website. Not all marketing drives subsequent sessions and more engagement but it definitely helps!

 

[jon.berna]

And lastly, to get this thread rolling, I want to plug @jon.berna for the marketing connections he is making on Facebook. I HIGHLY recommend asking him about it.

Thanks Alex, shameless plug: We are really excited about this. We connect all of our customer data directly to your Facebook Ad account(s) (FB Custom Audiences). We are seeing match rates of 95% DMS sales, 90% DMS service and 88% CRM leads in an active status. More here

 

[jon.berna]

Real quick chart on the relationship between leads and sales and how it is a logarithmic function. This is non-showroom leads vs sales.

 

[joe.pistell]

The short answer is yes. The correlation is 61% which means the strength of the association is high (anything greater than 50%). A correlation (good high level article here) goes from -1 to 1. There are other factors to consider. Inventory on the ground has a linear relationship with advertising expense, and although we are talking about engagement not traffic consider the cumulative effect marketing has on a customer reengaging on a website. Not all marketing drives subsequent sessions and more engagement but it definitely helps!

Thanks for answering my question DR Truth, I've seen this correlation a lot, it's nice to see it in a study!

100 units ... Avg Engagement = ~225
200 units ... Avg Engagement = ~250
400 units ... Avg Engagement = ~310
800 units ... Avg Engagement = ~420


Smaller Store Takeaways:

• Marketing: Smaller stores without any inventory advantage (i.e. scarcity or Velocity) are doomed to attract grinder shoppers (who'll visit 3,4,5 stores)
• Sales: What a bi-polar world you're in. You've got loyal hyper-local shoppers (who know your store's name), and then there's everyone else. They don't know your store, they're a friggin battle.

Big Store Takeaways:

• Marketing: You've got it all. A big ad budget, a deep product selection... the perfect setup for a 1stop sale.
• Sales: Sales come easy here, even order takers will make a great living (if the GSM doesn't ax you .

To the victor goes the spoils... Big stores have sooooo many advantages. This is just the tip of the ice berg.

 

[joe.pistell]

Smaller stores are not doomed, they just have to be smart (& lucky too

Look at the red box below. These stores are high-performance outliers. The shoppers on these websites are super interested. These dealers are CRUSHING their shopper engagement stats...

​

Jon, whats going on here?

A quick look at the Variables that could swing these numbers:

1. Small Markets? (big fish in small pond
2. Franchise? (Jag vs Kia)
3. Inventory Scarcity?
4. Velocity dealer? (crushing the 'Gurus listings)
5. Destination Dealer? (a long drive from major market)
6. New/Used ratio highly skewed to used?
7. etc..

Ugh! Look at all the variables! But... If there are ANY attributes that a dealer has influence over (e.g. photos, new/used mix, scarcity, velocity, etc) that would be very helpful.

thnx
Joe