Text Us message conversion from Website and VDP?

[Alexander Lau]

There are various texting options and it's extremely important to differentiate between the two.

• SMS or MMS Marketing or Campaigns (when you're attempting to get users / potential customers to opt-in based upon an offer of some type (Text TOYOTA to 95555 to Receive a $500 Coupon); illegal to buy or scrape numbers)
  • Examples: http://www.clickmotive.com/mobile-car-dealer-websites-mobile-texting-campaigns.html, https://www.eztexting.com, http://getclearstream.com, http://www.tatango.com, etc.
• Texting from Website Platform or Plugin / Widget (when you're attempting to contact a dealer for them to follow-up with you as a potential customer and it is absolutely a lead generation tool)
  • Examples: https://www.carcodesms.com (bought out by Edmunds after Hackomotive pitch), http://www.autofusion.com/car-dealer-text-messaging.html (have used successfully), etc.

Additionally, there is a vast difference between SMS and MMS, with different costs associated: http://www.tatango.com/resources/video-mms-sms-marketing, etc.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Dude. Love your enthusiasm, but take a deep breath and re-read that post.

When I was your age, a wise ol' man told me .... "God gave you 7 holes in your head, give the other 6 a chance to save your ass."



It's best advice I ever got, it's still with me 4 decades later.


HTH
-Uncle Joe

I re-read it and stand by my statement. I think you as an "ol' man", might not understand the point of this thread very well. *See above post, in reference to what you posted.

Again, your assumptions make you look silly, forget the previous LinkedIn profile view assumption. Are you now assuming my level of experience by a picture? You don't even know my age, LMAO.

 

[skutchhenks]

My $0.02

Texting is a Dealer Experience Improvement Tool, not lead gen.

Summary:
Texting is highly personal. It opens a door into the user's life that most folks don't want to open (in our space). From this observation, it's easy to conclude that text volume should be low.

That being said, texting may be a high value tool if the shopper 'opts in' and wishes to become visible. IOW, Texting is a cool option AFTER I submit a form (finance form or a trade-in form or a service form, etc).



HTH
-Uncle Joe


p.s. I believe that most leads come from a poor website experience. Texting breaks anonymity, so texting isn't what uncommitted shoppers want.

You're right on Joe.

When I hear the words "internet lead" anymore, it just makes me tired, I want to move on. Add "conversion" to the end of those words, and I want to throw up from frustrations. The tools we have to communicate with shoppers do not generate leads, only vehicles do.

An internet lead is simply a shoppers which is interested in purchasing a vehicle you have for sale. How they make themselves known to you is the path of communication they choose to take, the paths of communications are not lead generators, the vehicle is the lead generator. The 3rd party sites we all pay way too much money for (superficially) are not lead generators, we pay them to expose our inventory to shoppers looking to buy a vehicle. If they didn't have vehicles, there would be no shoppers, it's a ying-yang thing. We pay for the amount of exposure those sites have in a given marketplace. If we didn't have vehicles for sale, nobody would ever visit our websites.

I never hear anyone talk about "showroom visits", Walk-ins, but that's the majority of any dealers traffic, how well are you handling that? That's another communication path, most shoppers would rather show up in person than go through the pain of being harassed online.

Chat, phone, texting, forms, walk-ins, are all paths of communication. Texting is super effective at communicating because shoppers have total control, can use it anytime and anywhere, it doesn't generate any leads though.

You know, we all already have the best advertising source, and it's doesn't cost anything extra... it's your inventory.




...sorry for going a little off topic.

 

[RMSFL]

Do you offer Text Us on your dealer website? What kind of results are you seeing?

"Long time listener, first time caller." I installed the carcode widget on my site in January, and have been pleased with the results. Granted, I am an entirely different dealer than most here, it would appear. We are a small, independent used car dealership in Florida, who does 99% of our financing in house. I can connect 5 sales that originated from an incoming text message this income tax season. Would they have come in/called/emailed/chatted if texting wasn't an option? I have no idea. But I'm glad I gave them that option.

 

[joe.pistell]

Brotha' from a different mutha!

You know, we all already have the best advertising source, and it's doesn't cost anything extra... it's your inventory.

5 yr old DR post:

"...Each vehicle in inventory is an advertisement on the internet. The more inventory you have the more times your advertisements will be seen."

​

gotta love DR!
(ty JK!)

 

[BHavican]

Bill,
Any update? Can you breakout txt requests by SRP vs VDP? Any breakout of mobile vs non-mobile?

Unfortunately for the sake of this post (fortunately for my career) I'm at a different dealership so I wasn't able to track the changes as I would hope. However, the group I'm at has the Text widget located in the bottom right of the screen that displays on every page.

We currently have 4 sites, one for each of the OEMs we carry and one group site. Unfortunately the leads for the group site end up in the same "bucket" as the Hyundai leads. In addition, Edmunds does not provide any metrics so I figure the best I can do is show you leads and UVs for February. It's not the best case scenario but here are some stats:



Also, I think it's important to note too that we do not currently have any chat service on our sites, so leads aren't being "vultured" by prospects choosing chat.

Wow, if that's the case and you're unable to use a tool ubiquitously (across all devices, views, pages, etc.), I would dump it and quickly. Looks like they didn't account for dealers performing their own "CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION" or measurements to hold their tool accountable, did they?

Edmunds offers Carcode as a free service to dealers. So while it would be nice if they offered us the ability to measure certain stats, I'm not going to complain about a free product that works extremely well as a texting tool even if it isn't the best lead generation tool.

 

[Alexander Lau]

Edmunds offers Carcode as a free service to dealers. So while it would be nice if they offered us the ability to measure certain stats, I'm not going to complain about a free product that works extremely well as a texting tool even if it isn't the best lead generation tool.

Right, I heard something about Edmunds' offering not too long ago and I mentioned it in a post above: "Examples: https://www.carcodesms.com (bought out by Edmunds after Hackomotive pitch)"

You have to ask yourself, is it worth sticking with an application issued gratis or is it wiser to pay for a text / minor lead generation tool which provides granular performance / behavioral insights? From what I've seen, texting plugins / widgets convert at a much lower rate than other mechanisms on-site, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored.

 

[joe.pistell]

Fascinating info Bill. Do you get a transcript of the texts? My gut's thinking that maybe the Hyundai text performance could be from ppl fishing for finance answers. Transcripts will tell you a lot.

Speaking of finance, do any of the 3 OEM sites have payments on the VDPs? I'd think payments would be a catalyst to text.

Good stuff!
Joe


p.s. congrats on the move, hope it's an upgrade!

[edit] Just read Matt's reply, he finances 99% inhouse and he's liking the text feature! I'm doubling down on the Hyundai bet

"...We are a small, independent used car dealership in Florida, who does 99% of our financing in house. I can connect 5 sales that originated from an incoming text message this income tax season.

 

[Rob McCartney]

Unfortunately for the sake of this post (fortunately for my career) I'm at a different dealership so I wasn't able to track the changes as I would hope. However, the group I'm at has the Text widget located in the bottom right of the screen that displays on every page.

Bill,

Would it be possible to see the VDP? I would like to see how you integrated the text widget on the sites. Also, are you incorporating your "text number" on 3rd party sites? Cars.com, AutoTrader... etc.

 

[RMSFL]

Fascinating info Bill. Do you get a transcript of the texts? My gut's thinking that maybe the Hyundai text performance could be from ppl fishing for finance answers. Transcripts will tell you a lot.

Speaking of finance, do any of the 3 OEM sites have payments on the VDPs? I'd think payments would be a catalyst to text.

Good stuff!
Joe


p.s. congrats on the move, hope it's an upgrade!

[edit] Just read Matt's reply, he finances 99% inhouse and he's liking the text feature! I'm doubling down on the Hyundai bet

​

Uncle Joe, you are correct. Ironically, one of the deals I'd mentioned began when a customer was at a nearby Hyundai store for 2 hours trying to obtain financing. She was browsing other sites on her phone, shot me a text, and is now MY customer. It usually works the other way around, due to the current subprime climate, but I will fight the big guys head on. I only need to beat them a few times a month