vAuto Replacement

What did you find was missing with the competitive sets in Max?
Disclaimer: Last time I looked was probably 7+ years ago.

I probably did 50 to 75 appraisals side by side to see how many vehicles were listed in vAuto versus the other tools - since this is the data used in pricing your vehicles. I set the filters identical, set the radius the same - check them at 100 miles, 200 miles, etc. Almost every time, there were 10 to 15 vehicles in the smaller radius that didn't show up, but they did show up in vAuto. That 10 to 15 number became much larger the further you went out.

I haven't looked at other tools in a while, but at the time, I decided that having more listing data outweighed the cost savings, since that is the foundation of appraising and pricing. If some of these tools have caught up from a data perspective, then I should start looking again.

vAuto Replacement

We had Max prior to vAuto and perhaps the only reason we left was when I called vAuto to ask a couple questions, Dale Pollak answered the phone. We were reading Velocity at the time so was a little star struck (he really is a great person). We went down that path in 2012(?) and had been with them since. Until May 1st this year when we switch over to VinCue. We probably had 5 or 6 hour-long demos with the VinCue team including Danny and decided it was time for a change in approach to pricing. Bonuses include integration with DriveCentric, buying center tools, elimination of Homenet, and a massive reduction in expense. Let me know if you want an introduction with them or you can hit up their site for a demo.
Last time we looked at most of the competitors, the data (competitive sets) within vAuto were untouchable. Did you find VinCue to be on par with them from a data perspective?

vAuto Replacement

Thanks for sharing. Was there anything vAuto added that Max didn't have? The other way around? I actually demoed Max before ACV bought it and ACV has made a lot of upgrades to it. If wouldn't mind at all if you wanted to make an introduction. Always appreciate you, Dan.
It was long enough ago that I don't recall all the reasons other than Dale had a solid argument in 2010/11/12 for the Velocity methodology. That and I peaked at 38 so any new knowledge I take in at this point, pushes out old knowledge LOL. I'll send you Danny's cell in a DM.
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vAuto Replacement

Yesterday I demoed ACV MAX (formerly Max Digital). Seemed like a decent vAuto replacement. Wondering if anyone is on it/has tried it or if anyone has experienced/demoed a similar product that they were intrigued by.
We had Max prior to vAuto and perhaps the only reason we left was when I called vAuto to ask a couple questions, Dale Pollak answered the phone. We were reading Velocity at the time so was a little star struck (he really is a great person). We went down that path in 2012(?) and had been with them since. Until May 1st this year when we switch over to VinCue. We probably had 5 or 6 hour-long demos with the VinCue team including Danny and decided it was time for a change in approach to pricing. Bonuses include integration with DriveCentric, buying center tools, elimination of Homenet, and a massive reduction in expense. Let me know if you want an introduction with them or you can hit up their site for a demo.

Marketing Opt Out

Because dealers still haven't realized bulk email blasts are dead :rip:
agree with most of what you are saying your article, but what is your solution in the short term? have you just stopped doing email blasts? what are you replacing it with? we are looking at cdp as well, but not sure if we are ready to manage another new tool

Marketing Opt Out

I'd miss my 15-20 minute morning dream-routine if I no longer received my daily email from Bring a Trailer.
Air-cooled Porsches, Land Cruisers, 1st Gen Tacoma's, and Volvo 240's lol

@Brad Burlingham this is an area that needs our attention as well but I do know we've gone through the exercise of gathering up all vendors that touch lifecycle. Laid them out to understand the timing of each one, message type, and control branding and then narrowed down the vendors that are crossing paths with other channels we have. We'd end the OEM ones so we can control all lifecycle messaging but they make it hard with exclusive lists (Ford private offers, etc) and co-op.

We're increasing emails coming from our CRM because it's nice for salespeople to see the marketing email within the customer's activity timeline. "I see you were sent the March offers email on the F-150" is great to add to a reply on a new web lead from an existing customer. At this point DriveCentric is fairly limited on reporting for email compared to MyEmma or the like. We're still in the gathering data process since we are new on the platform. There is probably opportunity for them to expand that offering. No, no one talks to anyone else if a customer opts out of one channel...

Websites

at best they're hopefully calling your dealership and suffering through a 5-minute phone tree where their call may get dropped several times.
If this isn't the sad truth.

xTime is our favorite as well. Our scheduling is set up from an hours based capacity, which helps manage the shop load, and not overbook (too much). It does take a lot of thought with setup though, but I'd say it's worth it.

Marketing Opt Out

Most DMS systems have an opt-out label that can be passed to the vendors consuming that data. The PITA is getting the opt-outs from those other vendors. Of those vendors you've listed eLead is the only one who may be able to pass something like that back to CDK. Mailchimp* certainly isn't going to integrate with an automotive business system. And some of the others would have to pay a significant amount to push data to the DMS. CDK has switched everyone to Fortellis and the cost difference between batch and "real-time" feeds is significant... which is understandable.


*Mailchimp and their competitors hate car dealers. I have looked at outsourcing mail delivery to them in the past and they flat out said dealers are some of the biggest spam offenders. They don't want anything to do with them on an enterprise level.
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Websites

It doesn't appear so, I checked a few Toyota dealers near me and they all have different service schedulers:
  • xTime
  • CDK Service Edge
  • Dealer FX
CDK Service Edge probably provides the least user friendly interface of the bunch.

Thanks for the research. In my dealer days I looked at home pages, VLPs, VDPs, About, and Specials pages on my desktop when visiting other dealer sites. Those were the things I cared about then.

Since becoming a civilian, I skip the home page, try to turn off all the location-allowing bullshit as fast as possible, check the VLP to play with the filters and skim for payment plugins, open an interesting car to look at photos, then look at the service scheduler all on my iPhone. If the experience sucks, I may look at the desktop version.

Things are always better on desktop because that's what dealers are looking at their own site on. 83% of shoppers are looking at the mobile site, so that's how I look too.
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Vehicle Exchange Policies

We have a 7-day money back guarantee on both new and used and a 30-day exchange policy on used. It does not get used very often. Averages about once a month. It's truly just peace of mind. I don't want a customer in a car they decided they don't like or don't want. I believe allowing this creates more repeat business than it loses business. It's also a good closing tool for "I need to think about it."

Fun Fact: We have a written policy, but we did not used to provide a copy of it in the deals. We decided that we maybe should, so we started including it and having the customer sign it to acknowledge it. They, of course, never actually read the policy. Yet there was an immediate and obvious increase in our returns/exchanges.. At the slightest hint of trouble, people would talk about bringing the car back. This was definitive proof that there is some psychology to a deal being finalized. Reminding the customer they had a way out right at the end of the deal basically took the commitment out of it. Ultimately, we decided that it wasn't in the customer's best interest, because they really didn't WANT to bring the car back, they just thought it might be the only recourse. I would recommend having a clear policy, but I would not make it part of your deal jacket.

That's an impressive sell. 7 day money back and 30 day exchange on used. I couldn't imagine offering that because all it takes is one ignorant uncle or friend to shit on European cars for the perceived higher cost of ownership and 28 days later we got an upset customer that previously loved the car!

I appreciate the feedback.

Photo Booth Services

Does this make more sense?

CARsten,
You are a "Left Brainer".

1711540167502.png

Buying a car is HIGHLY emotional.​

Your photo review was left brained, highly analytical, with near zero weight to the right ride.

Buying a car is driven by WANT, NOT NEED.​

"I want a car"
"I need brakes"

"I want a swimming pool"
"I need groceries"

Use your left brain to think about the emotions that cause ppl to 'come into market'.

Marketing Opt Out

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.
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Vehicle Exchange Policies

Not 100% sure it would go in this forum, however, since I'm coming at this from a marketing perspective, I felt it was close enough.


Looking at adding some sort of "exchange" policy. We sell only used cars and are independent dealer.

a 3-day / 150 mile exchange policy that allows the customer to bring the car back assuming they didn't destroy it, etc.

What I'm really looking for is to see how often these exchanges happen at your dealership and if having that policy and actively advertising it, has garnered sales.

Obviously once they are committed to the vehicle, even if they were hesitant they either stick with the original choice or switch to something similar, but you've sold them a vehicle and made some money.

If you had the choice to keep or eliminate this policy at your store what would you do?

Is there a good Sell My Car tool for my website?

I think the tool is good, but I'm not sure how comfortable dealers are giving cash offers on vehicles they may or may not want to acquire. Maybe there's some fine print on CarMax's site about this, but CarMax will take anything. The tool itself, though, isn't very difficult to build.

Anyone Have Experience with the SEO offered by OEM Website companies?

3) Innovative - The founder, Alex Melen, is not from the automotive industry, which is a HUGE competitive advantage.
That's smart; put this whole community down. And you're breaking DealerRefresh rules with your unsolicited sales pitch.

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