The most trusted name in live chat brings the top ten blogs and auto news stories right to you! We monitor industry trends, current events and the auto dealer community every week to bring you the top ten blogs and automotive stories from around the globe. In this weekly edition – email template theft, fake social media reviews, and Myspace makes a comeback!

10. Stingray Photobomb

This photo of a stingray smiling for a photo opportunity has gotten national attention. For some reason, everyone else in the picture doesn’t look too happy about it.

9.  Being An Absent Leader Is Much Like Being An Absent Father

In a highly personal blog post on Dealerelite.net, Craig Lockerd writes that being a leader at the workplace is much like being an attentive father. Read about how to be present for your family and your employees.

8. Are You A Victim Of ETT (Email Template Theft)?

Email Template Theft (ETT) has become such a serious problem in automotive sales that it’s apparently gotten its own acronym. Have you had your email template stolen? Find out here.

7. Depth of Engagement vs Breadth of Impressions

Engagement counts more and costs less than awareness – find out how you can engage your customer rather than simply raising awareness.

6. Russian Truck Driver Miraculously Survives Head On Crash

In an amazing, gut-wrenching video, a Russian truck driver makes an unbelievable escape and sticks a landing worthy of an Olympic gold medal.

5. Peacheetameleon: New Cobalt Study Shows Dealers Must Evolve To Survive

Like some kind of weird new Pokemon, the Peacheetameleon was invented by the Cobalt Group to represent the perfect amalgamation of the peacock’s beauty, the cheetah’s speed, and the chameleon’s adaptability. Read on to learn how you can become more like this biological nightmare.

4. Justin Timberlake Is Bringing Myspace Back

In an attempt to revitalize one of the oldest social networks, Justin Timberlake has acquired Myspace and given it an extreme makeover. Will this resuscitate the site, or is it forever doomed to be used only by teenage musicians?

3. Dealers Finding it Difficult To Put A Price On Online Reputation Building

How much do dealerships value their brand? How much should you spend to increase your brand’s Internet review ratings on Yelp and similar sites? Jerry Hart talks about the importance of your brand’s customer satisfaction thumbprint.

2. By 2014, 1 In 10 Social Media Reviews Will Be Fake

Falsified online reviews are going to become a huge problem that Mashable projects will explode in the coming years. How will reviewing sites counter this? And will this saturation have a negative effect on your brand?

1. Regular NFL Refs Return, Get Standing Ovation

To the widespread relief of football fans, NFL refs are back in action. After ending their union strike from the league, refs took the field Thursday night to replace their cheaper imitators. fans can now look forward to a more professional sport for the rest of the season.
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Did we miss anything important? Like our top ten blogs this week? Leave us a comment below! Or if you really can’t wait for your automotive fix, follow @activengage on Twitter for daily updates on auto industry news!

In a retrospective presentation on the 2012 SXSW Expo, Jack Morton Senior Vice President, Liz Bigham, said that “engagement counts more and costs less than awareness.” What Bigham means by this statement, a variation on the Harvard Business Review maxim that loyalty is more valuable than awareness, is that brands stand to profit much more from one repeat buyer with lifetime loyalty than they do from two buyers who purchase only once. As Jack Morton’s SVP says, marketers get more bang for their buck by making customers love them than by spending lots of advertising money to generate awareness. Bigham calls it “an argument for depth of engagement over breadth of impressions.”

Makes sense, right? We live in a world where hundreds of marketing messages and distractions pull at us every day, vying for our attention. This is because marketers know that engagement is the new currency. Yet many, especially in the auto sector, still see digital as a means for impressions and not actual engagement. Jack Morton’s own research shows that 75% of consumers say that “if a brand wants to get my attention, it has to do something special.”

What does this mean? Liz Bigham says that to get the attention of shoppers and make that special connection, brands need to “treat every touchpoint as special.” Every interaction between brand and consumer is a sacred opportunity to stand out – and this is especially true with digital marketing. That means marketers should not adhere to the same tired SEO regulations and boring web content. Instead, do something completely different to capture consumer loyalty.

How can your dealership’s website stand out among the nation’s thousands of stores? Get your customers to continue their relationship with you by offering service discounts. Invest in learning about targeting and remarketing, so you can show off specific test drives to your visitors who have browsed those vehicle inventory pages. Don’t leave a simple form on your website to capture leads – implement live chat on your website to begin a relationship with shoppers before they enter your dealership’s physical storefront.

If you’ve made customer loyalty a priority, congratulations! You’re playing the long game by thinking about more than just the cars you could move off the lot today. A loyal customer won’t just buy from you today – he or she will come back for more, and evangelize your brand to others along the way.

Subscribe to the ActivEngage blog for weekly marketing updates!

“I’m afraid I can’t talk to customers, Dave.”

I don’t think anyone can deny that robots are pretty cool. I mean, we can send machines to the bottom of the sea or to the depths of space. Robots have improved efficiency and quality of life in warehouses, factories, and mines. IBM’sDeep Blue wiped the floor with chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. As I write this, NASA’s Curiosity rover is probably making first contact with Martians (and tweeting about it). Occasionally, robots can even travel back in time,shapeshift, or conquer the whole human race. Yeah, robots are better than us at almost everything. Almost.

There is one arena that human beings are not quite obsolete: customer service. I’m sure that many of us have run the nightmare gauntlet of a corporate phone tree, so we know just how frustrating and useless automated operators can be. My experience with chat providerActivEngage has taught me that nothing turns off web shoppers like the feeling that they are conversing with a machine. Your customers want the attention of a real person to answer their questions and help them find their next vehicle.

Here are some tips to help you avoid sounding mechanical when engaging your visitors through live chat and email:

• Don’t sweat small mistakes.

Though widely considered inappropriate and unprofessional, a small slip-up or typo can prove your humanity to web shoppers. If you’re working hard on a live chat and catch yourself inputting a misspelling or grammatical error, quickly correct yourself and apologize. Your visitor will forgive you. Know that your capacity for human error is a strength, not a weakness.

• Throw out your script.

People are pretty smart. If you’re abusing canned responses or copy-pasting corny one-liners into your live chat conversations, your visitor is going to know. Your main priority in these chats should be to listen and react accordingly. Don’t try to stuff your pre-scripted narrative down your customer’s throat; you’re just insulting his or her intelligence.

• Personalize your conversation.

Always add context to your customer interactions online. Address your customers by name. Wish them a good morning to show that you’re aware of the passage of time. Greet them the same way you would greet them in the real world. Use friendliness and your own personal brand of humor to lighten the mood and show your human side.

At the heart of ActivEngage’s philosophy lies the belief that it is people, not technology, that sells cars. Robots may best us in physical strength and processing power, but they lack the very thing that makes customers feel welcome, that builds brand loyalty, that makes your dealership the best place to buy a new car: communication. So while this robot may win 100% of the time at rock-paper-scissors, it can not increase car sales at your store. It can not feel pain, or love, or desire. Robots can not dream, or laugh, or cry.

But when robots can do these things – we’re all pretty much doomed.

Shares of Facebook stock are still trading below 40% of the social media company’s initial public offering of $38, but CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s announcement of a Facebook search engine serves as a light at the end of a tunnel for many investors. According to research firm eMarketer, search engines are an $18 billion industry. Now Zuckerburg says that Facebook has more personal data than any other website, which puts him in an ideal position to transform the social network into the world’s first true “social search engine.”

This article by CNET refers to Facebook’s search practices as “friend mining,” extracting specific answers to your questions by diving into your friends’ opinions. Speaking to a crowd at the TechCrunch Digital SF conference, Zuckerburg described how a Facebook user could instantly find restaurants based on friends’ past status updates, reviews and likes. The same holds true for auto dealerships; with this Facebook Search application, every comment, status update, and “like” that your dealership receives are logged in a database and retrieved when a shopper searches for you.

The implications for this kind of search engine are enormous. With this development, Facebook can seriously contend with social review companies like Yelp while monetizing search results in the same vein as Google. Perhaps the most ingenious thing about Facebook’s proposed search engine is that users don’t even know they’re participating in the search process. “If I write on Facebook that I had a phenomenal meal, Facebook could have a text box pop up that would ask me if I would like to rate it, give it a thumbs up,” said Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities Internet analyst.

This news isn’t just making Wall Street investors reevaluate their low estimation of Facebook – it’s also making business owners realize the importance of every customer review that is posted. Facebook will be able to summarize public opinion of your business – and the best strategy is to leave a positive social media footprint.

Follow our ActivEngage blog for more industry updates on cars, marketing, social media, entertainment, and more!

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.” However, we doubt that Franklin had considered the freedom to browse the web while driving. As in-car technology grows exponentially, the potential to offer consumer convenience is seemingly limitless. Full Internet access from within a vehicle? Totally possible. Apps that allow drivers to use social networks like Facebook and Yelp already exist. But as today’s roadways become increasingly perilous, automakers need to ask themselves if American drivers really need another distraction in the car.

Carmakers say customers are demanding these features, according to a recent New York Times article. Hyundai attracts over 100,000 subscribers per year for its Blue Link connected car system. Cadillac boasts about its CUE dashboard screen as “an iPad on wheels.” The redesigned Lexus system features a 12.3-inch screen – practically asking for drivers to get lost in the foot-long liquid crystal display.

But roadway regulators aren’t going quietly. PC Mag reports that the Department of Transportation has proposed guidelines that would block all in-vehicle communications by a driver, including texting, dialing, Internet browsing, and even entering a GPS address by hand. Auto manufacturers insist that consumers are accessing these features with their phones anyway, but the DOT also hinted at restrictions on smartphone and tablet use, too.

These restrictions have huge implications for the future of connected cars, as well as navigational GPS systems and map applications. But technology is evolving so rapidly that any legislation will likely become obsolete before it can even be enforced – which means that, for better or worse, our drivers will become more connected with the Internet and less aware of the road in front of them.

What do you all think? Will the connected car usher in a new era of road recklessness? Or do you have faith in the common sense and decency of American drivers? Weigh in on the debate by leaving a comment below.

Social media marketing is a time-consuming endeavor, and not all of us are hip to the language of tweets and likes. But that’s okay – you can find young professionals who are already devoted to social media – and they’ll often work for free! I’m talking of course about interns, a magical breed of ambitious, tech-savvy students who can offer you free labor in exchange for experience.

We all know that twenty-somethings spend their entire day on Facebook anyway – why not use their social media skills to your advantage? The question is, how can you find these eager employees? ActivEngage has a lot of experience with grassroots hiring techniques, and dealers are constantly asking us how to handle the marketing challenge of social media. We have some tips to share with you on our best hiring practices.

• Partner with local colleges.

ActivEngage has brought on numerous employees by working with educational institutions in our area. We hand pick from the University of Central Florida and renowned design academy Full Sail University, just to name a few. You, too, can recruit your ideal social media marketing team from the colleges in your area. Contact your local schools today to find out about how they can help.

• Challenge prospects in creative ways.

ActivEngage CEO Todd Smith knew that marketing was a creative and unorthodox field – that’s why he tasked prospective social media candidates with a video challenge. Applicants were challenged to create a video, like this zombie video,  showcasing who they were. You can also get a feel for the capabilities of your young hires by challenging them in the same way. Social Media interns will also need to draft a lot of content, so it is good to also have them include a writing sample with their applications. Even better, ask them to draft a Facebook post or blog for your dealership to see how good their marketing and writing skills really are!

• Promote awards and achievements.

Trust me – nothing attracts young hires like prestige. Millennials aren’t interested in just another 9-to-5 job. They want a career path, a work environment that they can feel invested in. That’s why you should make your laudations and awards clearly visible to all applicants. If you haven’t won any – start applying for them! Our recent award as one of Orlando’s Best Places to Work has help ActivEngage’s hiring process tremendously.

• Build career paths. 

Millennials struggle to understand what it is they really want to do for the next 20 years. In order to overcome this uncertainty, provide them with an outline of what career paths are available at your dealership within the Marketing department and beyond. Showing that you care about the candidates happiness within your dealership, will draw in those applicants committed to working for YOUR dealership, not those just looking for a paycheck.

Social media management requires tech-savvy, marketing educated employees who can invest the time and care to make your marketing campaign blossom. Start smart hiring practices – build your dream team from the ground up!

You can follow the ActivEngage blog for more cutting-edge marketing techniques and commentary.

It’s true that the live chat adoption rate is growing astronomically among auto dealers. The ability to greet your online shoppers and walk them around your virtual showroom has proven to be an invaluable technology, driving more customers to physical dealerships and ultimately selling more cars. You know all of this already, but one question remains: Do I manage my own website chat, or should I allow a vendor to take over for me?

Call us biased, but we’ve dug deep into our customer database, and we found some interesting statistics. Using a trusted managed chat solution leads to a blissful, relaxing paradise. Cherubs whisper lead information into your ear as you stroll carelessly through gardens of unicorns and rainbows. Your fully-staffed website professionally greets all of your customers for you – while converting 80% of all chats into qualified leads with a phone number and email. Your chats are answered within 6 seconds while you bask in the warm glow of the sun, and all you have to do is collect the pot of gold.

But we know that some of you guys try to deal with chat on your own, using other vendors who have left you in the wilderness to carry the burden of live chat. These poor souls are embroiled in a fiery hellscape, agonizing over missed web chats, haunted by the demons of poor response times. As they scramble around their dealership website, they shed sweat and tears over their lost sales and failed customer service. These dealers still hold on hope – hope that one day, the end of the world will spare them from their eternal torment.

And no, we don’t think we’re overstating things.  We’ve even illustrated your predicament for you:

No dealer deserves such cruel punishment. That’s why ActivEngage is here to help. Let us work with you to reach your managed chat nirvana – check out our new eBook, In-house vs. Managed Chat  to get the full story on how you’re missing out.

Pop-up advertising has gotten a pretty negative rap over the years. Maybe that’s due in part to the 90s, when pop-ups would frequently flood your browser window, unfettered by blockers or anti-virus software. Perhaps pop-up ads deserve their negative connotation; they’re intrusive, gaudy, and difficult to escape from. But when properly implemented, pop-ups can effectively direct your Web traffic to a particular Web page, generate more lead information, and spread brand awareness.

Since the Internet boom, marketers have tried to figure out a way to send a message to consumers without alienating them with annoying and flashy ads. Pop-under advertising is a slightly different (and less intrusive) take on the same concept. These ads are hidden behind your browser window and are only seen when the visitor exits a Web page. Netflix, Orbitz, and Priceline are famous, current examples of companies that use this kind of advertising – and they’ve historically frustrated their audience with these tactics. But do they work?

As the automotive industry’s premiere live chat provider, we utilize a variety of tools to increase visitor-to-chat conversion. One of these tools (ActivInvite) is a personalized, talking pop-up message that invites visitors to engage us in a chat conversation. We decided to test the effectiveness of our own pop-up invitations. After comparing before-and-after data from the hundreds of dealers who use our pop-up invitation, we found an average increase in chat conversion of 23% –  and some dealers saw an increase of almost 70%!

The moral of this story is that pop-up ads – though universally despised and reviled – actually work, proving once again that empirical testing of web strategies is the only way to evaluate them. Though you might hate pop-ups, don’t discount them as ineffective or useless. The most successful marketers are data driven; they embrace new ways to reach their goals.

Social media seems like such an pleasant, magical journey for a business to embark on. Ask a mundane question on Facebook, tweet a photo of your lunch, and the world will love you (and ultimately buy whatever you’re selling). But social media occasionally causes instant public relations disasters – and these crises can rarely be controlled or contained.

Take Progressive Insurance, for instance. The insurance company is currently embroiled in a social media scandal that accuses them ofdefending killers to avoid honoring an insurance policy. The story set the Internet on fire, and Progressive’s Facebook page was flooded with pledges from customers to cancel their service. Here are some excerpts – just from the past hour:

“Your company sucks!”

“I will NEVER do business with this company because of their actions.”

“I am a customer – but not anymore.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Progressive responded to the crisis with automated robo-tweets that stated, “We feel we’ve handled the claim within our contractual obligations.” Ouch – that one will cost you. The company is now under hot scrutiny that has caused many clients to terminate their coverage. Maybe Matt Damon’s character in The Rainmaker should have taken his legal insurance fight to the social media battleground.

If you think this can’t happen to auto dealerships, I’ll direct you to Timothy Martell’s recent Wikimotive post about Clay Nissan, which came under its own social media fire after terminating an employee just three weeks after she returned from brain radiation treatment. Now her relatives have started a boycott against the dealership using social media, which (as Martell puts it) “can make or break a business with equal aptitude.”

Realize that your actions can become an instant PR nightmare when broadcast over the internet, and make sure you monitor your social media and adequately respond to complaints and mentions.

A new study shows that a new breed of “digital test drivers” are completely skipping the dealership sales process. More than 10% of new-car shoppers are buying vehicles without even seeing them in person. To me, this seems like buying a pair of pants without trying them on – except a thousand times more expensive. But for some consumers, online research and previous experience are enough to make a purchase decision.

This is a rather disturbing trend for dealership sales – test drives are a favorite sales technique for committing a buyer to a vehicle or converting a customer from a competitor. The Maritz Research study, which surveyed 80,219 buyers of 2012 model-year vehicles, found that 11.4% didn’t take a test-drive. It’s the first year the study has asked the question. It also found that 8 out of 10 buyers use the Internet to research vehicles before setting foot in the dealership.

But why aren’t buyers coming into dealerships anymore? The Maritz study reports that some are intimidated by the cutthroat, pushy nature of dealership sales. Some just aren’t very interested in cars, and they’re not willing to invest much time in the purchasing process. But the Internet remains the biggest reason: the wealth of information found through online research is worth more to consumers than any “new car smell.”

When customers aren’t visiting stores to purchase their next cars, what can auto dealers do to clinch dealership sales? Consider adding a virtual test drive to your website or live chat service – a short video tour of a vehicle that offers the same rush of a test drive through your dealership website.

The only way to preserve your dealership sales is to adapt to the rising trends of Internet commerce and research. Implement a progressive solution for your website – as the data indicates, an online dealership may someday be just as important as a physical one.