The joint presentation, "Scale Your Business Profitably by Taking Digital Data and Retail Marketing Beyond New Vehicle Acquisition," offers a modern method to drive brand loyalty and fight the aftermarket bleed

Martinez’s presentation “GRO Your Bottom Line” selected by auto dealers in a highly competitive process; joins an agenda with four award-wining authors and other industry experts

Daytona Beach, FL – October 6, 2015 – Mike Martinez, Chief Marketing Officer of DMEautomotive and AutoPoint, has been selected to present at the seventh annual DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES), one of the largest gatherings of progressive dealer executives, on October 19^th at 11:15 AM at the Bellagio Las Vegas. Martinez’s presentation “GRO” Your Bottom Line was selected by a panel of dealers in a highly competitive process, in which only 1 in 3 applications was accepted. 

Martinez joins a powerhouse DSES agenda that includes a Harvard Business School faculty member, leading search marketing and content marketing strategists, branding experts and technology visionaries, and award-winning authors. The DSES has sold out every year since inception and hosted over 1,000 attendees last year. It is unique in the industry because auto dealers determine the speakers and agenda.

Martinez’s presentation addresses long-standing issues with traditional service retention metrics, and offers a new metric, GRO, that is designed to help dealers increase their customers’ lifetime spends in the dealership service lane and keep those customers coming back for their next vehicle purchases.

“Many dealers have the same problem: watching their service retention climb at a steady rate while their service revenue plateaus, or even decreases,” said Mike Walther, Managing Director of DMEautomotive. “GRO provides dealers with a simple, clear picture of the true health of their service operations and helps them put plans in place to increase revenue and retention. We’re very excited to present our proven metric to some of the top minds in the automotive industry, and to help them grow with ‘GRO’.”

In a study of GRO’s effect, DMEautomotive found that dealers that had an average GRO Score twice that of the majority of dealers (the “targeted range”) sold 75 more units, by increasing the percent of captured customer lifetime value as measured by GRO.

“Mike’s presentation was chosen from a competitive group of applicants comprising some of the industry’s most innovative dealer executives and thought leaders. Clearly, GRO resonated with our dealer panel because it offers the kind of ahead-of-the-curve insights, actionable information, and profit-building practices that our attendees can take home and immediately implement in their dealerships,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder, Jared Hamilton. “We are very proud to add Mike Martinez of DMEautomotive to our 2015 agenda.”

For the full DrivingSales Executive Summit agenda and to register before the event sells out, go to http://drivingsalesexecutivesummit.com or contact events@drivingsales.com. Stay tuned for DSES news as it develops on www.twitter.com/drivingsales and on facebook.com/drivingsales. Participate in the conversation using #DSES as preparations continue throughout the year. 

About DMEautomotive

DMEautomotive (DMEa), a Solera Holdings Inc. company, is the industry leader in science-based, results-driven automotive marketing, and provides turnkey marketing to the largest and most innovative automotive organizations, from automobile dealerships to many of the largest aftermarket companies in the U.S. DMEa's uniquely panoramic view of the complete automotive sales and service market, combined with its cutting-edge, science-based marketing programs, increases customer yield, conversion and retention. Joined with Solera's network of global companies dedicated to innovation, DMEa's mission to increase customer engagement within the automotive industry is further strengthened.

Supported by DMEa’s proprietary, cloud-based Red Rocket Technology Platform, the DMEa product suite includes science-based, data-driven, multi-channel customer acquisition and retention marketing programs; best-in-class campaign reporting; data management and analytics; auto-focused Customer Interaction Center solutions, and complete on-site mail and email fulfillment services. Headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida, DMEa also has major operations in Jacksonville, Florida.

About Solera

Solera is a leading provider of risk and asset management software and services to the automotive and property marketplace, including the global P&C insurance industry. Solera is active in over 75 countries across six continents. The Solera companies include: Audatex in the United States, Canada and in more than 60 additional countries; HPI, CarweB and CAP Automotive in the United Kingdom; Informex in Belgium and Greece; Sidexa in France; ABZ and Market Scan in the Netherlands; Hollander serving the North American recycling market; AUTOonline providing salvage disposition in a number of European and Latin American countries; IMS providing medical review services; Explore providing data and analytics to United States property and casualty insurers; Identifix, providing solutions for the service, maintenance and repair ("SMR") market; AutoPoint and DMEautomotive, providing data-driven tools to enhance SMR experiences and facilitate customer retention and marketing solutions for the retail automotive industry; and I&S, a provider of software and business management tools, third-party claims administration, first notice of loss and network management services to the U.S. auto and property repair industries, specializing in glass claims. For more information, please refer to the Solera's website at www.solerainc.com.

DMEautomotive Media Relations

Katie Gile, DMEautomotive, (904) 416-1451, Katie.gile@dmeautomotive.com

About DrivingSales

DrivingSales is the industry’s leading resource for automotive dealership professionals to obtain actionable insight, education and connections to advance their careers and grow their businesses in a time of unprecedented market change.  Founded by a third-generation car dealer in 2008, today DrivingSales is utilized by two thirds of franchised dealerships in North America as a resource to improve their business performance. 

To learn more about the DrivingSales community, news, dealer education or performance analytics visit DrivingSales.com.

DrivingSales Executive Summit Contact:
Christina DeVore
christina.devore@drivingsales.com
DrivingSales
866.943.8371x124

DMEa selected as a presenter for four key 2015 conferences: DealerSocket User Summit; Digital Dealer Conference & Expo; DrivingSales Executive Summit and Fixed Ops Conference & Expo

Daytona Beach, FL – September 22, 2015 – DMEautomotive (DMEa) today announced that it has been selected as a presenter for the 19^th Digital Dealer Conference & Expo.

Mary Sheridan PhD., Manager of Research & Analytics at DMEautomotive, will present at the upcoming 19th Digital Dealer Conference & Expo on October 5-7 in Las Vegas, NV. Located at the Paris Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, the Digital Dealer Conference & Expo is the largest and most progressive digital automotive event in the United States with the digital tools, education and peer contacts the automotive industry needs to solve problems, grow sales, increase customer retention and boost profits. With the largest representation of technology providers and new product introductions of any digital event in the industry, Digital Dealer affords attendees the opportunity to meet the experts, demo products from more than 120 companies, and build solutions for their businesses.

Mary’s presentation, “Grow with GRO: Drive Higher Lifetime Value” will occur on Wednesday, 10/7 from 11:00-11:55 am.

“We are so excited to be included among the brilliant professionals on the agenda for the 19^th Digital Dealer Conference & Expo,” said Mike Walther, Managing Director for DMEautomotive. “As a vendor with countless dealer customers, one of the biggest parts of our work is providing our clients with the information they need to succeed. We’re pleased that our topic has resonated so much with our clients, and very excited to present it to some of the top minds in the automotive industry at Digital Dealer.”

About DMEautomotive

DMEautomotive (DMEa), a Solera Holdings Inc. company, is the industry leader in science-based, results-driven automotive marketing, and provides turnkey marketing to the largest and most innovative automotive organizations, from automobile dealerships to many of the largest aftermarket companies in the U.S. DMEa's uniquely panoramic view of the complete automotive sales and service market, combined with its cutting-edge, science-based marketing programs, increases customer yield, conversion and retention. Joined with Solera's network of global companies dedicated to innovation, DMEa's mission to increase customer engagement within the automotive industry is further strengthened.

Supported by DMEa’s proprietary, cloud-based Red Rocket Technology Platform, the DMEa product suite includes science-based, data-driven, multi-channel customer acquisition and retention marketing programs; best-in-class campaign reporting; data management and analytics; auto-focused Customer Interaction Center solutions, and complete on-site mail and email fulfillment services. Headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida, DMEa also has major operations in Jacksonville, Florida.

About Solera

Solera is a leading provider of risk and asset management software and services to the automotive and property marketplace, including the global P&C insurance industry. Solera is active in over 75 countries across six continents. The Solera companies include: Audatex in the United States, Canada and in more than 60 additional countries; HPI, CarweB and CAP Automotive in the United Kingdom; Informex in Belgium and Greece; Sidexa in France; ABZ and Market Scan in the Netherlands; Hollander serving the North American recycling market; AUTOonline providing salvage disposition in a number of European and Latin American countries; IMS providing medical review services; Explore providing data and analytics to United States property and casualty insurers; Identifix, providing solutions for the service, maintenance and repair ("SMR") market; AutoPoint and DMEautomotive, providing data-driven tools to enhance SMR experiences and facilitate customer retention and marketing solutions for the retail automotive industry; and I&S, a provider of software and business management tools, third-party claims administration, first notice of loss and network management services to the U.S. auto and property repair industries, specializing in glass claims. For more information, please refer to the Solera's website at www.solerainc.com. - See more at: http://ir.solerainc.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=210437&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2075383#sthash.QNLUPKmj.dpuf

DMEautomotive Media Relations

Katie Gile, DMEautomotive, (904) 416-1451, katie.gile@dmeautomotive.com

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that vicarious liability under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is broad. In Gomez v. Campbell-Ewald Company, the United States Navy hired the Campbell-Ewald Company to assist the military branch with a multimedia recruiting campaign—which included the decision to send text messages to prospective recruits. Campbell-Ewald contracted Mindmatics to execute the campaign and, as is almost always the result of text message advertising, a class action lawsuit was filed by a disgruntled recipient. 

Campbell-Ewald sought to place exclusive blame on the text triggerman—Mindmatics. In other words, Campbell-Elwald argued that it should not be liable under the TCPA because its agent was the one that hit the send button. The court disagreed and held “[t]he [TCPA] itself is silent as to vicarious liability. We therefore assume that Congress intended to incorporate ‘ordinary tort related vicarious liability rules.’” Further, “[i]t makes little sense to hold the merchant vicariously liable for a campaign he entrusts to an advertising professional, unless that professional is equally accountable for any resulting TCPA violation.”

The important takeaway from Gomez is that vicarious liability is alive and well under the TCPA and can work to commit you to the actions of your agents’ agents. The prudent business move, therefore, is to understand who your advertising agents use to fulfill campaigns on your behalf. Do those agents know the law? Are they financially solvent enough to indemnify you for legal missteps? If not, do they carry proper insurance—either under an Errors & Omission (E&O) policy or specific policy covering TCPA liability? 

Regardless of the advertising channel, agent due diligence and trust are good things. In a TCPA scenario, however, where liability can run into the tens of millions, it is critical that your agents also have you covered—literally. 

Eric R. Sloan 
Vice President & Legal Counsel 

Eric Sloan’s blogs are provided for educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Readers should not act upon the information provided without the advice of independent counsel. Participation in the webinar does not create or constitute an attorney-client relationship.

I will begin this by saying that I’ve never been a cheerleader, but at my last in-store mobile app training session I wish I had their contagiously enthusiastic charm. I’m working on it. So why the “cheerleader’s guide” you may ask? Well first of all, every dealer rolling out a new mobile app needs a cheerleader, and secondly, I’m going to see if all the cheerleaders who read my blog will let me get away with presuming to know anything about cheerleading. Here I go…

One of the biggest opportunities car dealers are missing when it comes to promoting their mobile app is perfecting the in-store processes necessary to drive continual downloads. More specifically, service associates need to get customers to download the app. Right now a majority of dealer mobile app downloads are driven from email campaigns, online advertisements, and sweepstakes. These methods, although effective, pale in comparison to having service associates engaging every single customer who comes onto the drive every single day.

Keep it short and repetitive so you can remember and they don’t forget

A typical cheer is short and to the point. Don’t overcomplicate it. Start by doing short, 20 to 30 minute, training sessions with your service team. Multiple sessions allow everyone to participate while customers are still being helped. Train them on the features and functionality. Make sure they’re familiar with the special offers available in your app as well as a short talk track that can be used to encourage a customer to download the app. They should be able to easily repeat a few key features and an incentive (or offer) available for downloading. With the knowledge of how your app works and this easily rehearsed talk track, associates are armed and ready to encourage customers to download the app.

Practice, practice, practice so you don’t trip or drop the pretty girl (or guy)

Your service team needs to practice with your app. Have everyone who has a smartphone download the app and play with it. Have them set up an account and a fake service appointment. Firsthand experience using the app is the best way to get associates comfortable with talking to customers about the app.

Help develop enthusiasm internally – eventually it will spread to your customers

A cheerleader’s enthusiasm is contagious and although we don’t expect your service team to be able to form a perfect pyramid, a little genuine enthusiasm goes a long way. In the first training session I did, it was as if I was asking high school kids to get excited about math club. I associate this with my inability to do a full scorpion (look I even did research for this blog). So how do you get them excited? Talk to them about how your app will make their job easier. How many calls do they get a day from someone asking them to look up their service history? It’s not always an easy task especially when they’ve got customers waiting on them. They could suggest a customer download the app, which would give them instant access to their service history right on their smartphone. Make sure your service team knows how your app helps make their lives easier.

Make it Eye Catching

When cheerleaders cheer you just can’t look away. It could be from what has been coined the cheerleader effect or maybe we’re all secretly hoping they fall, but either way we’re captivated. When customers enter your service center make sure they’re greeted with more than just the smell of rubber and gasoline. Make sure they’re greeted with eye catching signage encouraging them to download the app. Include QR codes so tech savvy smartphone users can scan and download quickly.

Everyone Parties When We Win

I’m not exactly sure what happens when you cheer for a whole game and then your team loses. I’m assuming it involves ice cream, chick flicks, and 5 extra hours at the gym but one can only guess.

But I know that when your team wins, everyone parties and with a few small incentives you can go home a winner. Get your service team to promote your app by incentivizing them. It can be as simple as making your number of downloads visible during daily meetings and rewarding the team when certain download thresholds are met. Consider doing an iPad raffle where associates get a raffle ticket for every customer they get to download the app, or a small spiff can help motivate your team to participate.

Building strong internal app promotion processes in your service department will yield long term results.

1. Arm your service associates with easy to remember talk tracks to get customers to download your app
2. Encourage associates to download your app and get comfortable with it on their phone
3. Make sure they understand how your app helps them do their job better
4. Hang eye catching point-of-purchase materials throughout your service center
5. Celebrate success by incentivizing your team to reach your mobile app download goals.

Remember, cheer on your service team and before long they’ll “sell it” to every customer that walks through your service department.

I was shopping in Target the other day with my 3 year old when a gentleman commented, “Wow, does she really know how to use that?” I looked down to see my daughter playing with “her” iPhone (ok technically it’s my old iPhone 3 that can still muster enough strength for some great apps, but I digress) and I was like, “oh… um… yeah, she can.”

My daughter can play with an iPhone because it’s easy to use; easy enough for a 3 year old, and if you want customers to download your app then you need to make it easy too. And part of making it easy is giving them functionality they trust, like Smart App Banners.

Now, my 3 year old doesn’t worry about clicking on a random pop-up that prompts her to download the $4.99 Disney Princess Royal Salon app because she is still trusting in nature (and desperate to be a princess), where as those of us over the age of 13 had our trusting nature shattered somewhere in middle school and only a few of us got to be princesses (damn you Kate Middleton!), but again, I digress. The point I’m trying to make (you thought I didn’t have one for a minute there didn’t you) is that consumers need to TRUST that what they click on is not a scam, and Smart App Banners are the best way to do that.

Smart App Banners are small rectangular banners that can display across the top of your mobile website that prompt a visitor to download your mobile app. The Banners are technically only an Apple functionality, however you can easily get similar functionality for Android devices with a slight variation of code. Smart App Banners greatly improve a user’s browsing experience compared to other promotional methods, as Apple has provided a consistent look and feel for these banners across the web, and users have come to trust that these banners will take them to the App Store and not a third-party site. Users appreciate that banners show up unobtrusively at the top of a webpage, instead of a full-screen ad interrupting the web content.

App Banners are super easy to add to your website. Your web admin just needs to add a small snippet of code (that can be found online) to your website and you’re good to go. And if the app is already installed on the user’s device, the Smart App Banner can intelligently change its action to open the app instead. Also if the device loading the banner does not support your app, or if your app is not available in the user's location, the banner will not display.

The bottom line is that Smart App Banners are one of the best ways to drive downloads for your mobile app. Now, you may run into a situation where your mobile website vendor (who created your mobile site and thinks it’s just the best thing ever) doesn’t want to drive traffic away from your mobile site to your mobile app vendor (who created your mobile app and thinks it’s just the best thing ever). Only you know why you have both and that’s to give your customers the experience that works best for them. So give them the choice right up front to continue to surf your site or download your app. If they trust in the functionality, which they will with the Smart App Banner, then you’ve given them an experience almost as great as the Disney Princess Royal Salon is to a 3-year old; an experience that’s easy, fun, and gets them that much closer to getting everything they want out of life… whether it’s a great mobile app or their handsome prince.

-Kelly Krause, Director of Customer Engagement, Driver Connect at DMEautomotive

A trend is developing in the used car industry: prices on used cars are up 30% since 2008 and they could go even higher. It’s not uncommon to see a 1999 Toyota Corolla on the road and it won’t be sputtering along covered in rust spots, either. Simply put, cars are being built better to last longer. If a car buyer can’t afford a new vehicle, they know they can put faith in a used car to last them longer than just the drive off the lot. With demand (and prices) on used vehicles growing higher every year, do you have the right stock of pre-owned vehicles? What’s your plan to get these on your lot?

Gas prices are at a similar high, so car buyers are looking at more fuel efficient options, like the Toyota Prius or Chevrolet Malibu. Car auctions may have been your go-to for a used Prius or Malibu in the past, but every other dealer will be there as well.

So how can you get the best deals? Your customers. Use your database to specifically target which pre-owned vehicles you’d like to stock up on and set into motion a buy back campaign. If you already know all of the individuals who bought a Toyota Camry from your dealership in the last four years, it will be easy to target these cars specifically to buy back. You don’t need to go to an auction, where the prices will go up and up as dealers try to outbid one another; just look at the cars you’ve already sold.

Get your salesman involved, too. If they see a 2007 Chevrolet Malibu drive on the lot, offer an incentive for every appraisal they can get for a potential buy back from the car’s owner. Who knows – your stock of pre-owned vehicles could literally drive themselves onto your lot.

As long as this trend in used cars keeps up, the demand amongst dealers to bolster their pre-owned inventory will be high. So where will you be getting yours from?

You send out your direct mail, place newspaper ads and get radio spots all for your car dealer marketing efforts. In the end, what you really want to know is your ROI, and for a good reason. If you’re going to spend the time and money, you want to track the results that are being produced and know that your marketing plan is effective.

But how do you track your clout in social media? You send out your tweets and post on Facebook on a regular basis, but is there a way to know how far this message is really reaching? Is it falling on deaf ears? Luckily, you’re not the only one asking this question. Enter Klout.

Klout is one of the many means to understand how effective your online presence is. By assigning a score between 1-100, with a higher number signifying more influence, Klout can literally quantify your automotive marketing efforts and influence.

One of the factors weighed heavily into Klout scores is your interaction. Are your tweets ever retweeted? Do you often get a “Like” or comment? How many people @message you? All of these play an important role in your overall score. What Klout is saying here is that, when you engage with and are engaged by other influential users, your own influence goes up. They aren’t using arbitrary standards to determine your score – they are using factors which actually make Twitter accounts worthwhile.

Perhaps most helpful is that these scores are not secret. You can find out what other’s Klout scores are to see what they are saying, who they engage with, and then interact with them. When you know these scores, you are able to improve on your own and extend the reach of your own influence online.

While Klout is one of the biggest names in understanding social media influence, there are other avenues you can explore: PeerIndex and even Google Analytics can give you some numbers regarding your online standings.

Social media is not a science, but with the right tools, you can determine the effectiveness of your efforts. No longer do you have to forge blindly into car dealer marketing through social media. You can effectively connect and engage and, most importantly, know where to do so.

By now, we all know the value of SEO, or “search engine optimization,” and we potentially use it in our arsenal of automotive marketing.  But to many of us, including those who work with it, SEO is a big mystery. According to Google, there are over 200 SEO factors that go into search results. No one individual can know all of these.

We all want our page to be at the top of the results whenever somebody does a Google search and we are likely to hire somebody in car dealer marketing to help do this. In the constantly evolving world of SEO, however, time passes a bit like dog years: a few months in SEO is more like a few years in the real world. It’s important to stay on top of the ever-changing trends.

Although navigating the world of car dealer marketing and SEO can be tricky, knowing some of the most recent changes can make SEO a bit more understandable:

• Backlinking isn’t worth its weight in gold anymore. In the past, a backlink from one site to your own could greatly help in rankings. Then people started buying backlinks; they were everywhere but worth nothing. To avoid this, you can produce high quality content to which people will actually organically link. Simply put- don’t put all your eggs in the backlink basket.
• “Spamming” doesn’t help. Not only has the glut of spam backlinks been caught on to by Google, but now they will punish it. If you have a single profile with which you comment on other blogs for backlinking and you use the same generic comment each time, Google will know. And they won’t be very happy. The same goes for duplicate content. If you have one well written blog with good keyword density and you just post it multiple times, it won’t help any.
• There is a “sweet spot” in keywords for a blog post. It is important to have a primary keyword that accurately describes your blog post and appears multiple times, but there is such a thing as using it too often. Google calls this “keyword stuffing.” How can you get keyword rich blogs without going over the top? Make sure when reading it that the placement of these words actually makes sense. If it’s used every other sentence, it’s probably too much.

You don’t have to be an SEO genius to know what works and what doesn’t. Don’t let your dealership’s blog be ruined by too much backlinking or overusing keywords.

75% of automotive customers use Facebook.  This should come as no surprise considering Facebook has more users than the population of almost every country in the world, including the United States.  But are these customers important for your business?  The answer is yes.  Not only are they important, but the future of your business depends on them.  In fact, active Facebook users represent your best customers – the ones who make up 60 to 80% of your revenue.   In a recent survey with U.S. automotive consumers, DMEa found that 57% of customers who spent at least $1,000 on automotive service in the past year visit Facebook at least once a day.  That is at least 27% more than lower spending groups.

Despite the high level of activity on Facebook, when we asked customers about the social site’s influence on where they chose to service their vehicle, only 12% thought it was important.  Things like their vehicle owner’s manual, service centers and automotive websites beat out the more popular networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.  Twitter trailed in at 9%.  While it’s reassuring to know that traditional channels are effective, the gap between usage and influence of digital social channels represents a significant revenue opportunity.  Throw in the exponential growth of social media over time, and it becomes clear that social strategies have cemented themselves as key components of every CRM plan.

Contact DMEa for more insights from our National Consumer Study or to develop an interactive strategy designed for the unique needs of your business.

About DMEautomotive

DMEautomotive provides multi-channel, variable communications for automobile dealers and aftermarket franchises nationwide. Their robust product and service offering includes: data driven, multi-channel acquisition and retention marketing programs, best-in-class campaign reporting, data management and analytics via the Red Rocket Portal, Virtual BDC call applications, and complete on-site mail and email fulfillment services.  Headquartered in Daytona Beach, Fla., DMEautomotive also has major operations in Jacksonville, Fla.