There's nothing wrong with shopping at the local supercenter. The convenience of getting toilet paper, bananas, a video camera, and a package of socks for the kids all in the same place saves time and often saves money as well. However, there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. If you're looking for something as important as a suit, you probably want to go to a place that specializes in them.

That's why it concerns me when I hear from dealers who are marketing to their customer database or even to conquest lists through their one-stop-shop providers like CRM companies. I'm not trying to start a way with any of these companies, but it simply doesn't make sense to perform one of the most important and detail-driven marketing practices through systems that simply aren't designed to handle them.

Yes, many other companies throw in loyalty or conquest marketing into their tool set because they can, but that does not mean that it will be effective. There is an art and a science to appending and cleansing a database that should be handled by specialists just as there is a quality factor inherent to the art and science of tailoring a good suit. Loyalty marketing takes strategy. Conquest marketing requires a strong plan. Neither can be done appropriately through website or CRM automation tools. Doing so is checking off the box rather than taking advantage of the full potential.

Your database can be turned into gold for both sales and service. However, trying to do it with add-on tools is just as bad as trying to fill your business wardrobe from the same place that you buy cereal. Can you get a suit at Walmart? Sure you can. Of course, a suit is supposed to make you look great and stand out. If your wardrobe came from a blue light special, chances are you'll stand out in it for all the wrong reasons.

Marketing to a database must be handled with care and through the level of expertise that can only be achieved through specialists. Don't mark it off as "done" just because you have some drip marketing emails hitting a bunch of spam filters in your database. Make it work by putting real effort into grabbing the low hanging fruit that your database can be.

Accuracy.

There, I said it. Within that one word lies the keys to unlocking the true potential of the customer data you have available to you. If you have the most accurate data, you'll be able to craft marketing, conquest, and retention campaigns that will boost your business faster than anything else available to your dealership.

Of course, it's not easy to achieve the level of accuracy necessary for the top levels of success. It requires that you cleanse your data rigorously to separate the wheat from the chaff. It also requires that you append the data to include the most recent information about individuals. Some of you are doing this to some extent today. Others are relying on their vendors and hoping that it's happening. Most have fallen for a shotgun approach either because they are doing it themselves and aren't sure that the chore of cleansing and appending is worth the effort or they let their vendors take the dangerous and costly shortcut of going straight for the data, any data, without a plan and with no sense of accuracy.

There's a fourth category - those who are not using their database for marketing at all. It's better to be in this category than to be using a shotgun. Bad data can damage the good data.

There's a reason that the laws regarding email spam, junkmail, and call lists are getting stricter across the board and have been for some time now. People don't like to be solicited without consent.

On the other side of the fence are those who provide the communications, whether it's email providers, ISPs, mailing services, or BDCs. These entities do not like spinning their wheels. In every case, there is a price to pay for bad data.

Combine these two aspects and you have the ability to damage the good data with bad data. In email, for example, if you're sending out too many that are bouncing, getting counted as spam due to recycled email addresses, or go unread because there's nobody there to read them, it can hurt your chances of your emails making it into the inboxes of people associated with the good data.

Even if you're running an internal BDC, bad data can waste their time and hurt moral. It only takes one bad follow up call to spin someone's head and hurt their chances for the rest of the day. A database that does not get cleansed regularly can yield wrong information about the person they're trying to contact. A database that does not get appended can result in old information being used by the BDC. People get married and divorced, after all. These types of life changes are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the needs for data appending.

Whether you're doing it yourself or you're having someone else do it for you, focus on the accuracy of the data that you're using. It's cheaper to use bad data, but at what point is saving money going to cost your more than you saved?

Conquest sales can be exhilarating. Let's face it, there's something medieval, even carnal about the concept of taking sales from your competitors. Even the action itself has an incredible name. "Conquest" - it sounds epic and it's something that we all want to do.

It's more than that, though. It's a double-dip. Every conquest sale is a good thing for our numbers and a bad thing for a competitor's numbers. Many of us have gone that extra mile when we found out that we're not only selling a car but also preventing a dastardly competitor from getting a sale as well.

Let's put the romantic aspect of it aside. Conquest sales are, in reality, hard. They are not the low hanging fruit that dealers should focus on first. They are a luxury that dealers should be doing when they know for certain that they have their own customers contacted regularly and coming in to continue buying cars from the dealership.

Keep in mind, I own a company that actually sells a conquest solution! It's in my best interests to promote the idea that you should be getting as many conquest sales as possible. With that said, I strongly encourage dealers to go after the low hanging fruit first. Retaining customers and converting them to do business with you in other departments is the lowest hanging fruit available to dealers and it's something that we feel must be done before any thoughts of taking someone else's business. Here's why:

Your Customers are Already Your Customers

On the surface, it sounds like a silly statement, but let's dig a little deeper. In our industry, we are often misguided to believe that we'll sell someone a vehicle and they're probably done with us for a couple of years unless they choose to service their cars at the dealership as well. Even then, they're probably just coming in for the cheap services, right?

Wrong.

The data that we've seen indicates that you can dramatically increase your service profits simply by marketing appropriately to those who have already bought a car from you. They're already doing business with you. Why wouldn't you want to have a strategic plan to keep them coming in for more. Conversely, your service customers are often the easiest to convert into sales opportunities. We all know that, but it's surprising how many dealers are not taking advantage of this fact.

While You're Conquesting Them, They're Conquesting You

When dealers are busy stealing each others' customers, the net result is often a wash. So many dealers are finding success in conquest marketing thanks to the lack of loyalty amongst most car buyers today that they feel like they're getting somewhere with it. In many cases, they're trading rather than increasing the number of people buying cars.

The beauty of marketing to your own dealership's customer database is that you're not only getting more business as a result, but you're also preventing your competitors from conquesting you. Take advantage of your relationship with them by staying in front of them. Every gap in communication is an opportunity for your customer to look at others. Stay in front of them. Don't give your competitors an open opportunity.

There's Money on the Table

It all comes down to the original concept here. People in your current customer database are the lowest hanging fruit available. Just because they bought a car from you last month doesn't mean that nobody else in the household is in the market this month.

Dealers are competitive by nature and taking advantage of the resources available to them is the easiest way to get that low hanging fruit. Stop leaving money on the table. Stay in front of your customers and turn them from being one-timers to life-long champions. We all want to be conquistadors. Sometimes, that means taking better care of your own kingdom first.

​If there's one thing that gets me riled up when talking to dealers, it's finding out that there are two completely different strategies being applied to their traditional and digital marketing. It made sense a decade ago when the digital age was first coming into existence in automotive marketing. It made a little sense a few years ago when the digital spend was much smaller than the traditional spend at most dealerships. Today's modern marketing strategies combine rather than separate the messages that are put out on the different channels.

In fact, the only real difference between digital and traditional marketing is the difference in venue. Otherwise, a holistic approach is the right way to go.

This isn't a blanket statement that I'm making without understanding. I've seen the differences. Dealerships that have one message going out through television or direct mail and a completely different message on their website or through email campaigns are not seeing the level of results that are possible for dealers who are viewing marketing as a singular practice across channels.

I'm not saying that you don't have to position the messages differently. The type of messages are still venue-specific. However, that means that you don't want a "click here for more information" link on a direct mail piece. It means that you don't want to use print-ready stunning graphics and images on your email campaigns. It does not mean that you need the messages to be completely different and it definitely does not mean that you want two different departments at the dealership (or two different companies partnering with you) to develop messages that are not synced up.

There is a flip-side to this. A warning. There is a trend for traditional ad agencies to get into digital out of necessity and there's a similar trend for digital companies to start diving into traditional marketing. I only know a handful of companies doing it right out of the dozens of companies giving it a shot. Those dozens do not even included the local shops trying to get into the mix and stay relevant.

This isn't easy stuff, but it's not so hard that dealers can't tell the difference between good and bad. It really comes down to data and intent. You can see the difference. If they're using weak data, run away. If they're getting involved in their digital or traditional counterpart to stop the bleeding of business that they've been using over the years, run away even faster. Some people know what they're doing and others are just trying to keep their own business running by offering these other services.

If your instincts tell you that something doesn't jive, run away as fast as you can.

​There is a ton of confusion out there when it comes to digital and traditional marketing. Despite the rise of the "savvy dealer" over the last few years, it is still clear that many of the offerings companies are putting out there focus on intangible results.

Don't get me wrong. I know that there are things that have value from a marketing perspective that are challenging to measure, but to say that something is delivering results without giving an ounce of data to support it is silly. Exposure is great, but at what point does exposure truly translate into sales.

I have no doubt that there are services out there that dealers have used and found to be completely lacking from a reporting perspective. Even worse are the vendors that are putting out reports that seem to be designed to verify that they're doing something rather than reporting on successes or failures.

As I dig deeper into the digital and traditional marketing worlds of the automotive industry, I'm learning that two things are very true and verifiable:

1. If it's bringing value, that value can be measured in some way
2. If it's not bringing value, companies will try to demonstrate value with confusing metrics or complex reports

Tangible, measurable value should be the cornerstone of any marketing company's reporting. If so much emphasis is placed on the intangible, can dealers really trust the alleged results? I'm not going to name any companies in particular. I just want to point out that it should be measurable or you should question whether or not it's bringing any value at all. If not, move your budget elsewhere.

There are muffins, and there are great muffins. The kind we get our of a plastic package from a vending machine or at a continental breakfast at a hotel usually meets the hunger requirements, but it's usually not exceptionally enjoyable. Compare that to a muffin from your favorite bakery and the experience can be like night and day.

Why is that? They have the same basic ingredients. There's the freshness component, but even packaged muffins are usually not that old because the shelf-life is so short on them. It really comes down to the way that they're prepared and baked. It comes down quality.

The difference between muffins is like the difference between customer database marketing solutions. When I speak to dealers across the nation, there is a good number of you who have some sort of customer database marketing in place. Perhaps it's an automated follow-up system through your CRM. Maybe you have a BDC procedure that tries to cultivate the relationship over time. These are fine and they're (usually) better than nothing, but they're usually result in very little tangible value as far is increasing sales and service business.

They're packaged muffins.

A true customer database marketing strategy requires quality, care, and strategy. It requires taking your database and improving on it based upon referencing other data that is available. It's about appending the data to make it more accurate and therefore more effective.

It also requires proper messaging. One of the biggest mistakes that I see dealers and even other vendors make is that they separate out their databases to target service customers and sales customers. The reality is that you have customers. Your service customers should be buying cars from you. Your sales customers should be getting their cars serviced through you. The strategies that can take the two types of customers and turn them into a strong set of "whole" customers is something that simply cannot be done through standard automated systems.

The packaged muffins won't get the job done.

A great muffin means putting together the right recipe (strategy) to nurture them properly. It's about staying in front of them with the right messages and being relevant to their needs before, during, and after they're fulfilled.

As you think about all of this, ask yourself if you're taking full advantage of your customer database in a way that is translating into dramatic increases in business and customer loyalty. Today, the loyalty factor has been abandoned by many simply because customers in the digital age seem to be less willing to do business with the same companies over and over again. They've broadened their horizons thanks to the internet. You can take advantage of this by nurturing them appropriately and constantly. The most successful dealers in the coming years will not be the ones that are relying on getting new business. The most successful dealers will have a strong balance between acquiring new customers and keeping their current ones.

Look at your strategy and decide whether it's really going after your current and past customers with the fervor it deserves. If not, it's time to explore a new strategy.

It's time to bake a great muffin.

The words "big data" have been buzzing around the marketing and advertising world for a few years now. Technology has made it possible to do things with data through analysis and proper utilization that weren't very easy a decade ago. It's a good thing, but it's not enough.

In the automotive industry, we see it used for everything from conquest sales to social media promotions. There's nothing wrong with this except for the fact that most in our industry are only seeing the tip of iceberg. Big data is great but the latest advances in technology make it possible to take advantage of both "big data" as well as "better data".

Many dealers are starting to see the benefits of using their internal databases to drive continued business with the dealership. It's great to go out and get new customers but there's a goldmine of opportunity within your existing clientele. Many companies are pushing this through direct mail, email, and other forms of communication, but nearly everyone is missing the opportunities that are created by improving on the data itself.

We have big data. Now, we have to turn it into better data.

For example, there are huge opportunities in appending the data based upon changes in circumstance. Let's say a customer gets married. She's driving the same car and may or may not be living in the same address. Her phone number is probably the same but she now has a different last name. By appending the data based upon the likely scenario that she got married, we can better attend to her needs and send her the right messages to get her back into the dealership.

Another challenge with big data is that it over-categorizes people. Just because the technology is there to put people into categories doesn't mean that it should be done. Dealers should not have service customers and sales customers. They have customers. You should be trying to get those who bought a car from you to also have the car serviced at your dealership. You should be trying to get those who come in for service to also purchase their next vehicle from you. This can be done when you tear down the category walls and tune the messages appropriately to the individuals.

Big data is the past and present. In many ways, it's also still the future, but it can be improved upon in the automotive industry by letting go of some restrictions and focusing on improving the quality of the data itself. Dealers that do this are the ones that will be able to improve their loyalty as well as their bottom line.