If you're not subscribed to the DrivingSales Newsletters, you're missing out on the top content from the automotive world.

We compile the top blogs, forums, and news stories that you want to see that week. Here are the top 5 blogs from February 2017 just to give you a taste.

Deerfield Beach, FL – February 21, 2017 – Wilen Direct, a leading direct mail marketing company producing more than one billion pieces per year, has launched Wilen Auto to fill a void in the marketplace and provide automotive manufacturers and dealerships with high-quality, personalized direct mail programs that are proven to drive more traffic and sales than traditional dealer tactics.

Through a combination of creativity, segmentation expertise, advanced manufacturing and on-demand print technology, Wilen Auto helps dealerships and OEMs deliver a superior product, deeper data selection and a more powerful array of direct marketing programs with higher performing formats.

“The automotive industry needs a paradigm shift in how it approaches customer acquisition and retention in terms of direct marketing.  Previous options for the automotive industry have been limited. Based on our research and direct marketing knowledge, we saw a real need for our expertise in the industry,” says Bill Sattree, Director of Wilen Auto.

Led by automotive and Madison Avenue marketing veterans with a proven track record of growing global brands like Cadillac, Honda, GM, KIA and Mercedes-Benz, as well as over 40 years of successful experience helping many Fortune 500 companies, Wilen Auto has reinvented automotive direct marketing.

Wilen Auto offers the automotive industry what no other direct mail company can — a specialization in automotive direct marketing, as well as a truly targeted, trackable,

high-impact, creative, custom program that is designed to generate floor traffic to a dealer’s showroom. “We have invested tens of millions of dollars in the latest 4-color variable printing technology that completely raises the bar on what a traditional direct mail company can provide,” says Sattree.

The Wilen Auto direct mail program is an ideal solution for any OEM or dealership that wants to reduce its acquisition and retention costs, while accelerating sales by way of a more progressive manufacturing process and strategy that delivers a higher caliber product to the right audience, effectively.

About Wilen Auto

Wilen Auto offers retail automotive dealerships and OEMs a different and better route to direct marketing success through a more comprehensive, high-quality and measurable proven response vehicle. Wilen Auto is an affiliate of Wilen Direct, a fully integrated, cutting-edge, on-demand direct mail manufacturing facility that ranks in the top 5 nationwide.

It takes about 22 seconds for a mobile landing page to fully load, according to a new study by Google. That might not seem to be a lot of time, but there’s a problem. The same Google study found that 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page if they have to wait for longer than 3 seconds for it to load.

3 seconds.

That’s not a lot of time.

Shoppers want a fast mobile experience, that’s a given. If there are issues with getting through the site, they’ll leave. So it has become critical to make sure that web experiences are fast. Google shows that more than half of all web traffic comes from mobile, but mobile conversion rates are lower than desktop. This tells us that speed = revenue. Mobile loading takes longer than desktop, so even though more people are seeing your site on mobile, it’s not moving quickly enough to make them want to purchase.

Imagine, if you could speed up your mobile site, what the conversion rates could become.

Google shared this in their recent story, “Last month, in an effort to get a better sense of how Google's advertising partners are doing, we did an analysis of 900,000 mobile ads' landing pages spanning 126 countries.5 That new analysis confirmed our thesis: The majority of mobile sites are slow and bloated with too many elements.”

Google found that auto, retail, and technology sectors have the longest load times on their websites, as well as some of the most bloated pages.

Further research found that 70% of the pages analyzed took at least 7 seven seconds for visual content above the fold to display, and more than 10 seconds for all visual content to show.

Google trained a deep neural network, a computer system modeled on the human brain and nervous system, with a set of bounce rate and conversion data. This neural net found that as a page load time goes from one second to seven seconds, the bounce rate increases 113%. Check out the graphic to learn more.

Simply compressing images and text could be a game changer, making mobile pages smaller and thereby helping them load faster.

So how is your site doing? Test Your Site now to see how you compare, and start figuring out what you can do to improve.

Check out the Google research here.

Meet Scott Larrabee, a salesman at Darling's Auto Group, and learn about his dealership story. 

The DrivingSales My Dealership Story series gives people in dealerships around the country the chance to meet others in the industry, learn their story, and see how they are impacting automotive.

We interviewed many vendors during NADA 2017 to hear what they think is ahead for the auto industry. Check out our interview with Xtime.

*The thoughts and opinions expressed by interviewees do not reflect the opinions of DrivingSales. These interviews are purely editorial content and are not sponsored by any party.

We interviewed many vendors during NADA 2017 to hear what they think is ahead for the auto industry. Check out our interview with vAuto.

*The thoughts and opinions expressed by interviewees do not reflect the opinions of DrivingSales. These interviews are purely editorial content and are not sponsored by any party.

We interviewed many vendors during NADA 2017 to hear what they think is ahead for the auto industry. Check out our interview with Pearl Technology Holdings.

*The thoughts and opinions expressed by interviewees do not reflect the opinions of DrivingSales. These interviews are purely editorial content and are not sponsored by any party.

We interviewed many vendors during NADA 2017 to hear what they think is ahead for the auto industry. Check out our interview with Orbee.

*The thoughts and opinions expressed by interviewees do not reflect the opinions of DrivingSales. These interviews are purely editorial content and are not sponsored by any party.

DrivingSales is excited to announce the 2017 finalists for the Most Valuable Insight Contest! These three finalists will have the opportunity to present their insight at DrivingSales Presidents Club. Winner will be announced LIVE at the event!

The finalists are:

"Prioritize Your Prospects: Uncover Clues to Predict Who Will Buy Next" 
AutoLoop, Doug Van Sach

"How Well Does Dealership VDP Engagement Correlate to Car Sales?"
Speed Shift Media, Ian Cruickshank

"Using Artificial Intelligence to Prioritize Customer Engagement"
T2 Modus, Jim Roach

The Most Valuable Insight Contest is designed to reveal and showcase never-before-released data and research unique in the automotive industry. Don't miss it! 

We are also excited to announce that David Mead is one of the Keynote Speakers for Presidents Club. David is the Chief of What's Next at Simon Sinek, Inc. He'll be teaching us how to inspire our entire organization to develop accountability and lead our dealership to new heights.

It's not too late to register! Visit DrivingSales Presidents Club to get your tickets now.

DrivingSales Presidents Club

April 9-10, 2017
Grand Hyatt
New York, NY

We interviewed many vendors during NADA 2017 to hear what they think is ahead for the auto industry. Check out our interview with myKaarma.

*The thoughts and opinions expressed by interviewees do not reflect the opinions of DrivingSales. These interviews are purely editorial content and are not sponsored by any party.