ITFT (Innovative Technology for  Transportation), has developed a patented technology called the Safe Driving System designed to prevent up to 86% of accidents caused from distracted driving, reckless driving, and speeding ITFT, Inc. (“ITFT” or the “Company”) today announced the launch of its investment crowdfunding campaign on the crowdfunding portal StartEngine (www.startengine.com). The Company is offering early investors the opportunity to join them on the journey to make the roads a safer place. ITFT’s signature product, the Safe Driving System, is a patented technology designed to prevent up to 86% of accidents. The net proceeds of the offering will be used to fund the completion of product development and testing of the Safe Driving System prototype, as well as to complete a comprehensive pilot program before bringing the Safe Driving System to market.

According to research, approximately 86% of car accidents are caused by one of three occurrences: reckless driving, speeding, and cellular-distracted driving. The Safe Driving System is designed to prevent all three of those occurrences, through speed prevention, speed and accident notifications, and the ability to choose what apps the driver is able to use while operating a vehicle.

ITFT designed the Safe Driving System specifically with parents in mind. The product is perfect for new drivers and worried parents, which there is no shortage of in the United States. According to the U.S Census Bureau, there are currently around 39 million families in the country with at least one child under the age of 18. “I created the Safe Driving System after I lost multiple friends to automobile accidents,” said ITFT CEO Matthew Godley. “I saw what it did to their families, and our entire community, and I vowed that I was going to create something to ensure these kinds of horrific accidents stopped. The Safe Driving System is a perfect solution for parents wanting to find that sweet spot between their child’s independence and their own peace of mind.”

Interested individuals can find out more information about ITFT’s investment crowdfunding campaign by visiting http://bit.ly/ITFTcampaign.

Yes Lifecycle Marketing recently released a study about gaps in email marketing. You can check out part 1 in my series here. The second gap in email marketing that we are going to evaluate is the gap between mobile and desktop clicks and CTO.

Data from Yes Lifecycle Marketing shows a consistent rise in mobile click-to-open rates, as well as the proportion of mobile clicks to desktop clicks since 2013.

Mobile clicks have rise 56% over three years, and 17% year-over-year. Mobile click-to-open is also steadily rising. Desktop click-to-open is conversely on the decline, and is now only about 4% higher than mobile CTO.  This means that the gap between desktop and mobile rates is shrinking rapidly over a variety of industries.

So how is this affecting auto specifically? Auto has just over a 1% difference between mobile and desktop click to open rates, with mobile just slightly behind. This indicates that the auto industry has one of the closest gaps between mobile and desktop, and the customers for auto are as inclined to use their phones as they are their computers to shop and check out dealerships.

The proportion of mobile to desktop clicks surpassed the 50 percent mark in 2016. In other words, more clicks occur on mobile devices than they do on desktops. This is yet another closed gap that illustrates consumers’ growing comfort with mobile. And again, that’s especially the case in the automotive ring.

Research also shows that consumers are incredibly likely to engage with email marketing on mobile phones, but few brands and industries have worked to make sure their email marketing is as efficient on mobile as it is on desktop.

How can you close this gap?

We recognize that many brands and dealerships have not yet adopted responsive design for all campaign. It would be smart to make it as easy as possible for subscribers to navigate and click through mobile marketing emails. Responsive design should be common knowledge, but many brands are still failing to use this extremely useful tactic. Consumers have come to expect it and are bothered by brands and stores that don’t make it easy for them to click through and convert. Make sure your email design and layout are optimal for a variety of screen sizes, and work to reduce the number of steps a user needs to take or form fields they need to fill out before proceeding.

A new study by VinSolutions and DealerKnows provides some very interesting statistics about everything we didn’t realize we needed to know regarding CRM usage. Check out some of these findings to see how your dealership or store can really make the CRM work for you.

Using The CRM:

• Only 74% of salespeople complete CRM certification courses
• Only 57% of salespeople have active wish lists in their CRM

So what do these numbers mean? These numbers suggest that your store or group isn’t full of salespeople who are actively working with the CRM to improve their sales and the customer experience. Here’s what you can do to help:

• Explain how the CRM will help your employees
• Hold the team accountable
• Have a CRM champion
• Evaluate your CRM to ensure it’s working for your company

Customer Records:

• Roughly 340 customer records in the DMS don’t match the CRM per dealership
• Industry averages show that only 44% have regularly automated reports sent out from their CRM

What do these numbers mean? These numbers show us that even if a CRM is being utilized, it may not be accurate or as useful as possible for a dealership. Here’s what you can do:

• Audit your CRM data to make sure it’s all accurate
• Remove duplicate leads
• Send auto reports
• Get management involved to help

Tasks:

• 16% of tasks in the CRM are overdue
• Average email open rates are only 48% and reply rates are only 11%

What do these numbers mean? These numbers suggest that your store or group should work with employees to understand the priorities of tasks and get them completed on time. It also suggests that you may be sending emails to the wrong people or with the wrong content. Here’s what you can do:

• Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!
• Re-evaluate your processes for tasks, email, etc.
• Get everyone on the same page

Leads:

• Leads followed up within the hour is around 73%
• Leads never followed up on is around 4% if you have a BDC, and about 34% if you don’t

What do these numbers mean? These numbers suggest that dealerships need to redefine their follow up process so everyone is reached out to, and in a timely manner. Even one person falling through the cracks is too many. Here’s what you can do:

• Evaluate your structure; do you need a BDC staff?
• Speed up internal communications
• Set up CRM alerts

Responses:

• 88% of the time dealerships send a personal response to customers
• 87% of the time dealerships send personal value proposition emails

What do these numbers mean? These numbers tell us that many leads aren’t getting personal responses or invitations. This is an easy thing to fix so that each customer feels like you are looking out for them specifically and working with them individually. Here’s what you can do:

• Take personalization to the next level
• Read, then respond
• Get visual
• Be in charge of the details

Confirming Prices:

• 93% of the time, best in class dealers confirm used car prices
• 85% of the tie, best in class dealers confirm used car prices.

What do these numbers mean? It’s easy to see that this is one of the best uses of CRM capabilities, however it appears that new car confirmations are slipping. This makes sense; salespeople want to get the best price for a car and sometimes knowing which incentives will work or won’t work can be hard. But here’s what you can do:

• Incorporate price transparency
• Provide MSRP, the discount, and the amount they will save
• Validate your prices with third party tools

Preferred Contact Method:

• 89% of the time, the dealership uses the customer’s preferred method
• 90% of the time dealerships send emails that encourage answers

What do these numbers mean? These numbers tell us that dealerships can do a little bit more work to ensure they will get contact with a customer every time. By doing a few simple things, you are incredibly more likely to engage the customer and help them communicate to you what they need. Here’s what you can do

• Skip unhelpful questions like “Are you interested?”
• Reply to each message
• Find out and stick to their preferred contact method
• Be helpful!

Lost Prospects:

• Time before marking prospects as lost is on average, 2 days
• 49% of the time dealerships call customers more than once on day one

What do these numbers mean? These numbers show us how the industry is loaded in the front end and are willing to work hard right at first, but sometimes may call it quits too early. There are a few things you can do to ensure you are moving on from customers at the right time, and not annoying them:

• Front-load your follow up
• Build in accountability

Appointments:

• The average number of appointments set per day, per salesperson is 6
• On average, 89% of customers are marked as “sold” in the CRM after 30 days.

What do these numbers mean? These numbers tell us that there is lots of fast paced, diligent work being done in the industry. But that means that your competition is doing all that work as well! So here’s what you can do:

• Help your salespeople by giving them CRM training
• Evaluate your structure
• Review your process
• Mystery shop yourself, and the competition

Now that you’ve learned more about CRM and how it can help you than you ever wanted to, take it and run!

Customer surveys are a great way to get feedback from people who are in your dealership. It’s important to be able to understand what they liked or didn’t like about their experience. This helps you be able to perform better in the future. But this isn’t the only option.

Online reviews are an incredibly valuable way for you to really understand what a customer is going through in your store. Surveys get answers to certain questions, but online reviews can get even more detailed information about a customer’s experience. This gives the customer a chance to use their own words and really voice how they feel about the product or service. This gets authentic and valuable information for your company.

These online reviews are often used by dealerships on websites to display how people feel about their products and services. This can be a great way to show that you are willing to take what people say and use it for the benefit of others.

Here’s a few things you need to know about making online reviews work for your company:

1. A waiting customer in the lounge is a perfect candidate to provide an online review


2. Incentivizing them to write a cars.com or Google review while they wait is twice as likely to happen than after they have left the dealership


3. Charj has found that giving a customer a platform to write reviews on can increase the total reviews content growth by 11%

So stop waiting and start working with waiting customers to get online reviews today!

Yes Lifecycle Marketing recently released a study about the gaps in email marketing. I took this research and have created a three part series on improving your email marketing by closing these different gaps. The first gap in email marketing is between subscriber RESPONSE and subscriber ENGAGEMENT.

Open rates have remained consistent over the past 3 years, but click rates and CTO rates are on a downward spiral. Unique click rate has gone down 15 percent year over year, and CTO rate has gone down 12 percent year over year. What do these numbers tell us? They say there’s a growing gap between response and engagement. Customers are opening emails as frequently as ever, but they’re not engaging and converting.

In the auto industry specifically, there is an 11.1% open rate, a 1.3% click rate, and a 8.7% click to open rate. The rates in the auto industry are better than in many other industries, but there still seems to be a major disconnect.

So how can you start improving? Brands often find success by using specific taglines many times in their marketing, so that when customers are ready for an oil change or for a new car, they’ll remember your consistent marketing.

Another easy way to work on your email marketing is by evaluating the day of the week that you send emails. Many studies show that Friday and Saturday are actually some of the best days for conversions, so that may be something to take into consideration.

I recommend always personalizing emails by name; consumers have come to expect this.

Studies also find that holiday and event emails give you a large advantage as they create a sense of urgency.

Trying these things and even being more aware of the disconnect between response and engagement can help you work on your email strategy, and drastically improve it.

We’ve discussed why consumer generated content is so valuable to dealerships, but many people still may not be convinced. Some believe that consumer generated content is looked at and produced by the younger generations only.  But Bazaarvoice research shows that it’s not just the 20-year old group that’s heading online to read and write reviews.

Take a look at the age groups and percentages of each age group who said that online reviews significantly impact their purchasing decisions.

18 – 24 years old: 35%

25 – 34 years old: 36%

35 – 44 years old: 32%

45 – 54 years old: 24%

55 – 64 years old: 19%

65+ years old: 17%

So we can see that a healthy percentage of every age group are significantly influenced by consumer reviews or social content when it comes to purchasing a car. 

Why is this valuable? This information changes the way that your dealership should use consumer-generated content to help others. By recognizing that it’s not just one specific age group that uses this content to make decisions, your dealership can evaluate how you display and utilize this type of content. You could try something like displaying reviews on your site, asking customers to leave reviews once they leave your dealership, interact more on social media to show that your company has real people behind it, etc.

The age factor should be considered when it comes to consumer-generated content, but for different reasons than many people think. It’s about the fact that all ages read reviews and use social media as part of their decision making process, and it’s important to realize this as you integrate this marketing strategy into your dealership.

Las Vegas, January 3rd, 2017 – Excelfore announced that the company will be demonstrating smart mobility networking solutions for in-vehicle and vehicle to cloud networks during the Consumer Electronics Show, CES2017, in Las Vegas.  Excelfore demonstrations will include an in-vehicle network architecture with 1Gbit Ethernet backbone, multiple 100Mbit star clusters, headunit, smart antenna, sensors, CAN ECUs, USB ports for smartphones, all with OTA update capability and end-to-end security.

Excelfore demonstrations during CES are by appointment only.  Interested parties are invited to inquire at:  www.excelfore/ces2017.

Eco-System Partnerships
Shrikant Acharya, Chief Technology Officer at Excelfore said, “Creating scalable and secure end-to-end connectivity is not just a question of technologies, but of behaviors and discipline. A system level architectural approach is needed, which takes into account networks and hardware in the vehicle, services in the cloud, and mechanisms of rolling out updates to vehicles. No one company can do it all. It requires cooperation among many participants, an approach that can be seen in the results we are showcasing with our partners during CES.” 

The Excelfore demonstrations bring together multiple network technologies such as CAN, Ethernet, Audi-Video Bridging / Time-Sensitive Networking (AVB/TSN), USB, WiFi and cellular.  Multiple operating systems including Linux, GENIVI Linux, Mentor Connected OS Linux, QNX, Integrity and AutoSAR are also showcased.  Acharya continued, adding, “We can all agree that we don’t want to re-invent the wheel. But it’s not just wheels.  The automotive industry has a great deal of legacy technology. The best way to navigate the transition to smart mobility is a systematic approach to bring those technologies together, not re-inventing them.”

About Excelfore

Excelfore Corporation, located in Silicon Valley, enables smart mobility networks with a scalable and secure unified middleware framework. Excelfore products include the eAVB™ protocol stack for in-vehicle Ethernet time-sensitive networking, as well as cloud-to-vehicle eSync™ software update management, eDiagnostics™ smart diagnostics, and eMatics™ fleet prognostics and fleet learning.   www.excelfore.com

BLAINE, Minn., Dec. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Teamsters who deliver O'Reilly Auto Parts to the company's retail outlets across Minnesota voted unanimously to walk off the job if the company does not abandon contract demands that will drive down living standards and create unnecessary safety risks. The workers, represented by Teamsters Local 120, have been working without a contract since Dec. 10.

"The company is putting profits ahead of safety and fairness by demanding increases in the number of deliveries while paying drivers less," said Troy Gustafson, Teamsters Local 120 Business Agent. "We won't stand for it."

O'Reilly Automotive (Nasdaq: ORLY) reported record earnings in 2015 and has reported sales and gross profit growth in each quarter this year as compared to the same periods last year.

"O'Reilly management is putting its successful business model in jeopardy by playing fast and loose with the safety of employees and customers," said Tom Erickson, President of Teamsters Local 120. "Their short-sighted strategy could spark a work stoppage causing service delays."

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.teamster.org.

2016 has come to an end. For some, it was a banner year full of amazing sales and advancements. For others, it was a rough sales year, and one full of nervous anticipation for the future. No matter how you felt about 2016, it’s almost over. And now we get a fresh start with 2017. But what will this New Year hold for us? We asked some of the industry’s top influencers what they predicted would be ahead for 2017, and here’s what they had to say.

Gary May, President of Interactive Marketing and Consulting Services:

1. Incentives will rise in 2017 and pressures on OEMs will result in more focus on traditional media for Tier 1.

2. Tier 3 will still struggle with digital due to pervasive platforms and middlemen, while a small increase in leading dealers will invest properly in digital to take market share.

3. Online purchase technology and adoption will continue to move forward, slowly.

4. Data and data ownership/sharing rights will be a powder keg behind the scenes.

Aaron Krane, Drive Motor’s CEO:

1. Millennials will gain marketshare and gravitate towards on-demand car-renting and purchasing experiences, which will influence auto-dealers’ behavior/offerings.

2. Consumers who don’t like being “desked” will spend less time inside the F&I manager’s office, especially as auto dealers will sell more F&I products online -- and fewer offline. With more transparency and digital transactions, everyone wins. In a hassle-free environment, consumers will be more likely to self-upgrade.

3. Large tech companies like Amazon and Uber will begin to encroach on dealership marketshare and customer relationships.

David Kain, Kain Automotive President:

1. I predict that 2017 will be the expansion of more self-service on dealership websites, where consumers are able to move further in the purchase process before interacting with a salesperson at the dealership. This will require innovation by website providers and trust by dealership management and financial institutions. At present, dealership websites are more of a barrier to self-service or digital retailing than a catalyst.  

2. I predict that 2017 will be an opportunity for dealerships that focus on the Professional Development of their Sales Team Members and move them into more entrepreneurial roles where they are responsible for their own business development in harmony with the Dealership BDC's and Internet Operations.  

3. I predict that 2017 will be a year when attribution becomes readily available and true sales influencers are revealed forcing passive influencers to rethink their business models so they can really prove their value in Digital Marketing.

Richard Rikess, Auto Consultant:

1. The Autonomous Vehicle won’t happen in 2017. Pretty much all I hear people discussing is the autonomous auto. While I am cautiously optimistic about this game changing event, it will not be happening in 2017! So, let us who are not involved in the production and distribution of this era changing vehicle focus on what we can impact this year. While others are chasing shiny widgets and the next great thing, when can we go back to basics and just start becoming professional sales consultants again?

2. Digital Marketing will be important, but not without proper sales techniques. SEO/SEM/Rep Man/Social Media, how do any of these matter if we can’t do a proper meet & greet? If we can’t take a phone up and turn into a sale? If we still do not respond to emails by answering the consumer’s questions and providing value? When a football team is in trouble, they always go back to the blocking and tackling. That’s all I want for 2017, I don’t want the latest and greatest algorithm to beat Google, and I don’t need to undercut my competitor’s price by fifty bucks! I just need to do a better job taking care of my customer base and my prospects!

Ron Henson, Director Of Operations DrivingSales University:

1. SAAR for 2017 declines to 17.2 ruled by higher interest rates that won't be offset by lower fuel prices.

2. Nissan surpasses Honda and becomes #2 import brand trailing only Toyota.

3. Usage-based auto insurance will increase steeply in 2017 as insurance companies adopt a model where customers are charged based on driving habits as recorded by telematic devices.

4. THIS IS A BOLD ONE: Lenders will begin to allow multiple borrowers on car loans in order to adapt to the current ride-sharing trends.

Allen Turner, Owner of Allen Turner Hyundai

1. I am not alone in thinking that interest will continue to rise as will consumer confidence over the next few years, however that will not be a huge number.

2. I believe that Trump will be business friendly and that will help create jobs helping us to sell more metal. 

3. I believe that buying services such as True car and others will be less of a factor as they are not new anymore, and more dealers realize they are not our partners. 

4.  Used cars will continue to be the go to department as manufacturers have less opportunity for "take always" in that area. 

5. As we have seen Beepi shutting down outside of California, I am encouraged that a locally owned and operated, bricks and mortar, car dealership still brings value to the community and its consumers. I predict that this trend continues and manufacturers and customers alike realize we bring value and service that helps them. 

Joe Webb, DealerKnows:

1. While I don't want to make full-fledged proclamations of prognostications, I will say that I have several "hopeful predictions" for automotive retailing in 2017. As searches are trying to match customer intent more and more at all phases of the shopping funnel, dealers will continue to draw back budget from 3rd party resources in hopes of off-site leads, and dedicate dollars to driving all means of traffic (digital or otherwise) to their own website and storefront. Given this trend, more focus will be put on technology that will assist their own website (and staff) with valuable customer engagement.

2. I would like to see a greater emphasis be put on developing seamless interactions with customers through new website transactional tools, video platforms, and SMS texting capability embedded throughout sites. With the new embracement of communication methods and transactional technologies, dealers must look inward at their own personnel to ensure they have the skill sets and training in place to deliver these efficient sales processes.

3. Sadly, I think dealers will still struggle with the transition between delivering a great online experience and the less than ideal customer experience the showroom provides. Hopefully, more transactional technologies become utilized at the tier 3 level before tier 1 begins instituting policies that some dealers are not yet ready for. Differentiation of the dealership brand will become harder to clarify as more dealers invest in themselves, and I see only dealers truly leveraging the power of video able to stand out online.

Do you agree, disagree? Have some different predictions of your own? Please let us know in the comments below. And if you have your own predictions for 2017, please comment by January 15th for the chance to be involved in one of our breakout sessions at DSES.

Originally Published By Automotive News

$14.7 billion

Volkswagen AG's settlement with regulators and owners of 450,000 polluting diesel vehicles, approved by a judge in October.

$1.87

The U.S. average per-gallon cost of gasoline in February 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That was the lowest gasoline price since January 2009, when a gallon cost $1.84, and the lowest price for last year.

18

The number of trophies the 2016 Volvo XC90 was awarded from U.S. media outlets and press associations, marking a resurgence for the brand.

300

How many years' worth of time Google's Waymo prototype self-driving cars have spent driving around and learning how to behave like a human driver.

41

In months, how long FCA's sales streak lasted before ending in September 2013. The company restated sales in July 2016, admitting its 75-month U.S. sales streak was not actually a thing.

531

The number of Cadillac ELRs sold through November. Cadillac said in February it would discontinue the slow-selling plug-in hybrid, which execs admitted was overpriced at its 2013 launch at $75,995, including shipping. Cadillac slashed the price by about $10,000 for the 2016 model year.

46 million

Number of recalled Takata airbag inflators in 29 million vehicles across 19 brands in the U.S. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expanded the recall in May.

6 seconds

How long a test drive of a Mercedes GLE350 lasted before the customer flipped the crossover on its side, just feet from the dealership's showroom.

75th

Anniversary that Jeep celebrated on July 16, 2016, which marked the day in 1941 when Willys-Overland Motor Co. in Toledo, Ohio, received its first contract to produce the Willys MB for use by the American military.

30

How many cars noted designer J Mays drew for Disney's Zootopia movie, including a convertible made to accommodate a moose's antlers and a tall, articulated car big enough to fit a giraffe.