Combination creates a leading provider of marketing technology and software solutions exclusively serving automotive manufacturers and dealerships in the U.S.

Chicago, IL and Clearwater, FL—July 18, 2019— Affinitiv, Inc. (“Affinitiv”) and Loop LLC (“AutoLoop”), leading providers of data-driven marketing automation and software solutions to the automotive market, today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to merge the two companies. The transaction is subject to approval under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended (the “HSR Act”).

The highly strategic merger will combine two industry-leading platforms to create the largest provider of data-driven marketing and software solutions exclusively focused on the automotive customer lifecycle. Key highlights of the combined company include:

• Modern and scalable SaaS offering, purpose-built for automotive OEMs and dealerships
• Fully integrated product portfolio across retention marketing, equity mining, online scheduling, service lane software, digital marketing and appraisal solutions
• Proprietary analytics platform that provides sophisticated customer and marketing insights based on the combination of unique data sets from OEMs, dealerships and third parties
• Long-term and highly strategic relationships with over 10 OEM partners and over 6,500 dealerships

The merger will result in a combined company with revenues of approximately $200 million and over 800 employees. The combined company will operate under the Affinitiv brand name, but will continue to leverage the AutoLoop brand across its product portfolio. NY-based private equity firm CIP Capital will continue as majority owners of the combined business going forward.

“The combined company is ideally suited to help guide OEMs and dealerships through the major disruptors that are facing the automobile industry, putting tremendous pressure on the profitability of dealers including lengthening servicing intervals, digital presence, and the ever increasing complexity in marketing with the proliferation of ‘Big Data’ and new mobile and digital channels,” said Scot Eisenfelder, CEO of Affinitiv.

AutoLoop CEO Steve Anderson continued, “The pace of technological evolution has accelerated tremendously over the past decade, and we’re committed to staying at the forefront of innovation as we continue to invest aggressively in new software and analytics capabilities for our clients. Partnering with Affinitiv gives us an extraordinary opportunity to enhance our existing products, expand our offerings and better serve our customer base as they navigate the industry challenges ahead.”

The combined company will continue to leverage its scale, resources and unique set of marketing, software and analytics offerings to drive innovation while providing clients with world-class levels of customer support for all Affinitiv and AutoLoop solutions.

About Affinitiv

Affinitiv is a leading marketing technology company serving automotive manufacturers (OEMs), dealership groups, and individual dealerships. Through a technology-driven and consultative approach, Affinitiv enables dealerships to produce, manage, measure and optimize omni-channel communications to drive brand loyalty and increase revenue. Affinitiv’s Connectiv1 Platform is designed to provide a 360° view of customer, vehicle, dealership and marketing campaign effectiveness all in one place. Affinitiv’s digital and analytics capabilities support a consistent customer experience through the entire ownership lifecycle. Affinitiv was formed in 2016 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL.

About AutoLoop

Since 2005, AutoLoop has been helping automotive dealerships grow their businesses. It all began with the AutoLoop Sales and Service Suite, a set of seamlessly interconnected Sales, Service, and Engagement tools designed to give dealerships industry-leading features, intelligent analytics, and streamlined performance. Together, these elements enable dealers to boost sales, optimize service, market with precision, and – most importantly – drive revenue. AutoLoop products are built by dealers for dealers, and are constantly evolving to help over 2,100 franchise dealerships elevate their automotive businesses every day. An Inc. 500 company with nearly 70 million names in its database and over 2 billion individual communications initiated, AutoLoop is passionate about being America's best customer retention partner for progressive dealerships. AutoLoop is headquartered in Clearwater, FL.

Scot Eisenfelder shares his opinion on why consumers have adopted online scheduling in other industries but only use it in low numbers within the automotive industry.

CEO & Executive Chairman Scot Eisenfelder explains why customers defect in service in this video blog.

eBook shares 9 marketing campaign strategies proven to increase customer loyalty and service revenue 

Chicago, IL—June 3, 2019— Affinitiv, the retail auto industry's leading marketing technology provider, today announced the release of a free eBook for auto dealers: Turbocharge Your Owner Retention Program (ORP) Marketing. The eBook reveals the most effective way to measure ORP marketing results and shares nine marketing campaign strategies proven to maximize results from manufacturer ORPs.

“Most dealers do some if not all of their service marketing with their manufacturer ORP, but results from these programs can be all over the board, depending on the chosen vendor, channel strategies and messaging,” said Scot Eisenfelder, CEO of Affinitiv. "The fact is many dealers underinvest in service marketing even though front-end profit margins are shrinking and customer retention is more important than ever."

"This eBook helps dealers assess the effectiveness of their ORP and gives them actionable strategies so they can improve results," said Courtney Evans, VP of Product for Affinitiv. "If you're interested in learning what other dealers are doing to increase their service business, this eBook will help you identify and fix the weak areas in your own service marketing strategy."

Many dealerships use a cookie-cutter approach to their ORPs, limiting customer communications to direct mail and email campaigns. The eBook stresses the importance of using on omnichannel approach to greatly increase frequency, reach and response rates.

The eBook also features four case studies of dealerships that improved ORP results with customized marketing strategies. Each dealership had a different and distinct goal, from increasing parts revenue to improving online presence, filling new service bays and re-engaging lapsed customers. The dealerships attained these goals using their ORP, optimized with campaign strategies that leveraged their customer data and third-party data to deliver targeted messages and offers.

Dealers who want to elevate their ORP from a marketing tool to a relationship-building tool can learn proven strategies in this free eBook.

To download, click on this link: Turbocharge Your Owner Retention Program (ORP) Marketing. For more information, visit www.affinitiv.com

About Affinitiv:

Affinitiv is a leading marketing technology company serving a dozen automotive manufacturers (OEMs) and more than 5,500 franchise dealerships. Affinitiv’s Connectiv1 Platform is designed to provide a 360° view of customer, vehicle, dealership and marketing campaign effectiveness all in one place. Affinitiv makes it easy for auto dealerships to leverage data and target customers with the right message at the right time on the right communication channel.

Affinitiv enables dealerships to produce, manage, measure and optimize omni-channel communications to drive brand loyalty and increase revenue. Affinitiv’s digital and analytic capabilities support a consistent customer experience through the entire ownership lifecycle. Affinitiv was formed in 2016 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL.

Scot Eisenfelder shares how dealerships can take future predictions and turn them into revenue opportunities in this video blog.

As the old adage goes, no one plans to fail, they just fail to plan. This could not be more true when it comes to service marketing budgets in dealerships.

As new vehicle sales and gross margins decline, it's natural to look for ways to cut expenses. But I've never understood the logic behind cutting service marketing budgets.

If service marketing is not working, by all means, change it—but if it does work, shouldn’t you increase service marketing when sales are slow? How else do you expect to maintain profits during challenging times?

According to NADA, fixed ops is responsible for 48% percent of dealership gross profits, yet most dealers don't have an annual service marketing plan, and their service marketing budgets are 10% or less of the overall marketing budget.

The logic behind this allocation is that new vehicles sales feed service. That may have been true 40 years ago, when you were guaranteed a substantial amount of warranty work and in-warranty customer pay business just from your new vehicle sales.

However, today’s franchise dealers only capture 20-25% of revenue potential from their Units in Operations (UIO). That means dealers are leaking 75-80% of service work from the cars they have sold to their competition! For many years now, independent aftermarket chains have slowly but steadily been increasing market share.

Additionally, today’s vehicles are higher quality and require less maintenance. For dealers, this means less warranty work, less standard maintenance work and more replace-than-repair work. So, as new vehicle sales decline, your service work is bound to decline at an even more rapid rate, unless you become more aggressive with service marketing.

For the dealer principals reading this, do you know why your GMs yank the service marketing budgets when sales slow? Because their pay plan incents them to increase this month’s profit at the expense of long-term growth. But that's a topic for another day.

It's funny how on the sales side, principals and GMs alike are loathe to cut the marketing budget, believing they need to stay competitive. What they don't realize is that sales marketing in a contracting market is a zero-sum game.

As more dollars chase fewer sales, conquest efforts become more expensive and less effective. It’s not unusual to see incremental marketing costs exceed gross margin net of commissions for conquest sales, with dealers hoping that service and repeat purchases will justify their initial acquisition costs.

The bottom line is this. As long as new vehicle sales and gross margins continue to decline, your best bet for revenue growth potential is in fixed ops. If new vehicles sales don't feed service, then where is that service revenue going to come from?

New service business comes from service marketing. Recommendations include:

Set a budget similar to sales. Most of you can name your market PVR target in your sleep, but do you have a service marketing PRO? The disproportionate spending on sales marketing vs. service marketing makes no sense. The old argument that sales feeds service does not hold water in today's market. Today it's equally, if not more true, that service feeds sales.

Prioritize spending. Engage all active service customers regularly across multiple channels; especially digital channels as that's where your customers' attention is. Keep brand awareness high and send highly targeted, relevant offers.

Conquest. Inevitably some of your service customers drop off every month. While some of these can be replenished through new vehicle sales, most of them have to be replenished through conquest campaigns. Establish an aggressive, multi-channel service conquest strategy to find and bring in new customers on a regular basis.

Allocate budgets in advance. Seasonal service campaigns are highly effective and proven to deliver high ROI, so plan ahead to make the most out of campaigns such as spring tire, fall tire, summer road trips and winterizing vehicles.

Market all service profit centers. Don't get stuck marketing basic maintenance and repair work. Do your customers know that you have a collision center? Do they know about your tire program, or about your aftermarket accessories? Dealers are notoriously bad at educating service customers about all available options.

Historically dealership service marketing budgets have been an afterthought, with no rhyme or reason given to how budgets are allocated or spent. For proactive dealers willing to think outside the box, this presents a huge opportunity to steal service work from your competition who remain stuck in their service marketing ruts.

Affinitiv CEO & Executive Chairman Scot Eisenfelder shares why dealerships should pay attention to the razor and razor blade models for their stores.

One of the biggest benefits of an omnichannel marketing strategy is the ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. In this blog, I'm going to focus on the "right person" part of this equation.

If your goal is retention marketing and building customer loyalty, of course it's always best to market to the customers in your own database.

But what about conquest marketing?

Marketing vendors talk a lot about strategy and messaging, but as we know that's only part of the equation. To maximize your return on investment, you also need a really good list.

Some vendors will buy lists with thousands of names in your dealership's primary market area (PMA), then blanket the entire area with postcards or coupons. If they have email addresses, they'll send out e-blasts to the entire list hoping for a one- to two- percent response rate. This is an expensive and highly ineffective strategy.

You'll get much better results and ROI with a strong list and sending targeted messages to various segments of the list based on data. What kind of data? Make sure your marketing vendor curates separate sales and service prospect lists using the following information:

Demographic Data

When purchasing a list, you can choose a number of demographic targets such as income, age, marital status, credit score ranges and over 175 lifestyle selections. How do you know which ones to target?

Start by analyzing your current customers. The top 20% of your customers product 69% of your gross profits. Compile demographic data on these customers and look at trends. What is their average income? Which zip codes do they live in? Use this demographic data to set parameters for prospects you want to conquest.

A number of lifestyle factors also help to determine which consumers in your PMA are in-market for a new or used vehicle. These include newly engaged, newlyweds, parents-to-be, new parents, parents with teen drivers, college bound students and parents, new movers, new divorcees and automobile off-lease.

Another strategy that falls into the demographic data category is to purchase vehicle registration data and cross-reference those names to your purchased list. In sales conquest campaigns, this allows you to target competing brand owners, selectable by vehicle make, model and year.

Customer Transactions

Up to 72% of dealership customers choose third-party independent repair facilities (IRFs) for service. Fortunately, it's possible to access credit card transaction records for consumers who frequent Pep Boys, Jiffy Lube, other IRFs and even competitive franchise dealerships. Cross-reference these names to prospects on your purchased list.

These consumers make ideal targets for service conquest campaigns. At an average $40 to $80 per customer acquisition, service conquest campaigns can be far more cost effective than sales conquest campaigns.

Online Behavior

For digital campaigns, it's easy to set up targeting parameters based on consumers' online behavior. This includes websites visited, such as third-party auto shopping sites, or search terms used in Google and other search engines.

Depending on the search terms used, you can easily identify where the prospect is in the buying cycle and deliver messages accordingly. Early in the buying cycle it's best to use a strategy that raises brand awareness. Later in the buying cycle you might want to run PPC campaigns with calls to action designed to convert active shoppers into visiting your website or calling your dealership.

Online behavior is also highly effective for digital service conquest campaigns. Consumers who are actively looking for vehicle repair can be targeted using PPC campaigns and retargeting ads.

Predictive Analytics

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. With advanced data analysis technology, it's possible to use data from multiple sources to generate a complete view of all customer interactions. With a detailed analysis of past transactions, it's possible to predict the likely future transactions that will take place, and when.

Although predictive analytics can be used in conquest campaigns, the technology works best with the customers in your own database, including defectors. Rather than try to entice them back with an oil change coupon or generic service offer, use data points to identify specific opportunities based on past behavior and where they are in the ownership lifecycle. With detailed data analysis, you should be able to target customers who are due for routine maintenance, trade-in value estimation, lease termination, warranty expiration, recalls and more.

Using all of this data together allows you to narrow down a purchased list of potentially thousands of random consumers in your PMA, to hundreds of in-market car shoppers and/or service conquest prospects, segmented for targeted message delivery. The power of a good list significantly reduces marketing costs and increases ROI, so make sure your dealership's marketing partner knows who's on your list.

Can the trend in dealership subscription services affect dealership valuation? Scot Eisenfelder shares his opinion in this video blog.

Connectiv Prospect update doubles social media impressions & decreases Cost Per Vehicle Sold, at no additional cost to dealers

Chicago, IL- January 7, 2018- Affinitiv has added Instagram social ads to Connectiv Prospect, its conquest campaign marketing solution for auto dealerships. In a 30-day pilot at Cullman Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership in Alabama, the Instagram update more than doubled the number of social impressions compared to Facebook ads alone, from 20,019 impressions in September 2018 to 45,878 impressions in October 2018.

After four months on Connectiv Prospect, Cullman CDJR decreased its Cost per Vehicle Sold (CPVS) from $250 to $167. For auto dealers, CPVS is a key metric used to determine the return on investment of conquest marketing campaigns. In general, a CPVS of $300 or less is considered a desirable ROI.

"Marketing to car shoppers via traditional channels such as television, radio and direct mail drives the CPVS up," said Eisenfelder. "Digital marketing, with the power of predictive analytics behind it, allows dealers to target only in-market shoppers."

Affinitiv campaign data shows an average 77 percent increase in reach when social media advertising is added to a traditional marketing plan. The reason is simple; social media is where consumer attention is focused. On average, people spend more than three hours per day on mobile devices, and one in five mobile minutes are spent on Facebook or Instagram.

Instagram has 700 million active monthly users, eight million business profiles and over one million active advertisers. The platform reaches a large segment of consumers who are not active on Facebook. According to Instagram internal data:

• 80% of Instagram users follow a business on Instagram
• 60% of users learn about a product or service through Instagram
• 75% of users take action after being inspired by a post
• 78% of adults age 18-24 use Instagram

Using Facebook and Instagram platforms together have proven to be a more cost-effective solution than running a standalone campaign on either platform.

Connectiv Prospect is a digital-only marketing solution designed for auto dealer conquest campaigns in both sales and service. Several packages are available based on a dealership’s needs, with strategies that include email, social media advertising, display advertising and optional geo-fencing.

In service, Connectiv Prospect is often used in conjunction with a dealership’s existing manufacturer owner retention program (ORP). The addition of digital marketing is proven to significantly improve key fixed ops metrics including RO count, customer pay dollars per RO and service revenue.

Affinitiv identifies in-market car shoppers and service prospects by analyzing data from multiple sources, including 200+ million auto owners with 175+ lifestyle demographic options and independent repair facility service records.

Additional targets include Super Responders, consumers driven by life-changing events that often precede the purchase of a new vehicle; including newlyweds, new parents, parents with teen drivers, college bound students, divorcees and recently moved.

This data is combined with analysis from consumers' online behavior to accurately identify in-market prospects. Affinitiv has the industry’s largest auto intender file containing data from buyers who have confirmed they will purchase or lease within 120 days.

The Instagram update is available to auto dealers using Connectiv Prospect at no additional cost.

For more information on Connectiv Prospect, visit booth #2139S at the NADA Convention and Expo in San Francisco, CA. Schedule a demo http://bit.ly/Affinitivdemo

For more information on Affinitiv, visit www.affinitiv.com.

About Affinitiv:

Affinitiv is a leading marketing technology company serving automotive manufacturers (OEMs), dealership groups, and individual dealers. Affinitiv’s Connectiv1 Platform is designed to provide a 360° view of customer, vehicle, dealership and marketing campaign effectiveness all in one place. It makes it easy for auto dealerships to leverage data and target customers with the right message at the right time on the right communication channel.

Affinitiv enables dealerships to produce, manage, measure and optimize omni-channel communications to drive brand loyalty and increase revenue. Affinitiv’s digital and analytic capabilities support a consistent customer experience through the entire ownership lifecycle. Affinitiv was formed in 2016 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL.