This is great and all Shawn and I can appreciate the points you are making here. The question that pops in my mind though is. If it's completely automated, is it really marketing? I tend to be on the side of the fence that says no it isn't. Automation is good for follow up reminder calls for a dentist appt. - busy work that has no necessary or traceable values. Efficiency is built through the business rules and KPI's companies set for their people. If I'm about to drop 30, 60, 90k on a car shouldn't i (mr. Customer) get to expect a little more personalized experience? The other issue that you run into when creating a self qualifying system based on triggers is that if anyone of those triggers becomes compromised it'll be like a house of cards crumbling down. Which leads to an infrastructure nightmare. Automation has its place don't get me wrong. But automating the entire process as you mention here, has a bottom line negative impact to a dealership which I can prove to you. I have looked over 2 years of data for various campaigns at various stores and can say with certainty that Automation does not sell more cars. It actually has lost more deals., Maybe if auto dealerships were trying to sell low cost items more efficiently then I would agree with what you are saying. But sine we sell high priced goods there is a level of personalization that comes with the price tag. If those things didn't matter, best buy wouldn't have Geek Squad for example. I have used simply cast in the past for my own business and have shared your platforms with others. So I understand what you're saying. No disrespect but what you are saying here is wrong for the automotive sector < to a degree> at least.

Chris, thanks for your reply. Great to hear you are familiar with our solution - may I ask if you had an opportunity to look at the 360 aspect for building automated decisions? In terms of automated marketing - it is marketing. While many dealers do a good job with customer engagement through marketing, there are numerous dealers that can do a better job with sending marketing messages, customer follow-up, after sales relationships and transferring them to the service department. Wouldn't you agree? Also, while marketing is part of the solution - another very important part is customer communication using the channels available. We work with retailers to automate aspects for service customer status updates, special order parts, confirming appointments and of course surveying sales and service customers after the visits. For personal messages that is specifically what our system supports to ensure that communication is sent using the preferred mode of email, voice mail, SMS, etc. of the customer themselves. Then using the data available to customize the message specifically is set up using decisions nodes based on the fields and in turn custom the information provided to the reader. Should a dealer want to send out a seasonal tire special for example, have a template that offers the information but within the same email have a specific savings based on the customer history. They haven't been in for 4 months? Send a coupon. Declined a new battery? Send them information on the benefits of a new battery for the winter. A customer looking for a specific used vehicle? Send an email as soon as one arrives in inventory. Wouldn't this benefit the sales process for the customer? While you do a great job with your marketing, there are lots of dealers that can use solutions to streamline many processes, automatically.

Shawn, I totally agree. We all have room for improvements. I totally get what you mean by streamlining processes. But that't not what your original post was suggesting. Your original post positions automation as the answer rather than a part of the solution. What dealers need most is to first understand the spaces and platforms that you mention. Develop specific sets of KPI's and design a systematic reporting structure before even thinking about marketing automation. With out those thing established and agreed upon first. A dealer is basically spitting in the wind.

Thanks for the reply Chris. From your perspective what channel do dealers need the most understanding? Where is the biggest challenge / opportunity for them as of today? Also, from a a reporting structure what do you see as a way to track and provide the results? Thanks for the great discussion!

Thanks for question Shawn I appreciate the discussion as well. I started writing an entire book of the things I do and realized that it would probably be better if I built a little ebook of all the things I do, tips and tricks and give it away at some point. But to answer your question... I would say that they need to understand what it is that sets them apart from any other dealership in town. When i say "stand out" I don't mean the same lazy answer of "well we are the number 1 dealership in this town and we've won this award that nobody cares about" The best place to get this info is by asking a dealerships best customers. They will tell you what they love about your dealership so much. I bet real american money that it isn't what a dealer may think it is. Once you realize what you are known for than you can start building your ideas and plans around those insights. If you are known for having a friendly staff and a nice, quiet lounge. You might want to leave the explosions and voice of the monster truck guy out of the next TV ad. A huge challenge I see in a lot of dealerships is the lack of communications between different parts of the front line. Meaning that the person running your CRM and email campaign should probably have the knowledge of the next TV campaigns promotion well in advance to prepare the proper inbound channels to make sure each point of contact is being tested, measured, adjusted and tested. We live in a world where everything can be measured to a certain degree. Each measure may be different but all are equally important to move the flow of the funnel. In most cases dealers set themselves up for failure by expecting each outgoing message the dealership makes to provide the same singular ROI. ROI's can be translated though and should be. They also need to decide what is the exact ROI they want. Do they want to look at everything as just providing leads or do they want to build community and be part of the solutions people are looking for? By identifying what you want to get out of the channels it will automatically eliminate the clutter and allow someone to focus on the exactly what they are going after. This can be measured by simply deciding what value the channel or platform has for you. If you want to sell cars on twitter you might find that twitter isn't really the best place for that and rather than wasting time trying to build it out. You can focus more on the places you see growth. I don't know if I answered your question as exact as I would have like to but it is a very good question that I am thinking I want to build on more and build out some materials to share. Thanks again Shawn