Welcome back to the Improve My Dealership blog brought to you by eTag, the dealer key management systems provider. We’ve decided to focus Improve My Dealership posts on exploring avenues to efficiencies and higher profitability for dealerships.

M-revolution

During the last few months we’ve been noticing a wave of interest in mobile communications and mobile marketing as part of an online strategy for stimulating car sales so we thought we would take a closer look at the m-commerce revolution and what it means for UK car dealerships.

Firstly it’s important to look the key areas that you may need to consider as these are the building blocks of a great mobile comms strategy:

1.      Mobile website

2.      Mobile Wallet

3.      QR Codes

4.      Mobile Apps

5.      Texting

6.      Responsive Email Design (RED)

Mobile Website

The key is to have a website which views well on mobile devices including tablets, smart phones and laptops. You should also tailor content so it’s easy to read on the move. Adding a well-flagged Click To Call (CTC) button on the mobile site for example is likely to be a big winner for mobile users who are busy and don’t want to search through a site for contact details. CTC; according to new statistics from the Google Think Insights published in Auto Retail Bulletin this month; is one of the most-used features on the mobile search engine results. 70% of mobile users have used CTC to reach the businesses they’ve found via their mobile. More importantly for sales departments, 61% of mobile searchers say that this option is most important at the purchasing phase – at the end of the sales cycle.

So the calls that are coming through off Click To Call buttons are likely to be red hot leads – quite possibly in your area right now looking to book a test drive or even buy a car. CTC is also valuable for mobile search ads – producing an average click through rate increase of 8%.

Location-based promotions & information provision

There has been a great deal of innovation going on in areas like location-based offers which could now be considered for application in dealerships. So for example Apple has begun installing iBeacons in many of its US stores. These sensors are placed on tables that hold Apple products. They allow customers to sign up for a notification on their iPhone to receive more pricing and features information on the product that customer might be looking at. The technology could be used to:

·         provide customers with details on upcoming workshop sessions on new products

·         locate customers waiting for Genius Bar appointments

·         presenting relevant adverts and promotions related to products that are close by.

For those looking at their phone regularly (and that’s most of us now) this could definitely assist the in-dealership experience and create an engagement which browsing customers might not otherwise get. Location-based offering, supported by information provision to the mobile, would seem to be something which dealerships ought to be looking at as part of their mobile strategies.

QR Codes

QR codes have, for some time, seemed like a solution looking for an application. However, if they can be used to provide mobile users with access to data and downloads which they value, then we think they can deliver real value to dealerships.  Directing mobile browsers from the QR code to your website’s front page is not good enough. But if you could use the QR code to push customers towards your new Mobile App for car configuration or car financing, then this would seem to be a great way of engaging them. For example, have you thought about putting QR codes on the specification/pricing sheet in the window of each of your used cars on the forecourt for customers to scan and read more about the vehicle and financing options in depth when they get home?

Mobile Apps

We predict an explosion of the development of mobile apps geared to helping provide customers with timely and easy-to-grasp information to assist their buying decision-making on the move. Much more on this in future eTag blog posts.

Texting

Texting deserves special attention in the mobile strategy as it has clear application for car dealerships. Clearly you will need to set guidelines for style and content of text messages to customers, even scripting key messages that might be used regularly. You can monitor and control what texts are going backwards and forwards by running all messaging through a central console. Several service providers offer these. Look out for a solution which automates opt-out permissions; tracks text transcripts; and provides user documentation designed to reduce compliance risk.

You will also need some familiarity with upcoming EU Data Protection legislation which is about to affect direct marketing and communications with customers. If the current proposals go through, then businesses will have to ask all customers for explicit permission to use their personal data for day-to-day activities currently taken for granted. Companies who can demonstrate that customers will get real value in return for their data will be the ones who thrive under the new rules.

But once the management systems have been put in place, texting has clear advantages for delivering timely information to customers. Messages like: ‘Your Vehicle is Ready’, ‘Your part is now in stock’, ‘there is a new special offer on the car you were looking at last time you were in’, ‘your MOT is due for renewal next week’ or ‘we’ve valeted your car free of charge’; if sent in a timely manner, are likely to be very helpful and will inspire genuine customer loyalty.

Responsive Email Design

Responsible Email Design (RED) is worth considering that if you are doing eNewsletters and other outbound email-based communications regularly. You must design these for reading on small format smart phones as over 50% of them will be viewed and read in this way now. Mobile-specific design expertise can enable you to get your communications right. Have a look at: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/mobile/design/. There are lots of RED software offerings out there now and your email marketing provider should also offer their own mobile-specific RED templates.

There are lots of things to consider so I thought I would leave you with a few technical tips for RED for mobile:

·         Single-column layouts that are no wider than 500 to 600 pixels work best on mobile devices. They’re easier to read, and if they fall apart, they’ll do so more gracefully.

·         Links and buttons should have a minimum target area of 44 × 44 pixels, as per Apple guidelines. Nothing is more unusable than clouds of tiny links on touchscreen devices.

·         The minimum font size displayed on iPhones is 13 pixels. Keep this in mind when styling text, because anything smaller will be up scaled and could break your layout. Alternately, you can override this behaviour in your style sheet (do so with care).

·         More than ever, keep your message concise, and place all important design elements in the upper portion of the email, if possible. Scrolling for miles is much harder on a touchscreen than with a mouse.

·         When possible, use display: none; to hide extraneous details in your mobile layout. Elements like social sharing buttons may be great in the desktop inbox, but aren’t always easy to use by the recipient on mobile devices.

When mocking up an HTML email or template, our advice is to create two sketches or wireframes - one of the desktop/webmail layout and one of the mobile layout. Keep in mind where your Call To Action button, such as ‘View deal’, appears on both layouts. Is it immediately visible when the email is opened on a smart phone? Or does the recipient have to scroll down in order to see it?

Do you see strong potential for mobile in your dealership or do you still think it’s too early to invest more senior management time and marketing budget?

Welcome back to the Improve My Dealership blog brought to you by eTag, the dealer key management systems provider. We’ve decided to focus Improve My Dealership posts (which we will issue every three weeks) on exploring avenues to efficiencies and higher profitability for dealerships.

Declining aftersales revenue

During the last few weeks there has been a good deal of comment about declining aftersales. Some of this discussion has been fuelled by recent aftersales-focused conference entitled ‘Future proofing your business’ which is run by the Auto Retail Network.  ARN also ran an extensive market study http://www.auto-retail.co.uk/report/future-auto-retailing-2013-2023 which uncovered the fact that 80% of auto retailers are now worried about sustaining aftersales revenues as 61.5% recorded falling absorption rates - multi-franchises being hardest hit.  More details can be read in the October issue of Auto Retail Bulletin this month.

One way customer comms

One of the keys to increasing aftersales is getting closer to existing customers and using phone, email or TXT-based services to remind them of service milestones and offers.  But is one way ‘push’ communications enough today for customer communications?

Interactive comms

All the evidence points in the direction of more interactive, visual and social media-geared communications being the new best practice for building customer relationships and inspiring their loyalty – especially when it comes to reaching out to the next two generations of car buyers -  Generation Y and the generation after them, aptly named  the ‘Connected Generation’: http://www.newworldofwork.co.uk/2011/02/25/how-to-prepare-for-the-connected-generation%E2%80%99s-transformation-of-the-consumer-and-business-landscape/

These groups have grown up online. They were early adopters of smart phones and tablets and they are starting to use these devices to make larger buying decisions – including buying their first used or new car from your dealership…or not.

With this in mind, we looked around in the trade media to see what advice is already out there for dealers looking to tap into Generation Y &C market and those a little older (‘Gen Xers’) who have grown used to researching and buying most things online. We picked on a few that caught our eye below...

Visualisation

The September issue of Auto Retail Bulletin has an article on the importance of using pictures in Google adverts as these generate substantially higher click through rates (CTR) than text only ads, according to a new report by online advertising expert Marin Software.

Making a story highly visual is definitely an emerging theme in marketing circles now. In one piece in this month’s US-based Dealer Marketing Magazine http://www.dealermarketing.com/internet-marketing/online-marketing/3197-video-in-the-modern-dealership for example, there is very good guidance on using videos to entice a new generation of car buyers through the show room doors.  The author of this piece, a US-based video production specialist, tells us that car buyers are 55 times more likely to interact with a video message on a website than with conventional text and images. 

He advises embedding videos into email blasts and social media marketing pushes.  He also advises dealers to shoot video inexpensively ourselves. He even provides a shopping list of equipment to buy.  Our own research into this area has uncovered many UK video production companies offering top rate videos for as little as £500 each. It is possible to shoot up to 4x 5-minute professional quality videos in a day using a professional team, thereby reducing the per video costs further.

Video offers

It would make sense to offer video walkthroughs of the ‘offer of the month’, ‘car of the quarter’, ‘latest launch’, even the’ used car deal of the month’.  Videos of your aftersales team at work with professional voiceovers which reinforce your focus on quality aftercare or proactive maintenance can also be a great addition to a showroom digital display and your website. And the great thing is that this sort of video production really should no longer be beyond the pockets of most franchise dealers.

And the consequences of not becoming digital marketing savvy look likely to extend well beyond sales losses and into reputation damage if we don’t react quickly enough should customers have something to complain about. We have seen several examples of where big businesses have been damaged by customers that have been unhappy with service that they received.

Power of Social Media Comms

Many of us will have seen the ‘United Breaks Guitars' YouTube videos which were inspired by United Airlines baggage handlers’ poor treatment of a little known Canadian-musician’s guitar while in transit across the States.  Dave Carroll took his complaint onto YouTube, following rejection of his requests for compensation and an apology from the airline, after one of his guitars was broken.  Today that first song (of three he has created) has had over 13.5 million views and the airline’s reputation has been severely damaged – all because of one poor experience by one customer which were spread through Social Media to millions around the world, watch it and weep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Another article, written up by the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23943480 and the Daily Mirror amongst others in the last month, shows the potentially negative power of social media communications if used against a company.

This time it was BA which was ‘in the dock’ for losing a bag and then failing to react quickly enough to find it. The resulting paid-for tweet complaint was picked up by Twitter news feed Mashable and thence made it into the mainstream media and digital marketing ‘blogosphere’: http://simpliflying.com/2013/promoted-tweet-against-british-airways-airline-customer-service/ and even into our very own Auto Retail Bulletin.

24-hour customer service age

ARB suggested that 24-hour customer service is fast becoming a necessity for dealership groups in the internet age where a single Tweet can become a big problem overnight. Take the nightmare scenario where there is video evidence of poor employee behaviour then the chances of an indiscretion like this one going viral via YouTube are dangerously high:   http://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/dealers-mercedes-caught-driving-along-dual-carriageway-with-bonnet-up/76611?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Blackball+media&utm_campaign=3162373_Car+Dealer+newsletter+-+October+8&dm_i=1NHP,1VS3P,94RSQS,6R1GC,1 .  

The is story caught the eye of the BBC, Car Dealer magazine, MotorTrader.com  and many more and was potentially very bad news for the dealer employing the errant Mercedes driver who failed to close his bonnet while speeding along an A road.  Of course if the Mercedes dealership in question had not reacted quickly to suspend the employee concerned it could have been a good deal worse.  If that story touched a raw nerve and you are worried about your Group’s exposure to the risk of poor driving of vehicles pre-sale or during servicing, you might want to look at an eTag key management solution http://www.etagsolutions.com/secure-and-audit-keys.aspx which will provide you with a verifiable audit trail of key users if misuse of vehicles is uncovered.

Summary

It is fair to say that social media communications and other digital marketing tools and techniques have a growing role to play in stimulating new sales as well as maintaining closer links with customers and reacting faster to complaints which can ‘go nuclear’ quickly with the aid of social media comms today.  The time to embrace all this has arrived. Failure to communicate at ‘internet speed’ is probably already damaging your bottom-line today but it could also undermine your hard won relationships with your regular customers tomorrow.

Do you feel as though you are taking advantage of all these new marketing and customer service tools today? Or do you still think that you have more pressing things to do to boost sales?  Do let us know.