In a down market, Morrie’s Brooklyn Park Subaru experienced a considerable decline in lead volume from April to June of 2017. In addition to a large drop off in leads, their lost sales and defection rates were significantly higher than the national sales trends. They needed a solution to identify the source of all lost sales and a strategy to reduce the rate of defection to other dealers, while growing their market share in surrounding zip codes.
AutoHook Moves Aged Inventory...FAST!
SUBARU DEALER CASE STUDY
JIM BURKE AUTOMOTIVE GROUP
2016 SUBARU IMPREZA 2.0i LIMITED 4DR
THE DEALER RESPONSE
“We had a 2016 Impreza 2.0i Limited 4dr that was on the lot for 362 days. We needed to move the Impreza ASAP and we were able to accomplish this utilizing AutoHook’s Web2Show solution via our Dealer.com website. We did an increased, targeted offer for the Impreza’s stock number only of $100 for a test drive and sold the vehicle in just 4 days. We are thrilled with the quick turnaround of this specific vehicle targeting campaign and will definitely continue to use AutoHook’s solutions in the future.”
Gordon Gibbs, Internet Marketing Manager
Jim Burke Subaru
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DEALER.COM ENHANCED TARGETING CAPABILITIES
Custom, on-demand strategies to fit your dealership's unique needs.
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What You Need to Know About DMPs
by David Metter
DMPs are a topic gaining escalating attention as we head into 2017. A dark cloud of big, irrelevant data still lingers above the automotive industry, just waiting to be analyzed. What are DMPs? For those of you that don’t know, the acronym stands for Data Management Platforms. Think of a DMP as a digital warehouse of data, designed to consolidate and organize consumer data from multiple sources all in one place so that it can be put to good use.
eMarketer addressed the need for advertisers to utilize DMPs back in 2013 – a near decade ago in digital time. “If data is digital marketing’s currency, then the DMP is its bank.” So, when it comes down to whether or not to use DMPs either at the dealer or manufacturer level, really dig deep and ask yourself… do you like money?
If the answer is yes, DMPs exist to give you insights that will help you make more and save more (money that is). DMPs consolidate past and real-time consumer purchase and behavioral data across ad exchanges, networks and devices. This allows for granular audience segmentation and targeting that goes far beyond standard demographics.
DMPs aren’t just a place to aggregate and store information. They help us find the most important data points that will actually help our business. And I don’t mean help down the line or months from now, but this very second. DMPs empower us to take action and deploy personalized campaigns with quantifiable conviction. These platforms are the secret to affirming what every advertiser claims they will do, which of course is to “place the right ad, in front of the right consumer, at the right time.” Sound familiar? Without DMPs, these empty promises would remain just that - empty and unproven.
DMPs are the ultimate source of budgetary efficiency for both digital and traditional spending. By illuminating a clean, 360-degree view of a consumer’s online and offline actions, DMPs pinpoint how far along car shoppers are in the buying process. They identify who in the market has already purchased a vehicle and if they bought it from a competitive dealership or brand. On the contrary, they show which consumers are just beginning their research journey, still months away from a buying decision.
Put simply, DMPs hold your campaigns accountable for their performance and help to guide your ongoing efforts to be more relevant, impactful, and efficient with where you spend your money and who you spend your money on. Specifically for the automotive sector, DMPs may be the solution to a lot of our sales attribution problems. Everyone wants to stake claim for a vehicle sold. A DMP may be just what we need to properly assign credit where credit’s due.
When asked about DMPs, Erik Lukas, Retail Operations Manager of Subaru of America said, “If there’s ever any hope of attributing all these touch points along the shopping journey, you’ve got to have some place where all the data rolls up and you can analyze it as one set.” Aside from attribution, another much-needed use for DMP-derived insights would be for one-to-one marketing and campaign personalization. Both are becoming increasingly necessary in order for a message to stand out and resonate with car shoppers.
According to MarTech Today, “A DMP offers a central location for marketers to access and manage data like mobile identifiers and cookie IDs to create targeting segments for their digital advertising campaigns.” This is a tremendous asset for automakers when it comes to eliminating waste. For example, if you are a luxury vehicle manufacturer, DMPs can help you only target individuals or households that you know have a net income of at least $200,000 per year.
In summary, the biggest uses for DMPs in the auto industry include:
- More accurate sales attribution
- More opportunities for personalization and one-to-one marketing
- Ideal audience targeting and segmentation
Data management platforms are about unification – unifying consumer data from one source to the next as their shopping journey becomes more and more complex. Big data fails to hold value unless it can be applied to better influence your most lucrative audience segment. Other industries have been using DMPs for years. Automotive has such a complex business model given our three-tier system and the fact that most transactions happen offline. Therefore, we need DMPs more than anyone.
The opportunities DMPs provide are limitless. But don’t get too wrapped up in all the ways you could use them to your advantage. Remember your one objective at the end of the day is to increase dealership revenue by selling more units and obtaining more ROs. Above all, SALES is the metric that matters and DMPs should be used primarily to generate more sales. Everything else is just noise.
We’ve Got the Data! Now What? (Top 3 Takeaways from the J.D. Power Data Expert Panel)
by David Metter
If anyone experienced the great misfortune of not being able to attend AutoHook’s J.D. Power AMR panel that had attendees lined up against the walls, I’ve got you covered. Below is a condensed collection of key insights from the session, We’ve Got the Data! Now What?
I know you’re probably all tired of hearing the term “big data.” You may even be a little nauseous from it – thus the critical need for this panel and the recap below.
First, let me formally introduce our superstar lineup. I do have to take a moment to say these leaders are not just auto experts with impressive titles. Each has proven a genuine desire to improve the way our industry operates and the way we share data for the benefit of all – and that’s huge.
- Dean Evans | Chief Marketing Officer, Hyundai Motor America
- Erik Lukas | Digital Operations Manager, Subaru of America
- Kelly McNearney | Senior Automotive Retail Strategist, Google
- Jenny Watson | Digital Strategist (formerly of AutoNation & Expedia.com)
It’s funny (and a little ridiculous) how often the solutions to the world’s biggest problems come from plain old common sense. We all have a tendency to overcomplicate even the most evident of concepts. Perhaps the secret to solving all this big data ambiguity is to take a step back and “under-complicate” the idea.
Three overarching themes dominated our big data discussion:
1. The largest obstruction to big data in the automotive industry is the automotive industry itself.
Pictured (left to right): Dean Evans, Kelly McNearney, Erik Lukas, Jenny Watson, & David Metter
I’m not pointing any fingers, but it’s no secret that our three-tier system makes things more difficult. It creates large disconnects in communication from one layer to the next. Dean Evans points out, “We know at Hyundai you can’t do decent business today unless you are connecting those layers.”
We also know it’s rare for what happens at the dealer level to be properly recorded and communicated at the OEM level. That’s just how it is. Allow me to propose an idea. If knowledge is power, then sharing data is power. Imagine the influence we could claim if we all stopped being selfish with our data. A united industry is an unbreakable industry.
Kelly McNearney adds, “The challenge for tier three in this big data game is getting some team spirit going where dealers will actually share with the OE and the OE will share with the dealers, and then you’ve got really powerful stuff you can use. Then you can really start to understand who your consumer even is and what their actions are.”
We’ve completed step one, identifying the problem. Now it’s time to complete step two, taking action to solve the problem. So, who’s taking action? AutoHook already has by opening our API and the attribution data that comes with it to the entire industry free of charge. CDK and Dealer.com are doing it by creating centralized data dashboards so OEMs can have a better view of the consumer sales data collected at the dealership level. So who’s next?
2. More data is not necessarily better.
Pictured: Jenny Watson & David Metter
The secret is not obtaining more data. Sometimes it’s about doing more with what you have at your fingertips. It’s about taking smarter, more efficient actions. What’s the end goal? Jenny Watson says, “At the end of the day it’s really about units sold and the number of repair orders generated,” and she’s right! More is not better. It’s just more. An emphasis on obtaining more data may be the root cause of why the subject has become so complex.
It’s also important to note that each channel has its own specific set of measurable KPIs. Regardless of what they are, if you can’t validate that these channels resulted in a sale or a service order, then don’t waste your money advertising on them. It’s that simple.
3. Data Management Platforms (DMPs) are important to use and understand, but never at the cost of simple, actionable insights.
DMPs have been around in other industries for years. In a lot of ways, they’re starting to replace that “big data” term. Both dealers and OEMs should take advantage of these systems in order to better serve their network. Dean Evans says, “Feeding the dealer network is always paramount.” In addition, because of our three-tier system, the auto industry has the most complicated business model in existence. Therefore more than anyone, we need DMPs. They exist and are designed to help us – so use them.
Erik Lukas shined a lot of light on this subject. “There’s room for both,” he says. “There’s the big insights that come from DMPs that we need to unlock, but you still can’t ignore some of the things that are right in front of your face.” Erik gives the example of Subaru’s highly successful Dog Tested campaign and how it all began. “A key insight for us that we spawned a whole campaign off of was that 2/3 of Subaru owners own pets, and of those, 70% are dogs. Clearly, that’s not a big data or DMP derived result, but we built a whole disruption campaign around this one key insight and it’s really resonated with our customers.”
Kelly McNearney is a big advocate of DMPs especially for the automotive vertical. However, she speculates DMPs are perhaps given too much credit. “Some of the best data we have is actually something quite small, but that we can take action on,” said Kelly. She followed that up with a great example. “In the month of November for the past three years in a row, searches for tires have been at an all time high. That is a useful piece of data and that’s not from a machine, it’s not from a DMP, it’s just a simple Google Trend.”
To conclude, if you’re going to remember anything, remember these three things:
The only way for us to overcome barriers across tiers is to knock down the egotistical walls that separate us and work together.
Instead of more, more, more, when it comes to big data, remember that the end goal is to increase sales and revenue at the dealership level.
- And lastly, do your research on DMPs and allow this tool to help you – but never ignore the immense potential of a single statistic such as 67% of Subaru owners are animal lovers.
Click here to watch the complete live recording of the J.D. Power AMR panel, We’ve Got the Data! Now What?
10 Most Memorable Quotes from the J.D. Power Automotive Marketing Roundtable
The 11th Annual J.D. Power Automotive Marketing Roundtable
AutoHook was honored to attend the 2016 J.D. Power Automotive Marketing routable at the Bellagio, Las Vegas. From Tuesday, October 25th - Thursday, October 27th, we had the privilege of networking with some of the most brilliant leaders in our industry. Things can get a little chaotic between fast-paced sessions and panel discussions, meetings, parties, and catching up with all our friends, clients, and partners.
We've taken the liberty to bring you the 10 very best, most memorable quotes of 2016 - straight from the mouths of automotive's smartest minds themselves.
1. “Don’t start with the big data, start with the business needs first. Identify them and then work backwards. I hear too much of let’s get big data let’s get DMPs in the room, but we need to start with the business needs first.”
- Dean Evans | Chief Marketing Officer, Hyundai Motor America
2. “If there’s ever any hope of attributing all these touch points along the shopping journey, you’ve got to have some place where all the data rolls up and you can analyze it as one set.”
- Erik Lukas | Retail Digital Operations Manager, Subaru of America
3. “There’s no silver bullet when it comes to KPIs. Big Data has become a muse for creativity.”
- Trace Przybylowicz | Autos Lead: Industry Relations, Facebook
4. “The challenge for tier 3 in this big data game is getting some team spirit going where dealers will actually share with the OE and the OE will share with the dealers, and then you’ve got really powerful stuff you can use. Then you can really start to understand who your consumer is and what their actions are.”
- Kelly McNearney | Senior Automotive Retail Strategist, Google
5. “A discussion that seems to be both prevalent and imminent is around DMPs. Data management platforms are almost replacing that ‘big data’ term.”
- David Metter | President, AutoHook powered by Urban Science
6. “A DMP can really give you a full view of who your customer is and how to personalize that experience – that’s the holy grail – making sure your marketing investments are put in the right place.”
- Jenny Watson | Digital & Performance Marketing Expert
7. “Because everyone is online shopping at the dealer’s site, the dealers have a wealth, almost a paralyzing wealth of information. Using that to understand and to empower their marketing - online marketing efforts in particular - can make them much more efficient and vastly more powerful in what they do.”
- Jason Knight | COO & Co-Founder, Lotlinx
8. “Unfortunately too many businesses today do focus just on the transaction and not the experience. We assume people don’t want to be there so we treat them that way. The truth is, people don’t come back if it’s not a great experience. If it’s just a transaction, how is that a great experience?”
- Beau Boeckmann | President, Galpin Motors
9. “With big data comes big challenges in verifying consumer data. We need free from fraud, viewable consumer content and data.”
- Mark Pearlstein | Chief Revenue Officer, DoubleVerify
10. “55% of advertisers consider themselves beginners in mobile advertising – that’s alarming.”
- Christian Fuller | Chief Relationship Officer, Search Optics
Pictured (left to right): Dean Evans, Kelly McNearney, Erik Lukas, Jenny Watson
Pictured: Christian Fuller
Pictured: Beau Boeckmann
Pictured (left to right): Joe Gumm, Bert Boeckmann, Beau Boeckmann, and Bridget Fitzpatrick
Pictured (left to right): Jeremy Anspach, Trace Przybylowicz, Myles Rose, Miran Maric
Pictured (left to right): Andy Jacobson, Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, and Mark Pearlstein
Pictured (left to right): Dean Evans, Kelly McNearney, Erik Lukas, Jenny Watson, & David Metter
Pictured (left to right): Jenny Watson and David Metter
