Introducing Our New Purchase Analysis Report

We are extremely EXCITED here at HookLogic.

Why? Because over the last year we have been working to "Build the Ultimate Attribution Model" for Auto Dealers.

By diligently working with RL Polk, we have developed a monthly Purchase Analysis Report to complement our existing reporting suite.

You already know our weekly performance report that breaks down your lead and show ratios.  Many of us on the HookLogic team have spent several years in the business and know that you are wondering ‘But do I sell cars using HookLogic’. Now we provide the answer. By providing sales data, not just with our dealers, but with surrounding dealers as well, you will see your true HookLogic ROI as well as lost opportunities.

Let’s review our new Purchase Analysis Report:

example analysis report

In the example Purchase Analysis Report, we are able to match nearly every showroom visit into the dealership that resulted in a sale (29). This is found under the Data Summary in the top left portion of the report.

walkin rate analysis example_report

The first bar chart you see is the Overall Walk-in with Incentive Buy-Rate (66%). This is the percentage of overall customers that were incentivized with HookLogic that resulted in a sale during a 90 day period.

Important to note here - this is the OVERALL Incentive Buy-Rate. Meaning that, these matched customers bought a car, somewhere.

The next bar chart is your Dealer Buy Rate or what we like to call, your Show to Close. In this example, the dealership Sold 16 of the 29 opportunities (customers that walked into the dealership), resulting in a 55% Dealer Buy Rate, or show to close percentage.

Next up is your Dealer Lost Opportunity. These are the customers that HookLogic incentivized to show up at your dealership to buy a vehicle, but walked out of your showroom without making a purchase and then went to another dealership.

lost analysis example report_final

In this example you see this dealership lost 3 sales to a competitor. Not only does this report show you the number of lost sales, but at the bottom of the report, you will see which 3 dealers they lost the sale too. Not only did they lose 3 sales BUT these customers bought what they intended to purchase.

Compelling  isn’t it?

monthly analysis example report

The middle performance bar charts includes the same information but broken out into the last 3 months by New, Used and Lost Opportunities.

We are confident these new Purchase Analysis Report will close the loop on the sale and help HookLogic and you create the ultimate attribution model.

If at anytime you have ANY questions about this report, please contact our support team and we will schedule a time to review. We want you to have a complete understanding of these reports.

Thanks for taking your time to read this; which hopefully has opened your eyes to the value HookLogic provides.

HookLogic Is The Official Driving Sales Executive Summit Show Provider!

We Are The Official DSES Show Provider!

Everyone LOVES our complimentary HookLogic AutoHook Limo service. And who wouldn't? Arriving to your Hotel and the Driving Sales Executive Summit in style is a sweet offer.

If you’re attending DSES 2014 this Sunday, take advantage of our complimentary limousine service. to shuttle you and your party in style between the conference, your local hotel, and some of the amazing parties.

Starting Sunday October 12 at 8:00AM text ‘vegaslimo’ to 55678 for rides to and from the airport and to and from your Hotel and the conference. Limousine service will also be available up until 10:00pm each night of the event. Not only will you driving around is class, but our limos will be stocked full of “refreshing beverages” (BOOZE) – compliments of  Ryantech Cloud Services .

Rides are on a first come, first serve basis and no reservations can be made in advance.  We hope you enjoy the HookLogic limousine service.

Complimentary Limousine Service - On Us!

In the true meaning of HookLogic being a "Show Provider", we would like to provide you a ride to the "Show".

If you are attending Driving Sales, Digital Dealer or J.D. Power conferences this month, Follow HookLogic into Conference week 2013 as we invite you take advantage of our complimentary limousine service to shuttle you and your party between the conferences, your local hotel, and the Vegas strip.

We will be offering refreshing "beverages" while you enjoy your ride with us, compliments of MSCloud Services.

All you need to do is text the word VEGASLIMO to 55678 from your mobile phone and drivers will contact you to arrange for pickup.

The service is first-come-first-serve and our drivers will give priority to our HookLogic premier clients, OEM partners, and agencies of record so depending on the number of people requesting transportation you may or may not have to wait. The limos will be in service on Sunday between 12pm and 10pm and Monday through Thursday between 8am and 10pm.

HookLogic, the industry innovation leader in providing quality traffic into your showroom, looks forward to providing you quality ride to the Vegas fall conferences.

We hope that you have a great time in Las Vegas.

HookLogic vs. The Competition: A Testimonial Like No Other

Leadership vs the competition

They say competition is good.

For many reasons:

1. It helps promote growth. 2. It forces you to be more creative. 3. It promotes taking chances and trying something new. 4. It can force you to become more goal oriented.

The list goes on.

Competition IS good and healthy.

We, Hooklogic/AutoHook, of course have some welcomed competition within the automotive industry. Some may argue that they're not REALLY competition, as they have done nothing more than mimic or try to copy our Industry Leading services and technology.

One particular competitor is quite boisterous and uses several tasteless "tactics" to try and compete.

I digress, and say good for them.

We (the Hook crew) would rather stay focused on our products, technology and customers while building out the ultimate attribution model. This is why we have an extraordinary list of amazing Dealers Clients, Partners, and OEM's (like Volkswagen and Chrysler) that we work with. None of our current competition truly compares to our services and technology, no matter how they package it or what tactics they use to try and compete.

I understand that last sentence could be read as being overly presumptuousness, but I mean it as nothing more than confidence and pride in our people and services. I could go on and on about how great I think our services are, but no one says it better than our dealer clients that have given the competition the opportunity to perform, only to come back. It's a great feeling!

Below is a testimonial from one of our dealer clients...

watersautoland testimonial

Thanks for the amazing testimonial Thad. We look forward to our continuing partnership.

HookLogic Selected for Dealer.com Certified Provider Program

DDC_Certified

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HookLogic, the global leader in commerce search advertising and premium provider of lead-generating incentive solutions for automotive dealers, announced it was named among the trusted providers in Dealer.com’s Certified Provider Program. As a member of this program, HookLogic gains visibility and credibility in front of the thousands of auto dealers that Dealer.com serves. HookLogic joins MS Cloud Services and Contact At Once! among the list of the providers that have proven qualifications including security and seamless integration with Dealer.com’s products and services.

“We have a strong sense for what technologies are in-demand in the automotive dealer marketplace, and a data-driven incentive program seemed something that would benefit almost every dealer in our network”

The Certified Provider Program will make available two different HookLogic solutions, Web2Show and Lead2Show, to Dealer.com members. Web2Show converts web traffic to showroom visits by delivering incentive offerings to in-market shoppers who meet targeting criteria; Lead2Show offers similar incentives to only those potential buyers identified as highly motivated, according to an extensive data network. Both will be fully integrated into the Dealer.com analytics dashboard and ready-to-implement without any installation or training required.

“We already have positive relationships with many dealerships across the country,” said David Metter, president of automotive for HookLogic. “But this opportunity with Dealer.com allows us to reach a vast array of dealers with whom we might not have otherwise had the opportunity to connect. To know that so many dealerships will have the opportunity to collect and convert leads through our technology is exciting. And their affiliation with such a reputable service as Dealer.com shows that the relationship with these new dealerships will be mutually beneficial.”

“We have a strong sense for what technologies are in-demand in the automotive dealer marketplace, and a data-driven incentive program seemed something that would benefit almost every dealer in our network,” said Mike DeCecco, Dealer.com Director of Business Development. “By making this technology available through our Certified Provider Program, we were able to convey to our dealers that HookLogic’s offerings are both compatible with our platform and trustworthy.”

Web2Show and Lead2Show are both immediately available through the UpgradeCenter in Dealer.com’s ControlCenter.

About HookLogic

HookLogic, the global leader in commerce search advertising, enables marketers to influence in-market shoppers and Win the Moment of Truth™ on the world’s leading retail, travel, and automotive sites. Network partners and advertisers including Expedia, Target, AutoTrader.com, Chrysler, Intel, Newegg and Rakuten.com Shopping use HookLogic to increase sales and monetize site traffic with industry-leading solutions such as Retail Search Exchange, TravelAds, and AutoHook. Backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Intel Capital, HookLogic is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Ann Arbor, Atlanta, and London, UK. For more information on the Retail Search Exchange, please visit www.retailsearchexchange.com.

HookLogic is Building the Ultimate Attribution Model in Automotive

Building the Ultimate Attribution Model in Automotive

I know, I know…that is a pretty bold statement but if you know anything about me, when I truly believe in something, I will stand behind it.

In the infancy and quick growth of the Internet in automotive, everything was supposed to be trackable and accurate.  What we found was that because an automotive purchase, done offline in a dealership, it was hard to quantify an absolute ROI.  So we stuck to the basics; how many leads could we produce and how many sales came from those leads.  All that did was raise more questions. In reality, the real black hole was in the transition of the lead to a showroom visit.

Now, that’s not a revelation. But when you ask most dealerships and OEMs what their “show” ratio is, they are not comfortable with giving you an answer. In fact, in the past two years of speaking at 20 groups, large dealership meetings, OEM regional meetings, and dealerships, I have only run into 3 instances where the answer was given and backed up with data. But that’s ok. We have spent the past 6 years focused on this stat, having driven almost 300,000 “shows” at HookLogic.

What we know is that the national “show” ratio is 17%.  So when a dealership looks at their closing ratio of 10,15,18% they are only getting a piece of puzzle. Here is a better way to look at it.

100 Leads = 17 showroom visits  = 10-12 sales =10-12% closing ratio

90% of the dealers in the country fit into this bucket. What this basically means is that most dealerships don’t have an operational issue at the store level. In fact, they close 60% of the opportunities that visit their dealership from an Internet lead.  Just so you know, this is the national average.

When you see dealerships with a higher closing ratio, it's usually because they have a higher “show” rate, not necessarily a higher in-dealership closing ratio.

For years, this has been our focus; driving more showroom traffic.  That’s why our tagline is “We aren’t a Lead Provider, we are a Show Provider”.

HookLogic was first to market and has proven to be the subject matter experts. Others try to copy what we do but most of our secret sauce is behind the scenes. Over the past 6 years, we have an overall “show” rate of 32%, nearly double what the national average is.  For those who like simple math, this is what it looks like.

100 Leads = 32 showroom visits = 18-19 sales = 18-19% closing ratio

For most of our customers, they see this everyday.  HookLogic has real-time reporting that breaks down lead and show ratios for our dealers. The majority of our clients don’t question the ROI or the math. But this is the car business so you have some level of pessimism and mud slinging involved, right?

So what are the objections? These are the three that I hear:

1. "These customers aren’t real car buyers.  They just want the gift card."
2. "They would have come in anyways."
3. "They weren’t buying my car. They wanted a different make, model."

That’s why we have added our latest added benefit to our solution set. It is the last piece of the puzzle for the perfect attribution model in the car business, the inclusion of sales data, not just with our dealers but with surrounding dealers, after the customer has visiting our dealer’s showroom.

Adding another layer to our premier partnership with RL Polk, HookLogic has developed a monthly Purchase Analysis report.  Because of the rich registration data that exists with Polk and HookLogic’s prowess for complete customer data, it allows HookLogic to match sales from showroom visits without tapping into a dealer’s CRM or DMS system.

In the example report, HookLogic is able to match nearly every showroom visit to the RL Polk Master Name File.  In doing this, we report shows very clearly that the majority of the customers that show up at the dealership for the incentive end up buying a car somewhere, killing the objection that these customers aren’t buyers.

More importantly, over 60% of those driven into to the showroom end up buying a car from that participating dealer.  In most cases, when a customer leaves that showroom and buys a car somewhere else, they usually buy the intended make, dispelling another objection.

Closing the loop on the sale helps to quantify Internet Lead Management ROI, not just with our solution, but with a dealer’s website, 3^rd party leads, chat, trade evaluation, PPC, direct mail and email campaigns, and many other digital products.  Our goal of building the Ultimate Attribution Model in Automotive just got a lot closer with our latest addition.  People continue to talk about big data but this is an example of how big data can be used to power more sales and better reporting in the automotive business.

We Keep Making It Easier to Help You!

New Support Tab

In a recent article we reviewed the many different ways our dealer clients are able to contact us for support. Whether you have a simple question about one of our industry leading services like Web-2-Show or Lead-to-Show, how to use our Mobile App for redeeming incentives or to simply let us know that we are (or not) meeting your expectations, we make it easy to contact us.

Continuing with our approach to pro-active support, we have made a small but welcomed addition to our support tab in your dealers Admin. When you log in, you may not notice the new addition right away UNTIL you click on the "Support" tab or link located right on the first screen of your admin.

As you can see in the screen shot, after clicking on the Support link to tab, you are presented with several options on how WE CAN HELP YOU.

Need Help?

Need Answers? Maybe you have a late delivery and are caught at the dealership late but have a question about a customers incentive - click on Frequently Asked Questions. It's quite possible the answer will be found in our FAQ.

Continued Training? Check out our Library of training videos and Webinars

Card Status? Customer calls in for one reason or another and you offer to check the status of their gift card. Here's a quick link to www.mygiftcardstatus.com

Chat Chat Chat? Hopefully you hadn't overlooked our ActivEngage chat / social bar located at the bottom of your admin screen. If for some reason you did, we have you covered with a quick link to open up a chat session.

Email anyone? With all the tools of communication, email still gets the job done. And our support team is quite quick to respond to your support emails.

Who uses the Phone (to make calls)? Let's face it - there's nothing like hearing a live support reps eager voice to help. If you don't already have our phone number in your address book, well…here it is for quick reference. Give us a call.

We look forward to hearing from you. If you're not already using our products to increase your lead to show rate, then give our sales team at call at 855-LEAD-2-SHOW  - (855-532-3274)

Hooklogic At Google - #DSMV13 Recap

google DSMV

The HookLogic Crew was at Google!

Google. It’s still hard to grasp after being home for a few days that we were, in fact, on Google’s campus, learning from the very people who shape how Google in the automotive industry works for you.

Sharing means caring, so here is what went down --

Todd Rowe (Google) spoke about the search, trends (which favor our industry) and what we can learn from the people searching for our cars.

• 20 percent of online searches are for a specific brand. That’s a lot higher than other industries. Search generates $154 billion in offline sales in the automotive industry.
• Smartphones are the number ONE screen you need to focus on. To be found you need a multi device strategy
• 44 percent of buyers will look up your phone number on their smartphone, ok that’s a lot – BUT over 90% will visit that same day.

What would happen if they couldn’t find your number?

hook_dsmv_sponsor

Mitch Joel (Twist Image, Digital Marketing Professional) gave us a quote that I won’t soon forget. Mobile devices are the remote controls of our lives.  Joel energetically, as well, in a practical way gave us roughly five new rules to digital marketing.

• You must own the direct relationship to the consumer. Personalization is paramount.
• Utility or death – Be useful or provide something useful for your consumer.
• The only screen that matters is the one that’s in front of the consumer.

Joel left us with thinking about being more active with media rather than passive.  Can a buyer find you from where they are on their one screen – be in blogs, Twitter or Instagram?

Dan Moore (VIN Solutions) spoke about website and consumer paths to websites.

Most shoppers are visiting Monday through Thursday – are your specials updated?

Duncan Scarry (Haystak) took the stage to tell us all we needed a little bit more common sense in our approach to digital marketing.  He’s right. Scarry’s presentation brought some great questions from the crowd:

• Q - What content is critical? A – The content on your website should be integrated across all platforms.
• Q – Should I be spending more on SEO or SEM? A – Don’t spend less on either.

David Metter chilling over Coffee

Jordan Hyatt (Google and former Internet Manager) and his YouTube presentation sparked the majority of the room to stop and think – and, to drive home the fact that so many dealers don’t take advantage of the importance of a YouTube presence.

• The magic of YouTube is in the stats. 183 million automotive consumers watch video in the buying process (9 out of 10 vehicle shoppers). One in 4 views are from a mobile device.
• Forget Generation X, Alpha or whatever – this is Generation C – The Connectors and they share moments that matter to them. They spend more time watching videos than TV.
• YouTube’s magic is about to go up a notch with True View for ads. If you’ve been passive about getting into video ads – you’re time is up. Get on board.

Kevin riding across Google campus

Neil Hoyne (Google) hit up everyone’s favorite – Analytics.  Also, he talked about everyone’s other favorite – Conversion.

• Consumers have four stages: Dormant, Aware, Consider, Convert
• The majority of us only focus on the last stage, conversion

It’s not new information to tell you that today’s shoppers research more than any other – research is not conversion, so be sure you’re there when they are aware your dealership has the specific model they’re considering buying.

Lindsey Schultz (Google) peaked the interest of the room with her presentation on enhanced campaigns and the data behind them.

• Reach the right person at the right time with the right message
• 47 percent of auto inquires come through mobile devices

No matter how you slice it, Google’s ability to determine which ads to show a consumer based on time and location of search is beyond awesome. It's that big data that determines which ad should be shown, one about 0% APR or $15 oil changes.

Dinner at DSMV

In a technology-focused event, Cardone Cardone had us checking our ability to focus on people.  He advised us that if we focus on people, our employees, our customers, our future customers, the technology will solve itself.

Monica Morse (Google) had the big job of speaking to our group about Google +.  Between reviews and multiple location confusion this can’t be the easiest presentation with an audience of automotive pros.  With that being said, Morse did come to the rescue and helped many dealers in the room.

• Claim your Google + URL, upgrade your page and start engaging with the 390 million users.
• Use Hangouts!
• Merge your YouTube and Google +
• 1 in 3 buyers consult online reviews

If you’re skeptical about using a Hangout, (understandable) members of the audience admitted to successfully using it for sales – and, check out this Toyota Prius Hangout.

Jonathan Rosen (Kenshoo), was all about the assist. How will you assist the consumer via your marketing? Rosen stressed that one part of your marketing assists the path to conversion.  For example, email blasts assist and integrate with other marketing efforts to facilitate the conversion.

Q&A Dealer Panel:

Moderator: Christine Merritt Head of Business Development and Partnerships Channel Sales North America

Dealers:

Kevin Frye Jeff Wyler Group Gordon Howard Hoover Toyota Gabriel Montano Groove Auto Group Jim Bell Don Ayres Honda

Hoover Toyota says they’ve fully embraced digital marketing and the proof is in Gordon’s “silly” YouTube videos, over 600 of them.

Jim Bell says he keeps his team educated and thirsty for knowledge through his own educations and training with his 20 group.

Gabriel Montano is a data guy and uses it to his advantage to track metrics that are specific to shoppers’ buying habits on his websites.

Kevin Frye advised the audience to focus on mobile devices, but to go a step further and check everyone’s phone skills.  With so many people click to calling on their mobile devices the dealership employee answering that call better be good.

As if all of this wasn't enough, we were trusted with seeing even more, learning even more - but, we took a Google vow of silence to not share "coming soon" programs, technology and just great goodies for our industry.

Jeff Kershner and Alex Jefferson

HookLogic Sponsors the 2013 Digital Summit at Mountain View (Google)

DSMV13

HookLogic and the AutoHook team is excited to not only be attending but also sponsoring this years Digital Summit at Mountain View - #DSMV13.

Held directly on campus at Google's Mountain View headquarters, dealers will learn about the leading edge philosophies and technology from the best of the best in the automotive industry. Attendees will be spending 2 days with automotive industry experts and product leaders from Google learning about new opportunities and advanced technologies that will help your dealership move ahead of the competition.

What an amazing opportunity!

Digital Summit @ Mountain View

When: Aug. 6-8

Where:  Mountain View, CA

Contact: 

General Info

Travel Questions

Registration

If you're a twitter user, be sure to set up a saved search for #DSMV13 to keep yourself updated with the latest news, announcements and  conversations happening at and around the Digital Summit at Mountain View event. And while you're at it, be sure to follow HookLogic/AutoHook on twitter @lead2show

Seats are limited to 150, and attendance is by invitation only. To receive an invite, please request it online.

Check out this incredible line-up of speakers and sessions:

Mitch Joel, author and president of Twist Image, helps us “Reboot Automotive Marketing”

Todd Rowe, Google’s Managing Director – Global Channel Sales (Adwords)

Neil Hoyne, Google’s Global Program Manager for Attribution. Neil knows conversion and how to obtain more of it.

Jordan Hyatt, Google’s Senior Product and Solutions Specialist, Automotive. Jordan is responsible for new advertising products and strategies for large automotive groups, as well as manufactures.

Lindsey Schultz, is Head of Industry, Automotive Dealerships at Google. Her team focuses on educating dealers.

Grant Cardone, author and automotive leader will bring best practices to the table for success in 2013 and beyond.

Monica Morse, Google’s go to professional for making social work for small businesses

Dan Moore, as the director of sales for interactive marketing at VIN, Dan shares the knowledge you’re looking for at the dealership.

Duncan Scarry, founder Haystak Digital Marketing. Duncan has a way of encouraging success within each person he meets – and he’s ready to share his secrets.

August 6 – 8 can’t come soon enough!

For more information about this phenomenal event, visit Digital Summit’s site.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23dsmv13&src=hash

Introducing HookLogic's “Bulk Incentive Generator”

  We recognize that our dealers are looking for multi-faceted marketing opportunities to sell and service cars.  One of those options is utilizing direct mail and email campaigns.  While a number of dealers are ramping up their email and direct mail efforts, many are rediscovering the power of utilizing a targeted incentive to influence the customer to take action. This not only improves the ROI of their campaign but also drives more targeted customers physically into the showroom for a test drive.

What happens when you have more potential customers show up at your dealership for a test drive?

You sell more vehicles!

So HookLogic listened to their customers.  As an enhancement to our industry leading AutoHook Suite of Solutions, we are now including (at no charge) our “Bulk Incentive Generator” to our dealers that are utilizing the full product suite.  This new feature enhancement will allow dealerships the ability to generate multiple incentive/coupon codes and triggered links with-in minutes for their Direct Mail and Email campaigns.  It even works with service campaigns.

The OEM’s had this figured out years ago; including an incentive (gift card) in a targeted direct mail or email campaign yielded butts in seats and a surge in sales. Now dealers too will have the ability to quickly administrate and produce incentives for their direct mail and email campaigns using our “Bulk Incentive Generator” solution.  Whether you’re doing an in-house micro mailer campaign from your CRM or working with an agency on your next direct mail or email campaign, you will now have the ability to include a unique code corresponding to a targeted incentive and customer for each direct mail or email piece. Having the ability to redeem and send the potential customer an incentive right at your finger tips – using your HookLogic /AutoHook admin or our Mobile Redemption Application on your iPhone or Android device is something that wasn’t achievable until now.

As you can imagine, we’re extremely excited to offer this feature enhancement to our clients, included when you utilize Web2Show & Lead2Show.  It’s one more way we help dealers improve their Show Rate and sell and service more cars.

Be on the lookout for this added feature in your Admin over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the “Bulk Incentive Generator”, contact us to be added to the training webinar series for this feature. While you’re at it, click here to sign up for our monthly Best Practices Webinar where we often review best practices around new features and our industry leading Lead2Show and Web2Show products.