Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, financial advisor, or legislative expert. Each dealer should consult their relevant advisors before making decisions. The purpose of this blog is just to share information I’ve gathered as I have been following the development of this bill closely to see how it can help our dealer partners.
As you may know, the “CARES” (‘Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act was just signed by the President of the United States. I wanted to provide a quick summary of this bill as I understand it because it may help you. It’s essential to understand at least how it works before taking drastic action.
First off, you will see many headlines about the bill being a $2 trillion stimulus package. If you’re like me, you immediately think, “Great, but how does this help me or my dealership/business?” In many cases, the answer to that question is well beyond the scope of this message. However, in this instance, one important section of the CARES Act is designed to provide relief to “small” businesses like you.
THE MAIN POINTS YOU NEED TO KNOW
The CARES Act created a new kind of SBA loan that a lot of small businesses will be eligible for that can be used to cover basic costs — and under certain circumstances, the entire loan amount can be forgiven.
The loan can be used for certain payroll costs (including commissions), employee benefits, operating costs (rent, mortgage interest, utilities, interest on preexisting debts).
The loan size generally equates to 2.5 times your average monthly payroll from the previous year, excluding comp above $100K/employee (with some adjustments if you already have an existing SBA loan).
Loans would be available immediately through existing SBA-certified lenders, including banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions. Here is a website that should list the eligible lenders https://www.sba.gov/. It’s pretty hard to navigate so I would check to see if your bank is an eligible lender. Nonetheless, the list will expand quickly due to the authorization powers of the Secretary of Treasury.
A FEW CAVEATS
The amount forgiven is limited to the principal borrowed.
The points above apply to small businesses that employ less than 500 people.
The maximum loan amount is $10 million.
Conditional upon the business retaining your employees and payroll levels during the covered period (March 1, 2020, through June 30, 2020).
If you reduce salaries (pay cuts), the number of employees (layoffs), or both during the covered period, then the loan amount available for forgiveness is reduced by the amount of any reduction in:
Number of employees
Wage reductions in excess of 25% of the total salary or wages of the employee during the most recent quarter
However, If you rehire or end the salary reduction before June 30, 2020, and eliminated the layoff or salary cuts, the loan amount eligible for forgiveness is not affected
CARES ACT RESOURCES
So, in short, there is a great opportunity that you should be looking into. The precise calculations and eligibility requirements are tricky, beyond the scope of this blog post, but this gives you the overall framework. The bill encompasses a ton more (as it is 800+ pages). Here’s a link to a few other resources:
While this may assist with expenses in the short term I know that selling and servicing cars is the most vital component to your success. Our team has put together the following videos and resources this week to help you adapt your digital marketing for the situation. Please take 10 minutes today to review as I can know they will help you.
VIRTUAL WALKAROUND CTAs
Our website and messaging tools can work together to help bring the dealership experience online for your customers stuck at home. Watch how adding one CTA on your inventory can launch a virtual appointment with your team using live video chat.
GUIDE: HOW TO HAVE CONVERSATIONS THAT SELL
Beyond video chat, there are many other ways you can utilize instant messaging to connect with customers and go deeper into the buying process online. In this guide, we’ll show you how you can take different approach to chat and turn what used to be a lead-gen tool into a closing tool.
Clear and up-to-date communication is more critical now than ever, and Google My Business (GMB) is one of the most important ways to get the essential status updates on your business to customers. Watch this quick video to learn how to take the first step of updating your hours, and then check-out our complete guide to leveraging GMB’s other features right now.
Our team is monitoring rapidly evolving search trends and providing recommendations on where to optimize your budget and efforts as paid and organic search intent shifts. For Dealer Inspire partners, our team is proactively making these changes to optimize your budget. Check out the live webinar we hosted this week, or dive into the guide on our blog.
As part of the CARS family we also wanted to make sure you were aware of several resources Cars.com is providing to help dealers get through this time, from financial relief and free chat to Virtual Appointment and Home Delivery badging.
We are living in an unprecedented time, and the way we ran our businesses just two weeks ago needs to adapt for the new normal of our communities practicing safe social distancing. This virus has brought uncertainty and significantly decreased foot traffic to many industries including ours, but there is good news for dealers: people are still shopping for cars, and we already have everything we need to connect with them and help them purchase.
While this is no doubt a challenging time, there is an opportunity here to triple down on customer service and communication to create new loyal customers. We need to work together on solutions that make your dealership’s experience shine online — and I believe we can do that today by taking a different approach to chat.
IT’S NO TIME FOR SMALL TALK.
Chat has been around forever on dealer websites, but as an industry we’ve always just thought about it as a lead generation tool. For a BDC, the strategy in any message thread is to convert the initial question into an appointment as fast as possible — but with customers less willing to come in for appointments, we need to think differently and extend the conversation way further into the buying process. And you can do that today by simply changing your approach.
We built our messaging platform (Conversations™) from the ground up exactly for this deeper level of customer engagement — and while our more advanced features have (transparently) gone underutilized with this old chat mindset, they are ready to connect you with stay-at-home customers out of the box. Whether it’s showing shoppers around a vehicle with live video or working through all the details of their payment plan and delivery through texting — simple conversations can sell cars. Get a glimpse of how it’s done from this demo with Jason, and then I’ll break it down in the guide below.
DON’T BE A STRANGER. BE A VIDEO.
Most people don’t have long conversations with strangers, so try to make sure that website visitors see you as a real live person behind those chat bubbles. While authentic conversation (and perhaps a joke) will go a long way, video is worth a million words. With Conversations™, you can create videos and then save them to your Glovebox to drag and drop into any future conversations.
For example, you could create quick walk-around videos of the new models on your lot, introducing yourself with your front-facing camera and then giving a tour of the vehicle. Helpful videos like this that feature YOU, the person they can actually buy from, goes a long way to making the customer feel connected and confident to take next steps.
This also works great for sharing service updates, creating the kind of modern and transparent experience that creates lifelong customers by showing the care you’re putting into their maintenance and repairs.
CLICK BUTTON TO BE A VIRTUAL DEALERSHIP.
When it comes to bringing the kind of conversations you have on the showroom floor online, no feature is more powerful than live video. You can instantly turn your chats into old-fashioned face-to-face conversations, whether it’s to tour a vehicle live, or just to (virtually) sit down at your desk and talk through payments and recommendations. Watch how adding one CTA on your inventory can launch a virtual appointment with your team.
Even if consumers aren’t in the right mood (or clothes) to do a live video, the fact that you’re able to offer it sends a clear signal that you’re able to do business differently to help them during this time. Promote that your team is here to take the shopping experience virtual, and you’re likely to engage more of these shoppers who want to buy but don’t want to browse a store right now.
TEXTING LEADS TO LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS.
Even stuck inside and bored, consumers are not likely to stay on any website for long. Asking for their number to text will help keep your conversation going well after the shopper leaves your website, because you can continue to text back and forth at their convenience offline. Taking the conversation to text also takes the pressure off of providing quick responses to keep them online, and lets you provide the most valuable and helpful responses to help them purchase.
In Conversations™, you can add a phone number in a chat directly to their customer profile, and then quickly send them a text to start a new thread via SMS.
DIGITAL RETAILING IS JUST A DIGITAL CONVERSATION.
“Online car buying” and “digital retailing” have been constant buzzwords in our industry over the past few years, and while I believe it’s essential for dealers adapt tools like Online Shopper™ to help consumers make purchase decisions online (especially today), I also think the concept of digital retailing has been confused and overcomplicated.
This is Suzanne. In 2010 my dealership got a Craigslist lead from Suzanne, who lived 300 miles away in St. Louis. We spoke over the phone, talked through her payment options until they worked for her budget, and then she flew into Chicago to pick-up the car from me. THAT WAS DIGITAL RETAILING! If I could do that with Craigslist and a telephone, you can absolutely provide a home car buying experience through chat and text.
Offer to help shoppers figure out their best payment like YOU are the digital retailing tool. Ask them they’re preferred monthly range, how much they’re thinking of putting down, what trade-in they have, etc. — and be inputting the numbers on your end using your digital retailing tool or DMS. That way you can provide real-time payments based on their answers, and even transparently share a screenshot to show your work and confirm the numbers. From there, all you need to do is print the deal and deliver it with the sold car.
STAY WITH THEM WHEREVER THEY GO.
Before you bump elbows and say goodbye to your customer, this one last tip can help keep them tied to your dealership for all future service. Program your Conversations™ SMS number into the vehicle’s Android Auto or Apple CarPlay as a contact for “Service”, and show them how they can voice text you to connect with your service department whenever they need you. Check it out — I made a video about this a few years ago.
WE’RE ALWAYS HERE TO CHAT.
All of us are anxious during this uncertain time, including your customers. Offering the ability to do business on their terms from home, and taking the time to really help them with a conversation tailored to their needs, will restore the confidence in shoppers to buy.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to discuss these strategies or any of the other ways we can help you during this time. At DI we believe it’s our responsibility to help dealers future-proof their business — it’s what we’re here for.
Like so many others, our industry has been upended by the Coronavirus. It happened fast, and now we need to work together just as quickly to adapt and promote how your dealership will serve consumers during this time of isolation and anxiety. We’re here to help.
It’s not business as usual for anyone right now, so it’s critical that your website and marketing channels are telling consumers the status of your operations: including what’s open and when, how they can do business with you from home, and why they should right now.
At Dealer Inspire we’ve pivoted all of our teams towards immediate dealer support and solutions to pull through this time together, including my team: B2B Marketing. We’ve postponed our next Office Space parodies showing how to use our products because our team is 100% focused on providing free creative to promote dealers.
THE ASSETS
Combining forces with our Connected Marketing team, we are providing the following templated assets at no charge right now to promote your dealership’s message.
Slider
Pop-Up
SRP Banner
Facebook Ad
Video
Google My Business Updates
THE MESSAGES
To support as many dealers as possible, as fast as possible, we are creating templates for the following common and strategic messages.
To help you decide (as much as you’re able to decide) on your messaging for the coming weeks, I wanted to take you behind the scenes on our team’s thought process for developing our first set of COVID-19 campaigns.
CREATIVE CAN STILL BE FUN RIGHT NOW
While this is a deeply challenging time for all of us, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your advertising needs to remind consumers of that. Your brand can be a fun, hopeful distraction from the rest of the posts we have in our newsfeeds while still being perfectly relevant to the times and addressing your audience’s needs.
Watch how this template we made — which we can create for your dealership at no charge — is squarely set in the consumer’s current predicament without directly referencing this virus or its impact on our economy.
A little fun and positivity is being shared a long way on social right now, and it’s important to remember that you offer an uplifting experience — whether it’s the thrill of getting a new car or the satisfaction of completing an essential errand at your service bay.
FOCUS ON YOUR ESSENTIAL SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY
Whether or not your showroom is still open, it’s a good time to focus on promoting your service bay. Over the last 14 days we have actually seen a 21.85% increase in service related search terms nationwide, which has led us to proactively optimize paid search budget and ad copy for our dealer partners.
Your creative messaging should support that, making sure that your community knows you’re open to help them. Remember, it’s a great time for them to get service since most people have more time and could use a reason to get out of the house and accomplish something.
Make sure anyone actively looking for you can easily figure out if and when you’re open by updating your Google My Business (GMB) profile and adding messaging to your homepage. Our SEO team can help you manage your profile at no charge so you don’t miss a single opportunity right now.
On the sales side, we are currently seeing a ~50% decline in walk-in traffic nationwide as more and more shoppers practice social distancing. Assuring shoppers that you’re tripling your showroom cleaning efforts and sanitizing every sales desk can make a big difference for those itching to buy, but for many others, getting them to come on down is a tough sell right now.
The good news is there are MILLIONS of people still in the market, with steady shopping activity across DI websites and Cars.com nationwide. We just need to show them how they can do business with you outside of showroom floor handshakes. This is where we need to work together to promote a message that connects with the experience you can fulfill.
Virtual appointments, online car buying, and home delivery are ideal messages right now — and we can set you up with the technology to provide those customer experiences — but no matter what tools you have today or what you have the resources to reasonably fulfill with your team, we can help you promote the simple fact that you’re available. Digital retailing is just a conversation, and you can bring the entire buying process to email, chat, text, or the good old-fashioned telephone — you just need to let shoppers know that you’re willing to.
OEMs are already rolling out big offers to help shoppers get into a new car over the coming weeks and months. Most people may assume that it’s not smart to get a new car during a time of such economic uncertainty, but a little promotion and education around these offers can show that this is the best time to get a new payment plan that will alleviate their monthly budget and help them afford their other necessities.
Not everyone is in the market for a new car right now, but everyone could use a lower bill and a break for three months. By just talking through different payment options you and your dealership can be the solution, helping people in your community get to where they need to be to weather this storm.
And that’s the kinda thing people don’t forget. They tell their friends and family that you can help them too.
FUTURE-PROOF YOUR DEALERSHIP.
It was our vision and marketing mantra. Now it’s the immediate mission. We need to work together to adapt and execute every day to serve at-home customers during this time, and the actions we take now will set you up to thrive long-term with consumers online.
Not just because you’ll have the right digital strategy in place, but because your community won’t forget that you were there to help. By offering an experience that helps anxious consumers right now, you can create life-long loyal customers — and you can count on our team to be here to help you make that happen.
You’ve heard it a million times, but today’s consumers now expect shopping experiences that are instant and on their own time. That means lead form engagement is down (“you’re gonna call me back when you’re ready?”) and phobias of answering phone calls from unknown numbers are on the rise (“ah! 😱”).
As a result, the daily usage of texting and messaging apps is sky-rocketing — and not just for sending emojis, Bitmojis, and animojis with friends. Shoppers prefer messaging businesses too because it’s instant, low-pressure, and they can respond on their terms — like during a commercial of The Bachelor.
DID YOU KNOW: 80% of consumers would rather text with a business than engage with an email or phone call.
*ZipWhip U.S. Survey, Fall 2018
And this isn’t just about what’s best for the consumer — text leads are some of the best kind of leads you can get because:
you know you’re acquiring their real phone number
they’re engaged with you in the moment, so you can answer questions and quickly move them towards a buying decision
you’ve opened up a direct line of communication (the text thread) that can be revisited by either side at any time
So, between it being one of the best lead types for your dealership, and it being the way that 4 of 5 shoppers want to connect, it’s critical that your team starts swapping text bubbles with customers on your website, from your marketing campaigns, and even in your dealership — but how?
THE MAGIC NUMBER
The most effective technologies are usually the most simple, and this one is really simple.
When we first built Conversations™ — what is now our 24/7 omnichannel messaging platform with A.I. — one of our first features was to give a unique SMS number to every dealership. Shoppers can text this number and those messages seamlessly route into Conversations™ where your team (or our Managed Chat team) can effortlessly respond, just like they would any web chat.
There are no technology integrations or process changes you need to implement before you can start texting with your customers, you just need to put that number in places people will find it. So yeah, it’s that simple, and that ability to include this number anywhere is its most powerful advantage.
Out of the unlimited ways you can incorporate texting into your business — here are five to get you started!
1. OPTIMIZE YOUR MOBILE WEBSITE CTAs
On the Dealer Inspire platform we can code your traditional page-based CTAs to launch web chats on desktop and texts on mobile, making it easier for shoppers to connect, get answers, and provide their real phone number with one tap. We’ve found that consumers are 47% more likely to provide leads in this instant, friendly interface than traditional submit-and-wait lead forms!
AND REMEMBER: If responding to all these texts feels like a lot work, many of these CTAs can be automatically answered by Ana Bot, our A.I. chat bot — and all the rest can be routed to our 24/7 Managed Chat team.
2. TALK TO CARS
Text with customers through their infotainment systems when they need you most — on the road with a service question. Just have your new customers add your SMS number to their phone (which will sync with their car’s ApplePlay or Android Auto) and they’ll be able to easily voice text you through their infotainment system to schedule service appointments and ask questions.
3. ADD SMS TO YOUR DIRECT MAIL
Direct mail is a big investment, so anything you can do to increase (and attribute) the ROI of a campaign can make a big difference to your bottom line. By adding your SMS number to your traditional creative you can increase the likelihood that shoppers will redeem the offer by making it instant, easier, and on their terms through texting (instead of having to call, visit a specific URL, or drop by your store). Just like that, you can connect in-the moment with consumers at their mailbox and get two-way digital engagement out of a piece of paper.
4. GET TV TEXTS
Just like direct mail, adding your SMS number to your television commercials can drive real-time engagement from a channel that’s traditionally only meant for brand awareness. With a strong hook and a prominent graphic for your number, you can start talking to the audience watching your commercials in real-time.
5. SEND SERVICE UPDATES
Building a customer’s trust is crucial to maintaining a high customer retention rate and keeping your service bay busy. Transparency and communication are two of the main ways you can build customer’s trust, and with Conversations™ your service advisors can easily send updates for the kind of transparency, communication, and convenience that will generate good reviews and repeat business . While our other strategies are just about receiving texts from marketing campaigns, this Outbound Texting feature allows your team to initiate texts with customers in your contact list, and opening this line of communication can help drive efficiency and revenue per repair order.
INFINITE POSSIBILITIES AT NO EXTRA COST
Your magic number and all the places it can go comes included with your Conversations™ account, so there’s nothing to lose in testing out a few strategies that start text threads with your customers. Give us a chat if you have any questions!
When you got to work today, did you boot up your Gateway computer running Windows 98, dial into AOL, and squee in delight when you were informed that “you got mail”?
Of course you didn’t. Because it’s not 1999. Yet when it comes to the online car shopping experience, there’s still a function on car dealer websites that dates back to the pre-Y2K era.
That’s right, I’m looking at you Get E-Price button.
Never mind the fact that the majority of consumers don’t even know what an “E-Price” is — the reality is that the submit-and-wait form fill approach to the car shopping experience is now turning customers away. Across the industry form opens are down, form completions are down, and lead-to-contact ratio is down. But why?
In 2013 the average lead form completion rate on a car dealer’s website was right around 5%. Today, it’s under 2%.
*Datium Automotive Website Insights
LIVING IN A POST LEAD FORM WORLD
While there are many reasons lead form submissions are declining, the most important one has to do with the fact that we now live in an on-demand, instant gratification world where waiting seconds can feel like minutes, and minutes can feel like hours.
When a car shopper is on your website, they’re looking for information NOW. Not 15 minutes from now, not a few hours for now, and certainly not a few days from now — and they want that information without talking to someone on the phone.
So when a shopper has a question about pricing, incentives, availability, or the value of their trade — why do we force them down this slow path of filling out a form and waiting for a call back? By putting up a form as a barrier to information, you’re essentially telling shoppers “sorry, we can’t help you right now”.
So, we’ve established the problem — but what’s a dealer to do? Every customer’s situation is different, and you don’t have unlimited resources to respond instantly 24/7. Well just like you’ve ditched that boring beige computer tower for a shiny black iPad, and replaced your screeching dial-up modem with ultra hi-speed broadband Internet, it’s time to embrace new technology and put your E-Price button and resulting lead form to rest.
ELEGANT SOLUTIONS FOR A MORE CIVILIZED AGE
The biggest opportunity car dealer’s have today to dramatically increase the lead generating capabilities of their website is to take advantage of technology that’s designed to immediately give your shoppers the information they’re looking for, while still capturing a valuable lead for your dealership.
With Conversations™ and Online Shopper™, we have the tech that allows you to help your online customers in their moment of need, with the same kind of immediacy that your showroom visitors receive.
Let’s see how it can work for you…
AUTOMATED CHAT FLOWS IN CONVERSATIONS™
On the Dealer Inspire platform we can code your traditional page-based CTAs to launch Conversations™ so our chat bot, Ana, can provide answers through a friendly chat interface that users are more likely to share their contact info in.
During our pilot case study of adding this functionality, our dealers saw a 47% increase in conversion rate when using Conversations™ chat flows to replace standard form fills. Check out a few examples of how your website CTAs can launch these friendly chats instead of lead forms.
Unlock Pricing
Locked pricing is a lead generation strategy many dealers like to (or have to for OEM restrictions) deploy on their websites — but as consumers become less likely to fill out lead forms these CTAs can create a barrier before visitors are able to make any real shopping decisions.
With Conversations™, you can have these website CTAs launch an automated chat with the customer that both unlocks the price and fulfills that 1:1 communication requirement many OEMs enforce for prices under MSRP. When a users taps the “Unlock Pricing” CTA on your VDP, Ana Bot will be there to greet your shopper and politely ask for their contact information. Once it’s collected, she will instantly reveal the most competitive prices on your website and then either guide the shopper to a salesperson or your digital retailing tool.
In this scenario, everyone wins. With little to no friction, the customer gets to see your best price and you get an engaged lead to personally follow up with.
Trade-In Evaluations
Trade-in value is another critical piece of information shoppers look for your on your website to make shopping decisions. Instead of having your “Evaluate Trade-In” CTA bring up a painfully long and clunky form that feels like homework, you can have Ana Bot do all the work right inside an effortless Conversations™ thread.
When a shopper clicks or taps the Get Trade-In Value CTA on a webpage, Conversations™ will open and Ana Bot will ask your customer a few simple questions about their vehicle. After collecting their contact info, she will provide your shopper with a real-time market value range for their vehicle (powered by TradePending).
The customer wins, and so does your sales team as they’ll receive a quality trade-in lead complete with all the information they need to make meaningful contact with that shopper.
Personalized Offers
Conversations™ also gives you the ability to import CRM or OEM manifest lists for Ana Bot to refer to when a shopper taps an “Offers” style CTA on your site. Again, when that CTA is clicked Conversations™ will open and Ana Bot is there to assist by asking for the shopper’s name, email address, and phone number in order to verify what personalized offers are available to them.
Once she has the details, Ana will check the database for a match and provide any personalized offers that your customer may qualify for. If they don’t qualify for a personalized offer, don’t worry, Ana Bot will still let them know which incentives or specials are available for the vehicle they’re interested in! Check out how this capability can be integrated directly into Facebook ads, too.
GIVING SHOPPERS REAL PAYMENTS (NOT E-PRICES) WORKS
75% of consumers say they won’t contact or visit a dealership if they can’t figure out if they can afford the vehicle they’re interested in based on their personal financial scenario. (Cars.com “Drivers Seat” Consumer Survey, October 2018. )
Online Shopper™ was designed to answer a consumers “Can I Afford It?” question by giving your website shoppers the ability to compare and customize multiple payment scenarios complete with bank rates, taxes, and fees in real time.
When looking at their previous 49 days without Online Shopper: Electric™ on their website, Patty Peck Honda generated 206 form fill leads from their VRPs and VDPs with a conversion rate of 0.51%.
In the 49 days after activation, they still generated 255 form fill leads from their VRPs and VDPs but Online Shopper: Electric™ contributed an additional 699 more leads for a total of 954. Overall their conversion rate jumped to 2.01% which is a 297% increase!
Online Shopper: Electric™ alone has been generating over 14 new leads per day since the day Patty Peck Honda flipped the switch. While the traditional form fill CTA’s are still being engaged with, it’s clear that Online Shopper: Electric™ is providing a superior experience for both shoppers and the dealership.
IT’S (NOT) SO HARD TO SAY GOODBYE TO E-PRICE CTAs
While that heading is much more amusing if you think early 90’s Boyz II Men, the data shows us that ditching your E-Price button and resulting lead form for solutions that instantly give your website users the information they’re seeking is the best way to dramatically increase lead generation. You literally have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. The Get E-Price past was fun, but the future is brighter.
NADA 2019 is over, and if you didn’t get a chance to visit us at our booth in San Francisco — fear not — we have a recap of everything we launched and announced for 2019 that had the audience buzzing. One of the most exciting things we unveiled at NADA 2019 was TWO solutions that solve digital retailing for every dealer by adapting to your desired process, so we brought out the cameras to give you at home live demos of Online Shopper: Redline℠ and Online Shopper: Electric℠.
Online Shopper: Redline℠
If you’re currently using Online Shopper℠ as your digital retailing solution, then you already know what Online Shopper: Redline℠ is all about. It allows your website visitors to customize their vehicle payments with real-time lease and finance bank rates, evaluate their trade-in, and schedule an appointment to take a test drive and complete the rest of their deal in the showroom.
For you, there’s no training needed, no backend to login to, no need to change your current processes and it installs on your website within 24 hours.
#ProTip: Online Shopper: Redline℠ can now be activated on any website platform!
This digital retailing solution has been wildly successful for our dealers since we streamlined the process this past October. On average, our clients see a 184% increase in leads generated from Online Shopper: Redline℠ compared to their website’s lead volume without it.
And these aren’t regular leads either — we call them super leads — because the data going directly to your CRM includes contact, credit, monthly payment, and trade-in details, so you have all the information you need to close the deal when they walk onto your showroom floor.
Online Shopper: Electric℠
While many dealers appreciate the no-nonsense approach to digital retailing that Online Shopper: Redline℠ provides, there is a growing number of dealers who are actively adjusting how they do business and want users to be able to complete more of the car deal online.
For these dealers, we have Online Shopper: Electric℠ which offers a seamless end-to-end, online and in-store consumer experience allowing consumers to complete more of the car buying process online.
We didn’t just add extra steps to Online Shopper℠, we reimagined the entire experience, including:
Redesigned UX that keeps users on the VDP
Digital garage to save, customize, and compare multiple vehicles
Seamless experience between devices and in-store kiosk
User upload of driver’s license and insurance card
Ultra-convenient 3-step check out
Need help deciding which edition of Online Shopper ℠is right for your dealership? Schedule a demo with us today, and we’ll walk you through versions so you can decide which best aligns with your consumer and business goals.
METAL℠ INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
A modern dealership needs a modern inventory management system, and Metal℠ is our brand-new IMS that was built with modern design and lightning-quick controls to help your team move metal faster than the competition without any training needed. Here’s look at some of the features that you’ll find in Metal℠.
Lightning Search: Finding one vehicle out of hundreds now takes milliseconds. Your list instantly adapts with each letter typed, allowing you to search by year, make, model, trim, color, feature, miles, VIN, and custom keywords.
Smart Custom Fields: Vehicle description fields are fully customizable so you can organize and display your inventory the way that makes sense for your dealership. Metal℠ also recognizes patterns and vehicle types to create the most relevant fields when uploading new inventory.
Dynamic Media Library: Metal℠ makes your vehicles shine by dynamically displaying high-resolution images, videos and even PDF brochures to shoppers. Adding, editing, and ordering media takes seconds before syncing with all your inventory near real-time.
Real-time API Sync: The changes made in Metal℠ are instantly pushed in real-time to your Dealer Inspire website, products, and advertising campaigns — as well as Cars.com and Facebook Marketplace.
We’re so confident that you’ll fall in love with Metal℠ that we’re offering you a free 30-day trial without having to ditch your current IMS. Sign up for your free trial today!
REAL-TIME REPORTING WITH PRIZM℠
If there’s one thing almost every dealer wants more of, it’s detailed reporting on how their marketing efforts are working for them. If there’s one thing almost every dealer wants less of, it’s reporting dashboards to log in to.
Prizm℠, our new real-time reporting platform, brings the technology and marketing dashboards you use most into one streamlined experience so you can spend less time logging into the backend of various systems, and more time making educated decisions based off data.
Prizm℠ currently can pull data from the following sources:
DMS
Dealer Inspire Website
Online Shopper
Conversations
Google Analytics
Google Ads
But it’s not just easy access to reporting, Prizm℠ also includes:
Enterprise Level Reporting: Easily toggle between full enterprise reporting mode and individual rooftop mode, giving you the flexibility you need when reporting on your group as a whole.
Support Ticket Dashboard: Whether you’re looking at the individual store level or the group level, you’ll always have insight in to the status of your open, closed and pending support tickets for your dealerships.
Custom Alerts: Prizm℠ comes with pre-set alerts that will notify you when certain conditions occur (i.e. weekly traffic decrease by 25%) and the ability to create your own custom alerts, IFTTT style!
PERSONALIZED OFFERS IN CONVERSATIONS℠
We’re constantly teaching Ana Bot, our A.I. powered chatbot, new skills to make her a more valuable member of your team. You can now sync your customer lists with Conversations℠ so Ana Bot can let customers know which offers they might qualify for and then seamlessly launch Online Shopper to start a personalized deal.
#ProTip: Export your sold customer list from your CRM and sync it with Ana. She can then return a Loyalty Coupon to those folks via Conversations℠.
If there are no personalized offers available, Ana Bot won’t leave people feeling let down. She’ll simply reply with the available incentives that are specific to the VDP your visitor is currently viewing.
DEALERRATER SALESPERSON CONNECT INTEGRATION
As we look to expand our connections with our sister companies, we’re really excited to integrate DealerRater’s Salesperson Connect technology on the Dealer Inspire VDP.
Salesperson Connect allows consumers to select an employee to work with directly from your website’s vehicle details pages. These connections personalize the shopper experience, while rewarding top sales people by featuring them on the VDP.
Shoppers on your website will now have access to all the information they need to make an informed decision – the product, price, place, and person. How awesome is that?!
DEALER INSPIRE, THE ESSENTIAL PLATFORM PROVIDER
At Dealer Inspire, it’s our mission to be the essential marketing platform provider for your dealership. Everything that we announced at NADA and talked about about here is a part of our quest to fulfill that mission. We’d love to show you how our innovative solutions – from search to signature – allow you to provide the best consumer experience possible, while helping your dealership find more efficiencies. Let’s connect today!
If you’re currently using Online Shopper℠ as your digital retailing solution, then you already know what Online Shopper: Redline℠ is all about. It allows your website visitors to customize their vehicle payments with real-time lease and finance bank rates, evaluate their trade-in, and schedule an appointment to take a test drive and complete the rest of their deal in the showroom.
While many dealers appreciate the no-nonsense approach to digital retailing that Online Shopper: Redline℠ provides, there is a growing number of dealers who are actively adjusting how they do business and want users to be able to complete more of the car deal online.
A modern dealership needs a modern inventory management system, and Metal℠ is our brand-new IMS that was built with modern design and lightning-quick controls to help your team move metal faster than the competition without any training needed. Here’s look at some of the features that you’ll find in Metal℠.
If there’s one thing almost every dealer wants more of, it’s detailed reporting on how their marketing efforts are working for them. If there’s one thing almost every dealer wants less of, it’s reporting dashboards to log in to.
We’re constantly teaching Ana Bot, our 
As we look to expand our connections with our sister companies, we’re really excited to integrate DealerRater’s Salesperson Connect technology on the Dealer Inspire VDP.
