Way too often we see dealerships handing over databases to vendors to facilitate a mass email campaign to an entire unfiltered list of customers. Vendors certainly have a stake in larger email campaigns since the odds that a dealer obtains business from the campaign increases - due to sheer numbers. A smart dealer will analyze their open rates and have tools set up to track…

As security breaches and data theft become more commonplace, businesses will encounter increasing regulatory and consumer pressure to protect that data. I’ve written numerous articles on the importance of data security in dealerships, especially when dealers share that sensitive customer information with their vendor partners.

According to a recent…

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that a crime ring in Russia has “amassed the largest known collection of Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than…

TECHNOLOGY HOLDING COMPANY TO CHANGE THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY

August 5, 2014, California, Already working with a start-up that will change the consumer world as we know it. Imagine a battery that will keep your smart phone charged for 30'days. What would it be like to power your entire house(Or Dealership) off the grid for less than $200 a month, including heat? Now, think what it would be like doing this with absolutely no fossil…

For years, marketing agencies have used many methods to track consumers in order to increase the likelihood of reaching them. From the very basic – yet still in existence – use of postal change-of-address records, to appending marketing lists for increased deliverability, to today’s use of big data to track consumers, technology is better enabling marketers to deliver more…

The words "big data" have been buzzing around the marketing and advertising world for a few years now. Technology has made it possible to do things with data through analysis and proper utilization that weren't very easy a decade ago. It's a good thing, but it's not enough.

In the automotive industry, we see it used for everything from conquest sales to social…

So what about Aristotle?  Aristotle’s the Art of Rhetoric contains the ‘Three Means of Persuasion’ which are Ethos, Pathos and Logos.

1. Ethos - The moral cause to agree or the audiences perceived character/reputation of you
2. Pathos - Emotional, can be either negative or positive, fear of loss > fear of gain
3. Logos - The logical justification to make a choice, the cold hard facts, figures, specs and…

So once again I ask the question at the heart of the matter.... Mr./MRS…

Written By: Steven Banks

Lately it seems I am unable to hide from the term, Big Data. I’m exposed to it in headlines, newspapers (a bit old school but I still read them), magazines and yes, even blogs. But what does big data truly mean and why are we being doused with it? The term is so new I couldn’t locate it in the…

Written By: Russell Grant

From speakers at NADA workshops to automotive manufacturers in trade publications to vendor product advertisements online, everyone is talking about how big data is changing the future of marketing in our industry. But most of the GMs I talk to aren’t nearly as concerned with the marketplace and the direction it’s taking, as they are with their business and where it’s going. They want to know two things—how can big data save me money and how can it sell more…

This article was written by: Russell Grant

From speakers at NADA workshops to automotive manufacturers in trade publications to vendor product advertisements online, everyone is talking about how big data is changing the future of marketing in our industry. But most of the GMs I talk to aren’t nearly as concerned with the marketplace and the direction it’s taking, as they are with their business and where it’s going. They want to know two things—how can big data save me money and how…

Enough is Enough!

Haven't you had it with all of these Data Pirates using our own customer information to defame us, lower our profits, alienate our customers... while…

Most of the articles I write are directed toward dealership senior managers or toward managers within specific departments. My content today is directed at all dealership department managers…or, rather, to those department managers who have a major sales responsibility. And guess what? Once again I’m going to talk about what’s not happening that should be happening in your department.

I am surprised by how few dealership departments have developed…

The Data War is raging.

Automotive dealers are becoming more enlightened daily as they are being exposed at NADA and through forums such as DealerElite to the very serious matter of consumer and dealer data leakage. By data leakage, I am referring to the unrestricted polling or scraping of their dealership DMS (computer systems) by vendors providing software "solutions" that are suppose to be helping dealers organize and maximize sales. Typically, these vendors have inserted…

Most recently there has been a bold new wave washing over the automotive dealership landscape. Beginning with TrueCar, whose CEO bragged about using data to eliminate dealerships and  lower profits below True Cost. He arrogantly taunted us with claims of "Transparency" which has become the "Buzz Word" of every vendor using our own data to virtually put us out of business, to steal our customers information, and sell it, pass it on to their affiliate companies, and otherwise resell it to…

  Due to the high market demand for speed, strategy and execution, Mudd Advertising is launching Mudd TV as an interactive tool to help auto dealers quickly get solutions today for their marketing efforts. This creative solution will premiere nationally “live” Thursday, September 8th at 10:30 a.m. CST on MuddTV.com. Viewers may interact with the live webcast via email, phone calls or social media chat.

Mudd TV will be accessible via live web streaming and…

We have a saying at VinSolutions “Bad data in, bad data out”, meaning even with all of the technology we have today, if your customer information is incomplete it is not worth keeping. One of the biggest challenges we have in setting up new accounts in Implementation is getting good data from another CRM/ILM. Every CRM/ILM has their own formats of exporting data and let’s face it; they are reluctant to give you the data you…