70% of all vehicle purchases come from leads scored 7 or higher - Free Download

Last year Polk and HookLogic worked together on a pilot program with a dealer group to test the concept of combining Polk Lead Scoring with HookLogic’s incentive program. As part of the test, HookLogic passed copies of the email leads it received from the dealer group and gave them to Polk to be scored. Leads that scored 7 or higher were sent an email with a test drive incentive that could be redeemed when the shopper visited the dealership. The pilot test yielded the following results:

• Nearly twice as many people opened the email and printed the coupon vs. previous dealer group emails (23% for the pilot test)
• Polk became a finalist in the DPAC (Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference) Awards 2010 for Best Digital Direct Response Campaign

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Because Polk has a record of every vehicle transaction in the U.S. Polk can track all automotive purchases. Based on Polk Lead Scoring, Polk sees that about 70% of all vehicle purchases come from leads scored with a 7 or higher.

The question then becomes not which leads are most likely to close but WHERE will they close? At the dealer that received the lead or somewhere else?

Polk looks at specific information in the lead itself coupled with Polk’s proprietary database information associated with the lead (e.g. address, demographic and vehicle information). This combined information is used to determine the score. Each element in the model is weighted for its ability to predict likelihood to purchase a vehicle.

Last month a webinar was held where Polk walked attendees through the lead scoring process and how HookLogic is working with Polk to drive these shoppers into the showroom.

Those that attended the webinar already received a free copy of the presentation deck but if you are interested in receiving your free copy of it then fill out the form below and we will send you a link. Upon doing so you can also expect to receive invites to other upcoming webinars and events sponsored by or in partnership with HookLogic.

Volkswagen Dealerships Using HookLogic – Performance and Results

Volkswagen is one of our first OEM partners. We've been increasing the lead-to-show rate for a lot of VW dealers over the last few years. Let's take a look at the performance for our Volkswagen dealers in 2014.

Purchase Analysis Report for Volkswagen dealerships:

24,825 Hooklogic Leads were generated and incentivized for our Volkswagen dealer clients during the months of  6/1/2013 – 5/31/2014

Of the 24,825 incentivized vehicle leads, 7807 walked into a Volkswagen dealership that utilizes HookLogic’s suite of products to test drive a vehicle after engaging with either Wed2Show or Lead2Show. That makes for a 31% Lead-to-Show rate. This is more than twice the national average (17%) Show Rate on internet leads.

Volkswagen Sales Match Data

Of the 24,825 leads that were incentivized and walked into this group of Volkswagen dealers for a test drive, 64% (nearly 6 out of 10) purchased a vehicle.

This group of Chrysler dealers are closing HookLogic incentivized showroom ups at 64% with an overall Internet lead closing ratio of  20%.

Most dealers do a good job at measuring their lead closing ratios and closing the customer once they’re in the showroom. What dealers miss out on measuring is their Lead-to-Show rate. A very important stat.

Loyalty/Defection and Conquest Sales

The Loyalty/Defection rate for our Volkswagen dealer's is 66%. Meaning, of those customers that sent in a lead for a Volkswagen, bought a Volkswagen. Our Volkswagen dealers also have a  64% Conquest Sales Rate.

*A conquest sale occurs when a consumer purchases a Volkswagen vehicle and did not already have a Volkswagen vehicle in their garage. Volkswagen's average conquest sales rate: 41%. 

Whether it’s a lead originating from your dealer’s website, 3rd Party Lead, Online Chat lead or HookLogic Web2Show – By getting more in-market shoppers to Show Up at your Volkswagen dealership, you get more opportunities to make a sale.

If you're a Volkswagen dealer and looking to increase your website leads, internet closing ratio or your lead-to-show rate and overall sales opportunities, Call 855-LEAD-2-SHOW or contact us to learn more.

CallSource Adds IHS (Polk) Data to Sales Profit Management System

IHS Powerd by Polk Logo

CallSource Automotive, provider of call management, marketing analysis and sales improvement services, today announced it has partnered with IHS (Polk) Automotive to add vehicle purchase insight to its patented Sales Profit Management (SPM) system.

The addition of IHS Automotive information and insight allows CallSource to provide its automotive dealer customers with reporting and analytics to show how many sales prospects ultimately buy at the dealership they called and how many are ultimately lost to competing dealerships and alternative brands. This data will allow CallSource to better identify and pinpoint how to improve their client’s call management processes and will help them to track improvements in performance over time.

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“IHS Automotive purchase insight provides a key element in analyzing the results of our clients’ call management efforts,” said Andrew Price, president of CallSource Automotive. “Our patented SPM system provides a continuous loop of ongoing improvement for our dealers. The IHS Automotive insight is an important measurement of dealership performance that allows dealers to identify areas of profit leakage and improve their call management processes.”

The two organizations recently collaborated to measure the impact of CallSource’s DealSaver service.  When mishandled sales or service calls are identified, a text message alert is sent to the dealership so management can reengage the prospect. After a 90-day review of calls at nearly 500 dealerships, IHS Automotive found that more than 40 percent of customerswho purchased from the initial dealership they contacted came into the dealership following a DealSaver alert.

“Adding our analytics to CallSource’s SPM system provides some important metrics,” said Bob Sherman, director of sales and client services for IHS Automotive. “As in the case of the DealSaver analysis, we can validate that CallSource services are providing an immediate impact on a dealer’s bottom line. In addition, we can uncover important industry trends that help dealers monitor their individual call management performance against the rest of the industry.”

About CallSource

CallSource has been the industry leader in call lead and tracking-based solutions for more than 20 years. We help our clients improve their marketing and lead conversion with solutions that include: CallTrack® call tracking and recording, LeadScore® marketing analysis tool, DealSaver® missed-opportunity alerts, vanity numbers, telephone performance analytics, and online training for thousands of companies in industries that include automotive, home improvement, media, healthcare, education, plus numerous franchise organizations.

Polk to Discuss Passive Lead Scoring in March Webinar

Last month we wrote about passive vs. active lead scoring here on our blog. In this post David Metter explained how the practice of lead scoring was co-created with Polk and that while somewhat controversial, the practice of scoring leads is ultimately a smart choice for most dealerships. The part that is controversial is more about the idea of assigning a score to a lead for your sales reps to size up potential customers, and not so much about the importance of knowing the real potential of each lead coming in to your CRM. We agree that it does not behoove the dealership to know the score that each person has been assigned, after all, the score is only temporary. We do believe however that it is important to know each person's real potential to become a customer. Thus the practice of passive lead scoring was born.

To score leads, people coming in to your CRM are evaluated based on certain criteria using an algorithm that helps identify where about in the buying process a person might be. With passive lead scoring, an action is taken that is appropriate to their current situations as opposed to blanketing everyone with the same message.

This action is not a conscious or deliberate action that a sales rep takes because of the person's score, but an action that is automatic and unknown to the sales rep all together.

In our case, this action is an automated email offering the recipient an incentive for coming in for a test drive, something that a person with a low score is not likely to be interested in whereas someone with a higher score might be.

The result is that more qualified buyers appear in the showroom for your reps to work with, less time is spent courting people (or annoying people) that aren't ready for the showroom to begin with.

Lead Scoring Discussions Led by Polk

To talk about this important topic, we have invited our lead scoring partner Polk to lead discussions this month on the significance of lead scoring and the process that Polk goes through to score dealer leads. Representing Polk will be Senior Solutions Consultant Mark Pauze.

Since starting with Polk, Mark has worked closely with clients to understand their diverse business, research and analysis needs, developed solutions to meet those needs and directed teams to deliver customer solutions. He works with clients to help focus their consumer and industry intelligence efforts and develop integrated solutions that will address their needs. Mark has been focusing his efforts most recently on lead marketing at Polk and has worked with a wide range of customers on diverse lead marketing solutions.

Webinar Registration Link

A webinar will be held on Friday March 16 in our Advanced User series for auto dealers. To register, click the link below. For more information about the AutoHook Webinar Series, visit our post titled, AutoHook Webinar Training Coming in January.

Friday March 16 at 11:30am EST (For Dealers) - REGISTER HERE

Passive vs Active Lead Scoring...What’s the Difference?

Before we get into the difference of active vs. passive lead scoring, it is important to set the stage of how lead scoring was born in the retail automotive industry. Five years ago, I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time when I participated in a RL Polk meeting with my previous dealer group. We had given a year’s worth of internet leads to them to bounce against their registration data. Our dealers knew what we had sold but now we wanted to see how many of these customers had bought from someone else. This exercise had been done before but this meeting would end with a different plan of action.

Like previous meetings, I saw that up to 40% of our total leads bought a car but in most cases, a typical dealership only sells 11-15% of them. That meant that more than double what we sold went to other dealers in our market area. This frustration got the best of me during the meeting when I blurted out “Why do we always have to look at old data to know we are failing? Why can’t we know if these customers are true buyers BEFORE they go somewhere else?”

Luckily for me, the right people from Polk were in this meeting. They shared that they were working on a lead scoring platform and were looking for a test partner. Taking hundreds of strands of data that included registration data, lifestyle info, household status, etc, Polk was betting that they could score a lead in near-real time and pass that score along to the dealers so they would react differently. It was suggested that a 10 was better than a 9 and a 9 was better than an 8 and so on. This was radical thinking at the time but it was a better idea than how salespeople had cherry-picked leads in their current process.

Sell More Cars Faster

As we started testing, the data proved that the higher scoring leads purchased more and faster than the lower scored leads. At least the registration data showed that. What we realized was if the salesperson changed his behavior for the higher scoring leads, we sold more cars. If they didn’t, the score didn't matter. We later named this active lead scoring. It took action on part of our dealership to drive a higher conversion.

As lead scoring was socialized in the automotive community, it was highly controversial. OEMs started scoring leads but chose not to pass this along to dealers for fear that they wouldn't know what to do. Dealers were afraid of scoring because it was something new and went against what every trainer had told them previously; handle all leads the same. As someone who helped co-architect and test the lead scoring platform, I found myself defending the practice ad noisome, even though the data showed it worked. Then, one day I woke up and the idea of passive lead scoring was born.

I decided to take the great data that Polk provided and create a new executable for our dealership teams. Instead of asking the internet salespeople to change their behavior, I thought it might be easier to change the behavior of the customer. We knew they were buying, they just weren't always buying from us. What if we scored the lead, didn't share it with the dealership, and created a reason for the customer to give us the opportunity over our competitors? That was the introduction of passive lead scoring.

Taking some of the great components of HookLogic‚s industry-leading Web to Show 1.0 tool and marrying it up with Polk‚s lead scoring, we created Lead to Show 2.0. When a customer submits a lead to a dealer, no matter if it comes from the website, an OEM, or a third party lead, the lead gets scored and based on the score, the customer is incented to come into your showroom instead of going to a competitor. All of this happened without changing any of the processes at the dealership level. It was like putting the chocolate in the peanut butter.

Once we turned this on behind the scenes for dealerships, we instantly saw an increase in show rate and closing ratio. Some dealerships experienced a closing ratio as high as 38% during the test. It only made sense. Drive the highest intent to buy into your showroom and your internet team will sell more cars...and your competition will have no idea what you are doing because it is behind the scenes. It quickly becomes a secret weapon.

Passive Lead Scoring is a much easier decision for a dealership to make. It allows an internet team to use great data to drive the highest quality at-bats into the showroom without changing the lead follow-up process at your dealership. Adding Lead to Show 2.0 allows you to motivate action while lead is still hot and stand out from the competition.