Dealer chat network Contact At Once and car dealer review website DealerRater have announced a new collaboration to boost real-time dealer-buyer communications. The two companies say the partnership can enable real-time chat between DealerRater Certified Dealer partners and online shoppers researching dealer reputation and vehicles via consumer reviews on DealerRater.com. “Our third-party generated dealer reviews […] [Read More]

A new process for capitalizing on service drive opportunities was announced Monday by automotive inventory management company RedBumper. Called SmartDrive, the system allows a dealer to identify in real-time those service drive customers who are in a positive equity position. By mining data from the dealership’s sales history, SmartDrive determines the approximate payoff for any […] [Read More]

AutoTrader revealed late last week a new role for subsidiary VinSolutions president  Mike Dullea, in addition to announcing position changes for other executives. Dullea has accepted a new position within the AutoTrader group of companies, where he will collaborate with AutoTrader chief executive Chip Perry and vAuto founder Dale Pollak on "a new companywide product […] [Read More]

As the social media site prepares to sell shares in an initial public offering this Friday, one OEM made an interesting move and shared its plans to pull its paid ads from Facebook, noting the exposure has “little impact on consumers’ car purchases." The automaker? General Motors, which told the Wall Street Journal this week […] [Read More]

Car shoppers are increasingly turning to mobile technology to find local dealers’ vehicles, so it seems, as AutoTrader.com announced it just hit a major milestone for downloads of its mobile apps for iPhone and Android devices. Available for less than one year, combined original downloads of these apps, not including downloads of app updates, reached […] [Read More]

CAR-Research XRM rolled out a new enhancement to its single-source CRM solution this week aimed at helping dealers unearth a potential “gold mine” of prospective vehicle buyers and capture more sales. The company explained that “Prospecting the Household” contains scripts built right into the CRM that are designed to farm the database for repeats, referrals […] [Read More]

Revealed late last week, Audi of America will be forming a new educational partnership with the National Automobile Dealers Association. NADA, the OEM and its U.S. network of 278 dealers will be “working together to improve dealership operations and, ultimately, customer service,” officials noted. What does this new collaboration entail? Audi is “the first automaker […] [Read More]

Rooftop technology company MyDealerLot (MDL) revealed last week it has been picked to participate in the Mercedes-Benz USA Preferred Vendor Status Program to provide automated customer recognition, targeted messaging and asset tracking systems utilizing radio-frequency identification (RFID)  technologies. What does this mean for MBUSA dealers? [Read More]

For dealers still unsure how to incorporate Facebook into their marketing strategy, Dataium’s newest report sheds some light on how effective the social media site can be in generating new activity for a store’s website. Dataium found that while only 0.45 percent of vehicle shoppers have been referred directly from Facebook to a dealership website, […] [Read More]

AutoTrader.com revealed Thursday some additions and enhancements to its display advertising solutions for dealers, launched in an effort to help rooftops better market their inventory to consumers. The company contends these enhancements to the programs — Skyscrapers, Spotlights and Alpha — provide more real estate and interactive features to multiple duration options for select solutions […] [Read More]