DEARBORN, Mich. -

A person who has served as a catalyst for the growth of FordDirect — a joint venture between the automaker and its franchise dealers — has been elevated to be the company’s chief executive officer.

On Monday, FordDirect revealed its new CEO is Stacey Coopes, who previously served as executive vice president of marketing and technology and has been a member of the FordDirect management team for the past eight years.

“Stacey has been instrumental in the success of FordDirect, and we are very excited for the continued growth under her leadership,” stated Bill Keith, chairman of the FordDirect board of directors and dealer principal of Freehold Ford and Steamboat Motors.

“The FordDirect team develops innovative, industry-leading digital solutions that drive dealer profitability and keep dealers on the leading edge of the digital space,” Keith continued.

The manufacturer calculated FordDirect Internet referrals represent 21.7 percent of Ford’s retail sales. Under Coopes’ direction, FordDirect has grown lead volume to Ford dealers for both new and used vehicles by more than 40 percent year over year.

The automaker mentioned Ford dealers sold more than 275,000 new vehicles from FordDirect Internet referrals in 2010.

In a previous interview with Auto Remarketing, Coopes emphasized FordDirect is trying to go beyond just having a shopper request a price quote to generate a lead. The company has tested concepts such as reserving a vehicle the shopper might find in dealer inventory or inquiring about more incentive details. When finding an element that appeals to consumers beyond the sticker price, Coopes believes it helps Ford dealers do what they do best — sell vehicles.

“What we’re testing and have done over the last couple of years at FordDirect is try to innovate on that value proposition for consumers so that we can offer more value to the consumer but at the same time generate more traffic to the dealership,” Coopes explained.

And once that lead arrives at the dealership, it falls on store personnel to turn it. FordDirect discovered if a dealer responds to a lead within 30 minutes of  submission, the close rate comes in at 25 percent. If the response takes an hour or as long as five hours, Coopes indicated that close rate plummets to as low as 5 percent.

“The unique structure of FordDirect gives us a competitive advantage and has made Ford Motor Co. a leader in digital products and services for our dealers,” noted Ken Czubay, Ford’s vice president of U.S. marketing sales and service and also a FordDirect board member.

Furthermore, based on a belief that 97 percent of text messages are opened, Coopes explained a couple of other projects FordDirect tested to harness that mobile technology. She explained that tools that utilize text messaging are based on the concept of having different approaches and innovative ways that the automaker and its franchise dealers can go after lead generation.

In an earlier interview with Auto Remarketing, Coopes outlined a program FordDirect unveiled late last year in the text marketing space.

“We saw a lot of dealers looking for solutions to take what historically was people who would submit for contest and incentives, dealers would get lists of customers in their text campaign and they didn’t know what to do with them because the customers had requested to win something but was not necessarily an in-market consumer,” Coopes explained.

“We actually piloted an approach where we would put the SMS code on our advertising and our commercials,” she continued. “As the customers would text that in, they would get series of questions that would indicate if they would be in the market for a Ford vehicle and would also give them a value proposition to keep going.”

So how far did these consumers engage with the brand and franchise dealerships?

“It was surprising the conversion of people who came through that process to be a lead because we would sequentially collect more and more information with each question until we had the name, phone number and vehicle of interest,” Coopes responded. “We were able to see 15 percent conversion on those leads versus our site conversion that tends to be in the 8 to 10 percent range.

“For us, it’s very important that the leads we send to dealers are really high quality because the last thing that an Internet manager wants to do is pore through a bunch of leads and not have many of them close,” Coopes said..

Now as CEO, Coopes highlighted what’s now on her retail radar.

“The FordDirect team is passionate about helping dealers sell more vehicles,” Coopes emphasized. “We will continue to innovate on behalf of Ford dealers and bring them new ways to meet the needs of their customers.”

Previously, the CEO duties were split between Leo Hillock, executive vice president, dealer relations and development; and Ted Vincent, chief financial officer.

The OEM indicated Hillock will continue managing FordDirect’s dealer relations and development department, while Vincent will continue as chief financial officer.

Management added that Valerie Fuller will continue managing FordDirect’s operations.

Prior to joining FordDirect, Coopes was a senior manager in Deloitte Consulting’s Automotive Practice where she specialized in digital strategy and customer relationship management.

In her tenure at Deloitte, Coopes led engagements at General Motors, Chrysler, and Audi to develop and execute customer-centric strategies within order fulfillment and marketing.