Every year, new technologies make the car buying process better. As the new year approaches, the latest technological advancements in the automotive industry have the potential to change the way consumers shop, and dealers do business.
At NADA 2022 in Las Vegas, you can get a sneak peek at these new technology trends and learn how dealerships are already benefiting from tomorrow’s technology today.
Predictive Consumer Insights
Today’s consumers spend the majority of their in-market shopping time online. They visit dealership websites and third-party sites that help them research vehicles and narrow down their options. And as they do so, they leave behind clues about their buying interests and intent.
Today’s successful dealers are uncovering those clues and using them to meet consumers on their purchase path. With the right tools, dealerships can identify how likely a consumer is to buy and the vehicle they are most likely to buy—before the shopper ever submits a lead. VinSolutions’ auto dealer CRM and suite of supporting solutions help dealers leverage exclusive Cox Automotive consumer data, including data from Dealer.com websites, Autotrader, and Kelley Blue Book, to identify shoppers that are 15 times more likely to buy*—before the competition.
Personalized, Relevant Marketing Messages
Modern consumers want an individualized car buying experience, and that includes personalized, relevant marketing that’s tailored to their specific interests. But delivering this kind of personalization to every consumer in a cost-effective way is a tall task for any dealership.
Advanced marketing tools can do a lot of the heavy lifting for dealerships. Automotive Marketing Platform powered by VinSolutions uses proprietary data and technology to engage consumers with targeted, personalized marketing. The tool also integrates with VinSolutions’ car dealer CRM, which helps simplify and automate the entire process for dealers. By using intelligent, automated workflows, VinSolutions helps dealers deliver the right message at a time when each consumer is most likely to take action.
Always-On Virtual Assistant Technology
As more consumers shop outside of normal business hours, dealerships need to be ready to connect with shoppers at any time—all hours of the day or night. But with a dealership’s limited resources, connecting with every shopper at all times manually is virtually impossible.
With new technology, your salespeople don’t have to answer every consumer message themselves. Virtual assistant technology can take on many tasks, increasing customer engagement and improving sales team productivity. VinSolutions Vinessa Virtual Assistant automates key sales tasks, including responding to consumers via text and email, setting appointments, and scheduling follow-up tasks, when team members aren’t available. Vinessa is fully integrated with Connect CRM, which helps dealership sales teams capture more opportunities by giving them more information about consumers, even when they can’t be there in person.
Connected Dealership Technology
New technology, by itself, can only take a dealership so far. To be truly effective, today’s technologies have to work together to facilitate communication between departments and bring together all aspects of a dealership’s operational objectives.
Technologies that combine workflows across sales, service, marketing, and operations can bring an entire dealership in sync, enabling increases in efficiency and elevating the entire consumer experience. Cox Automotive has increased the level of connection between its products and now offers a unique set of solutions that leverages first-party transactional data from trusted consumer automotive platforms—Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. With connected technologies, unmatched proprietary data, and performance experts focused on dealer needs, the connected suite facilitates workflows across departments and enables dealers to deliver next-level consumer experiences.
Even as car sales becomes more complex, the rule for winning consumers is simple. When you know more, you win more. These new technologies can help dealers increase their consumer knowledge and sustain an advantage over the competition to win more deals.
*Source: VinSolutions Connect Automotive Intelligence Data predictions for 30 days prior to purchase in Aug 2020–Feb 2021
