Optimize your Marketing with NCompassTrac Dashboard

In 2018 alone, automobile service was a $100 Billion industry. Car buyers need regular visits to the service drive but hate feeling like they’re getting marketing that doesn’t apply to them. Optimizing your customer communication is the key to long-term profitability. If a customer just purchased a car, for example, it doesn’t do any good to try to sell them another. A smart marketing system will instead focus on their first maintenance visit. If your dealership offers free maintenance for six months or a year or two years, immediately after the sale is a good time to follow up with a customer and mention that.

If a customer purchased a car two years ago, on the other hand, you’ll need to examine their specific case and see what they might need. Now is a great time to let them know what services your dealership can provide to keep their car in top shape. If a customer brought their car in for service six months ago, it’s smart to reach out to them and see if they’re ready to come back in. Some customers just want to feel like they’re getting a good deal. After decades of negative media attention, dealerships unfortunately have to make up some ground sometimes. Sending a discount or frequent visitor card out to a customer will make them feel valued (because they are!)

NCompassTrac Dashboard

The key to automotive marketing is timing. The most successful dealerships utilize industry-leading software that analyzes each individual customer’s needs and suggests the appropriate marketing plan. A good marketing plan will take into account how long it’s been since the customer was last in the dealership, but it will also factor in external data to optimize communication. One of the best examples in the Auto/PowerSports space is the NCT Dashboard, which can be broken down into three major methods of improving your marketing:

1. Retroactive History

Many dealership solutions only look forward. You’ll install them and maybe six months to a year from now you’ll start gathering useful data. The functionality of NCompassTrac can analyze data present in the system, giving you up to five years or looking-back data. From day one, you’ll be able to make informed decisions based on hard data from your dealership history. NCompassTrac wants to make sure you know where you’re going, and it does that by telling you where you’ve been.

2. DMS Health Check

Building off the Retroactive History, NCompassTrac analyzes the quality of data in your system. Any data analyst knows “garbage in, garbage out”. If you haven’t been keeping accurate records, NCompassTrac will assist with that going forward and backward. Ensuring that you’re keeping quality data is just one of the understated benefits of the NCompassTrac Dashboard.

3. Marketing Expertise

While the software does a great job of analyzing present data and looking backward, its main feature is synthesizing recent data into a straightforward conclusion. The dashboard analyzes data and presents the best options to keep your dealership successful. Most importantly, you’ll be connected with a tech-savvy Account Executive that knows exactly how best to use your data. The NCompassTrac Dashboard is built on science and plenty of historical data, but it’s up to you how you choose to use it. Don’t worry, your Account Executive is there every step of the way.

Once you’re using the NCT Dashboard, you’ll be able to easily visualize your customers across industry standard groups:

• Active – Done business with your dealership in the last 0-12 months
• High Risk – Done business with your dealership in the last 12-18 months
• Lapsed – done business with your dealership from 18-60 months
• Purchase Never Serviced – Purchase a vehicle from you but never came back to you for service for 12 months
• Inactive – you have them in your database, but they haven’t done business with you in 60 months. The lead isn’t completely dead, we should put some effort in and try to get them to visit again!

Without any further time investment, you’ll have an idea of how many of your customers fall into each specific group. This will allow you to effectively configure your upcoming marketing campaigns and methods. Sometimes a customer simply needs to be reminded that it’s a good idea to bring their car in for service. A 60 cent postcard can turn into hundreds of dollars in Service Sales.

RevenueScoring

RevenueScoring is yet another beneficial trick in the NCompassTrac hat. It synthesizes your data and history along with industry trends and metrics to determine how likely a customer is to spend money. In short, it assigns every customer a number between 1 and 100 based on how likely they are to make a purchase if marketed to in the near future. Some examples of the metrics used:

• Distance from dealership (in miles)
• Last interaction with the dealership
• Historical trends of this type of customer’s behavior
• Cross-referencing dealership offerings with customer needs

Every customer makes their own decisions, of course, but the reason marketing works so well is that humans are predictable. This isn’t a bad thing, though! Marketing to a customer with a purchase that makes them happy is good for both parties. Despite the reputation that auto dealerships have unfairly gained over the years, most customers walk in and buy what they want and go home happy. That’s what years of NCompassTrac data prove, and it’s something that will continue to happen at your dealership when you market successfully.

The Bottom Line

For over a century, dealerships have struggled to maximize their marketing ability. Dashboard solutions have failed to keep up with the rush of data provided by technology and the internet. NCompassTrac Dashboard is a giant leap forward in accurately marketing to customers who are ready to purchase. Going into a new decade, dealerships are struggling more than ever to keep up with all the available data. The 2020s will be the decade of analyzing customer data and using it for successful marketing. NCompassTrac is the best option out there. More information on the Dashboard is available here. If you’d like to learn more about the NCT Dashboard and schedule a demo, contact us today. You can also give us a call directly at (844) 478-5668, ext. 1 for Auto or 2 for PowerSports. We’re looking forward to working with you.