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San Ramon, Calif. – May 8, 2006
– MediaTrac™, the market leader in automotive service reward
programs, today announced that dealerships across all major automotive
brands including Acura, BMW, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, GMC, Honda,
Toyota, Infiniti and others are improving revenue and profit through
the company’s customer loyalty program. Dealers are benefiting
from higher customer retention, dramatic increases in warranty
and service contract penetration, and repeat vehicle purchases
from existing customers.
Today more than ever, dealers need to challenge their traditional
marketing strategies to reach new consumers and to retain existing
customers. Many dealers spend hundreds of dollars getting new
customers, yet four in five never return to the store for service.
With MediaTrac’s loyalty program, dealers spend less than
two dollars per customer to keep them. And that two dollar investment
is not per month or per year; it is for the life of the program.
“When you sell a car you sell the whole dealership,”
said Ken Dent, Service Manager for Stirling GMC. “If you
succeed in getting a customer in for service consistently, they
are 85 percent more likely to repurchase a car from you,”
said Dent. “Since we’ve installed LoyaltyTrac, we’ve
retained 87 percent of our sales to our service business. General
Motors’ standard for retaining sales to its service business
is 34 percent. MediaTrac literally costs me nothing and the return
is incredible.”
MediaTrac’s LoyaltyTrac solution provides a highly efficient
path to communicating with customers through email. Until now,
capturing customer email addresses has been a challenge for many
dealerships. Without a consistent effort and a means to leverage
that information, dealerships leave potential revenue untapped.
The LoyaltyTrac program helps dealers capture email addresses
during the loyalty card activation process and begins to immediately
build a relationship with their customer beyond the vehicle sale.
Customers who may not have purchased a vehicle from the dealership
but come in for service are also invited to join the service rewards
program.
“MediaTrac has allowed us to focus on capturing email addresses,
and we are averaging better than 91% email capture rate,”
said Bess Wills, General Manager at Gresham Ford. “By leveraging
email to communicate with our customers we’ll spend a lot
less money on advertising and marketing each month,” said
Wills. And using the LoyaltyTrac system for ongoing customer marketing
is paying off for Gresham Ford. “Service retention improved
more than ten percent in the first six months on the program.
We believe that this next year we’ll reap substantial benefits
in our cost savings with MediaTrac.”
Dealers across the U.S. are offering customer loyalty programs
because their customers perceive real value by participating in
the program. By bundling warranty and value-added services such
as oil changes and tire rotations into a Platinum loyalty card,
customers sense an even greater value in joining at the highest
level. As a result, F&I is driving more revenue and profit.
“A Platinum loyalty card program is really an extraordinary
way to improve our dealership’s profitability and build
customer loyalty,” said Tom Lane, CEO of Dwayne Lane Automotive
Group—Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Chevrolet, and Suzuki. “In
just the first ten days on the program, we’ve seen a dramatic
increase in our ability to up-sell warranty and other F&I
products through the LoyaltyTrac Platinum card,” said Lane.
“It’s a tough market today and there are a lot of
factors impacting automotive sales. LoyaltyTrac allows us to hone
in on what each customer wants and to be creative in our marketing.”
A rewards program helps to shape the dealer and consumer relationship.
By starting a relationship at the buying process and carrying
that relationship through to the service level, customers have
the opportunity to experience value in a variety of ways and build
a relationship with longevity. This business principal applies
to any dealership, across any brand, in any location. A customer
who is treated well, offered incentives for doing business, and
who feels they have a connection with the dealership is much more
likely to retain the dealer’s services and return for vehicle
purchases. And that is the real value of a customer loyalty program.
About MediaTrac™
Headquartered in San Ramon, California, MediaTrac is a proven
provider of customized customer loyalty and media tracking programs.
Founded in 2002, MediaTrac has hundreds of retail clients throughout
the US and Canada. The company is one of the fastest growing,
privately held firms in Northern California. For more information
please contact Mike Gorun, Managing Partner, at (800) 608-2080
or visit www.media-trac.com.
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