Dealer Funnel announced the launch of an online tool that links all aspects of a car buyer’s shopping journey, handling customer engagement from social media ads via text messaging in real-time, all the way through short and long term follow up. Pilot dealers using the solution have enjoyed social media lead closing rates as high as 11%. 

Co-created by Geoffrey Wise, president of Xcel Media Group, and Troy Spring, CEO of Dealer World, Dealer Funnel delivers precise messaging tailored for the dealership from a single dashboard and rectifies common pain points for auto dealers by enabling them to immediately engage with customers and then continue to follow up, both short and long term, through a series of funnels, a plug-and-play method, and marketing automation. 

The Dealer Funnel platform can be tailored to the exact needs of a dealership, regardless of size. It comes in a stand-alone software solution, all of the way up to a fully managed solution, where incoming leads resulting from social media ads are responded to immediately by a team of seasoned automotive professionals. The tool can also be used to put leads into the funnel and follow up with customers who end up purchasing the vehicle elsewhere, attempting to capture their service business. Through extended beta testing and software refinements pilot dealers have seen social media leads close at 9-11%, with one client generating 1,000 leads from a $10,000 ad spend resulting in 38 sales in one month.

According to Wise, he and Spring created Dealer Funnel because they saw many dealers wasting thousands of dollars on ineffective advertising who did not have consistent long-term follow-up solutions in place to reengage leads, regardless of the initial opportunity.

“Having worked with many dealerships, I’ve seen that customer engagement on incoming leads is in the range of about 2-3%,” Wise said. “Salespeople and business development reps are attempting to catch the low-hanging fruit and quickly forget about the other 97%. Many dealers simply cannot count on their salespeople or business development reps to complete all follow-up tasks on every customer. They rely on emails that are frequently never seen. Or they get deleted by customers, or simply end up in a spam folder. We knew a solution was needed, so we created one.”

Dealer Funnel’s technology benefits dealers in the following ways:

• Increases customer engagement on social media platforms and other mediums consumers are actively using.
• Helps gain more opportunities to engage with customers for less advertising expense. 
• Increases lead generation through powerful ads that convert.
• Enables real-time conversations with car buyers and captures the buyer’s information.
• Provides smart and powerful follow-up funnels for both short and long-term follow-up via marketing automation. 

The platform is designed to be a custom fit for any dealership. Dealers can be entirely involved in the process or allow Dealer Funnel’s dedicated BDC of highly trained automotive industry professionals to engage with customers. 

“Far too often dealers spend upwards of $30 per lead from third parties that may contain no, little, or erroneous contact information,” Spring said. “With 34 years of auto industry experience, I realized that a solution was needed to connect with buyers on their terms, in the medium they prefer – namely, text messaging. By leveraging Facebook’s 228 million user audience in a targeted and strategic way, dealers can know the car buyer engaging with them is real and stop wasting their staff’s time attempting to contact shoppers that never respond. It’s not just the combination of Facebook ads and texting that makes a difference. If a dealer cannot create ads that are noticeable and compelling, the results will suffer. I have always judged the performance of an account by the ROI. The Dealer Funnel platform truly optimizes the leads’ ROI, both long and short term. More importantly, we believe that it increases ROI in ways we have not yet seen any other combination of platform and staff do in this market.”

For additional information and to schedule a demonstration call (800) 675-4522, or visit www.dealerfunnel.com