Gubagoo, the leading provider of digital retailing and conversational commerce for automotive dealerships, announced today it’s been named a winner of a 2022 AWA Award for both Conversational Commerce and Digital Retailing.
Brian Pasch announced the awards. “I’m honored to recognize the efforts of many deserving companies who stand out in their areas of expertise and have proven to be thought leaders and innovators this past year,” said Pasch.
Gubagoo continues to exemplify these qualities with its Gubagoo ChatSmart service, which won a Conversational Commerce Award. “ChatSmart has deep integrations to all the touchpoints and messaging platforms that dealers would use,” explained Pasch. “This allows dealers using ChatSmart to have a unified messaging platform across all consumer touchpoints.”
Pasch also named Gubagoo Virtual Retailing as a winner in the Digital Retailing category. Gubagoo Virtual Retailing specializes in supporting all buyer types and expected buying experiences. With Virtual Retailing, a consumer can buy a car completely online, or complete some steps online, and pick-up their deal and transaction in-store exactly where they left off.
At any point of the Virtual Retailing experience, the dealership can see the online shopper’s progress and engage and communicate with them through Gubagoo’s messaging platform to provide a guided and personalized shopping experience.
“Gubagoo Virtual Retailing continues to show great improvements and innovations, especially with new data certifications for OEM programs and DMS integrations,” said Pasch. “This platform continues to be a dealer favorite and dealers who are trying to lean into conversational commerce know that the integration of their messaging and communication platform with their virtual retailing is what helps them stand apart from the competition.”
More than 7,000 dealerships worldwide, including 90% of the top 150 automotive dealer groups in the U.S., use Gubagoo’s chat, texting, behavioral marketing, and digital retailing tools to build trust with customers, generate higher quality opportunities, and sell more cars.
“It’s an honor to be recognized with two AWAs for ChatSmart and Virtual Retailing,” said Brad Title, president of Gubagoo. “We firmly believe it is critical to today’s dealerships to support all types of buyers, and these tools make it possible and easy for dealers to provide the kind of experience that the online, in-store, and blended buyer wants.”
The AWAs were created in 2008 to recognize the best vendors in automotive digital marketing. Since then, the AWAs have become a benchmark in the automotive industry for recognizing innovative products in digital retailing, marketing automation, sales process, dealer websites, digital marketing, fixed operations, F&I, training, website merchandising, conversational commerce, business intelligence tools, video technology, OTT and reputation management.
According to Pasch, this year’s lineup of AWA winners included a number of exciting new products designed to create operational efficiencies for auto dealers, strengthen their brand, and grow their bottom line. In addition to creating new tools, the vendor community fully embraced the challenges and opportunities created by COVID and consumers’ rapid deviation from historical shopping habits. Likewise, companies showed their ability to quickly respond with dealer tools when faced with the anomaly of low/no inventory.
