Leads pour into your dealership’s CRM from many sources with between 15%-20% having only a name (sometimes fake) and email address for follow up. The latest data shows that as high as 40% of leads are deficient in information, which seriously questions the quality of lead generation.  

How on earth are you supposed to take a name and an email address and turn it into a vehicle sale with any consistency? Yet, your pay-plan and personal financial success are at stake with your ability to make contact with and have a quality conversation that results in an appointment and then eventually a sale.  

Most of the time, you start your initial lead follow up without any useful information about the shopper other than the vehicle they submitted their lead in on. This lack of context places your success at a severe disadvantage. 

The impetus to this is an industry-wide issue since the number of form leads generated by third-party providers continues to diminish. So, to counteract that, they have taken action to ensure they remain relevant and that more people move through their funnel by reducing the information needed to submit a lead on their respective websites.  

Unfortunately, this shifts the burden onto you and your dealership to figure out how to engage the shopper with minimal information about the shopper. Let’s not forget that leads haven’t become cheaper. They cost the same if not more in many marketplaces. The average lead cost today is north of $22 apiece.  

So, let’s put this into financial context. If your dealership receives 1,000 leads per month, approximately 400 will be missing data, making contact difficult. In quick math, that is $8,800 of your marketing spend will have limited value as it stands today. This is why lead enrichment can help to gain the additional insights you need to increase contact rates and produce better conversations.  

I believe we are cheating ourselves out of creating a better experience for our shoppers, and would be selling more cars if we just understood more about our leads.  

Let’s imagine for a minute you get a lead with a name and email only. Typically, you would now send an email introducing your dealership and attempt to set an appointment or ask the shopper to call you for more information. What happens if before you send that email, you hit a button, and your name and email magically convert into a comprehensive report about that person? 

Think name, email, phone number, social media handles, home address, work history, schools attended, lifestyle characteristics and more. I know you can create a better conversation now that you have some background, some information that helps you to connect more personally with the shopper. 

In closing, if you are looking for your competitive edge in 2020, think data enrichment for your leads. By adding context about your shopper using data enrichment, you can have a better conversation and convert more leads into test drives and, ultimately, sales for your dealerships.