TruVideo and Outsell today announced their partnership to bring a new communication channel to automotive dealerships nationwide. The partnership transforms customer engagement for dealers by equipping them to communicate with consumers by text, making sales and service information and appointments easier, faster and more effective.

“The Outsell–TruVideo partnership is powerful because combines the expertise of two market leaders,” said Mike Wethington, founder and CEO of Outsell. “When we combine our customer engagement platform with the text and video solutions from TruVideo, we reach more people and deliver incremental sales and service volume in a way consumers increasingly prefer.”

Through the new partnership, Outsell dealerships will use TruVideo’s smart lines to send robust and timely text messages and video when they deliver the most impact for dealers. Unlike standard texting tools, TruVideo’s smart lines give users the ability to send video links, analyze the words and phrases used in the text, and be responsive to customers’ immediate needs. In addition, behavior data from customer engagement creates new data sets that powers Outsell A.I. and helps dealerships understand customer intent.

“Outsell’s expertise with dealership first-party data and analytics and TruVideo’s laser focus on engaging and reaching customers on their terms through messaging is a solid combination,” said Joe Shaker, founder of TruVideo. “Texting is no longer enough. You need to be able to deliver multiple experiences through smart lines and analyze the customer engagement that comes from that conversational commerce.”

Under the partnership, Outsell A.I. interprets dealerships’ first-party data by lifecycle stages and interests, identifying targeted opportunities for text message outreach via TruVideo. If customers reply with interest, dealers can have one-on-one conversations and move customers down the funnel for sales or service. Functionality exists for full-lifecycle outreach, with options for both sales and service campaigns including lease-end, positive equity, buyer detection, service-due reminders and more.

Dealerships experience a variety of benefits from text message communications:

• Text messaging creates the highest intended service loyalty (60%) among communication channels.
• Text messaging yields a higher Net Promoter Score than any other method of consumer engagement.
• Customers who text with their dealership report the best customer satisfaction.
• Outsell–TruVideo text reaches 41% of customers who are not reached on any other channel (based on 120,000 sends).
• Outsell experience with text shows that more than 30% of linked sales and more than 50% of linked service transactions can be attributed only to text and no other medium.

Dealers who want to reach more customers on a channel they prefer to use now have an option that combines the best of Outsell with the best of TruVideo.