Just when you get your internet department to follow a lead handling process, you find your website isn’t producing as many leads as it used to, consumers don’t want to talk on the phone (especially millennials!), and the average consumer goes to less than two dealerships before buying. Somebody moved the cheese on you. What are you going to do about it—keep doing the same thing with diminishing returns or evolve your process along with changing consumer behavior?

A recent 3 Birds analysis found that 86% of the contacts in a dealer's CRM are unsold leads. The conventional wisdom has been to reach out to these leads and inactive customers through OEM programs with offers timed around equity position and trade cycles. Data has shown that these approaches result in some incremental sales. Not bad – but these numbers pale beside those of many 3 Birds clients. Our clients are seeing more than 10 incremental sales a month through our various email campaigns.

Crunching the numbers

These results are based on an extensive 3 Birds analysis of dealer data over an eight-month time period, including:

  • 90,000 Sales Transactions
  • Over 350,000 Leads
  • More than 4MM campaign communications

Again and again, 3 Birds found leads at different stages engaged with various 3 Birds Email Campaigns, including Sales, Service, Newsletter, Buyback, and other types of our proven campaigns. At each stage, 3 Birds either influenced or directly contributed to an average number of incremental sales (we defined a Direct Contribution as one in which there is a period of inactivity followed by a 3 Birds Campaign being sent and opened,* subsequent activity with the dealership, and a sale within a short time period).

The results proved our hypothesis that many customers are still active prospects even after the typical dealership lead handling processes drop off.  We found 5.7 incremental sales per month on average per dealer by sending 3 Birds Campaigns to leads that had been inactive for more than 31 days and 5.4 more incremental sales on average per month per dealer from response to 3 Birds Campaigns sent to owners in dealers’ previous customer databases.

Get the full story

These results are exciting, but even more exciting is what it means for your dealership. Get an in-depth look at the data and our analysis in our new white paper, “Consumer Behavior is Changing. Is Your Lead Management Process Changing, Too?” You’ll learn:

  • Why conventional long-term lead follow-up programs are not sufficient to mine all the sales volume out of your leads
  • The role that lifestyle content plays in owner retention
  • Why the 3 Birds Newsletter isn’t just a “touchy-feely” piece

To view the white paper and download a copy, click here.

*At a minimum.