Team Velocity® Partners with Kia in Digital Program
Kia announced Team Velocity as the newest website, advertising, and retention provider in the Kia Digital Program.
GM Announces Team Velocity® as Newest Provider in Dealer Digital Solution Program
Team Velocity introduces a new OEM relationship as the newest reputation management and social provider for General Motors dealers.
Team Velocity® Named Newest Provider in Honda Digital Solutions Program
Honda announces Team Velocity as a key partner for advanced integration, seamless digital advertising, and expert personalization in the Honda Digital Solutions initiative.
Team Velocity Unveils Highly Anticipated Website Platform, Apollo Sites
Team Velocity® is proud to announce the release of its powerful new website platform, Apollo Sites. Fueled by the Apollo Technology Platform®, Apollo Sites is the first website to fully integrate with dealer DMS systems to deliver an unparalleled, personalized customer experience online.
Team Velocity first debuted Apollo Sites at NADA with the launch of longtime client Paragon Honda’s website, ParagonHonda.com.
“I wanted to have a website that would be unique to Paragon’s customers to give them a more personalized experience, and Team Velocity got it right. For the first time ever, our website is sitting on top of our DMS, making use of the first-party data to serve our customers better. It’s taking the friction out of scheduling service and car buying because it’s easier than ever for our customers to transact. It’s like we gave our customers each an Amazon Prime account for their car, and they love it,” says Brian Benstock, VP and General Manager of Paragon Honda and Paragon Acura.
Thanks to companies like Amazon and Netflix, consumers are demanding highly personalized online shopping experiences. However, automotive websites have been slow to adapt to meet the customer’s expectations.
“Personalization is no longer a ‘nice-to-have,’ it’s a must-have. Amazon’s model works because Amazon knows its customers,” says David Boice, CEO of Team Velocity®. “Dealers need to look at their website the same way. Customers don’t want to go through the hassle of filling out a form to schedule a service appointment because they expect you to already have all their information. If they are shopping for a new car, they expect to easily find out what upgrade options they have and what their payment would be. The data is there, it just hasn’t been used in automotive websites until now.”
Apollo Sites harnesses the data goldmines within the dealer’s DMS to provide every customer a unique, personalized, Amazon Prime-like experience. In addition to a public-facing website, Apollo Sites creates a personal website for every customer, dynamically customized to their unique information, including vehicle history, equity position, and shopping activity. Apollo Sites even generates personalized upgrade offers, recommended vehicles, service coupons, and recall notices, all based on unique customer data. These progressive sites also include interactive features like texting and service scheduling, and in the very near future, will offer the ability to complete the entire vehicle purchase process online.
“Throughout the past two decades, dealers have been plagued by ‘Mission Improbable’ – the impossible task of creating a seamless, personalized, omni-channel customer experience across every marketing channel – due to the numerous vendors and technologies on the market that simply do not integrate,” says Boice. “The vast majority of all consumers visit a dealership’s website before they purchase or lease a vehicle but are immediately put off by the huge discrepancies between the offers they receive via mail, email, or even what they see on Google, and what they see on the dealership’s website. Apollo® was designed to solve these integration challenges and make it easier for the dealer to provide the best consumer experience possible. The evolution of Apollo to include websites has brought that vision full-circle.”
Apollo Sites unlocks the unbridled power of true performance, personalization, and integration. Paired with other products like Apollo Ads, Video, Email, Mail, and Text, Team Velocity now offers a one-of-a-kind, fully integrated solution for customer retention, advertising, websites, and retailing.
Recently, OEMs – most specifically, Mitsubishi – have overhauled their current website and digital marketing programs to focus on the power of consistency through integration. In a recent interview with Automotive News, David Baum, Jr., General Manager of Lewisville Autoplex, discussed his store’s success with Apollo Sites, noting the unique ability to track customer activity and interaction on his website in real time, allowing his team to tailor their engagement with the customer to drive a service visit or sale.*
“In the past, I always had service coupons on my website, but I can think of only a handful that were ever presented. With digital coupons pushed to customers through their accounts and through email, just last month, we had 286 coupons redeemed from service customers,” David Baum, Jr., General Manager of Lewisville Autoplex.
Apollo is the only integrated platform that makes, manages, and measures all your automotive marketing. With its unique offer management system, dealers can price out all vehicles on lease, buy, and finance options daily and deliver those offers across all mediums. This includes websites, email, mail, search, video, social, and more.
“We are so excited and grateful for the abundance of momentum we are having with dealers and OEMs who are signing up and endorsing our platform. It is proof positive that our industry understands the demands of the customer and is rapidly moving forward with companies like ours who are helping to fulfill that frictionless and personalized customer experience,” says Justin Byrd, President of Team Velocity.
Original Source: PR Newswire
Mitsubishi Offers Dealers Choice of New Digital Tools
But Mitsubishi has big plans as it adds franchises every month, revamps its facilities program and works with alliance partner Nissan on new generations of its crossovers.
A critical part of rebuilding the brand is the new “Small Batch” marketing initiative designed to reach customers through digital-first advertising. And now, Mitsubishi is making it easier for dealers to access modern ad tools in their local markets and bring that more-for-less approach to chasing after customers online.
The Mi Digital Solutions program, or MiDS for short, was launched in November and allows dealers to choose from five curated providers offering prenegotiated rates and 100 percent reimbursement through Mitsubishi’s co-op ad program.
The goal is to strip away some of the vendor clutter and allow dealers to join the cutting edge of digital retailing in an affordable and manageable way.
“Prior to this program launching, we were really only focused on what I would call the traditional elements of the Tier 3 program, which are leads and websites. So, it was pretty basic,” Kimberley Gardiner, chief marketing officer for Mitsubishi Motors North America, told Automotive News.
Gardiner took over as Mitsubishi’s CMO in January of last year after high-level marketing jobs at Kia Motors America and Toyota Motor Sales USA. She rolled out the initial Small Batch campaign for the brand nationally in June, starting with digital ads before expanding to video and broadcast. That same challenger spirit led to the development of the MiDS program at the local level.
Retailers now have Mitsubishi-supported providers offering website management, digital chat, text, data mining, lead generation and other services that are tied together rather than spreading them out across multiple vendors, sometimes with little accountability.
“We really wanted to help our dealers take their digital marketing and digital programming to the next level and couple that with Small Batch thinking, which is: You can be a small organization or a small dealer, but the things we can do can have a big impact,” Gardiner said. “They realize they want to make a change but don’t know where to begin.”
Early Returns
Early results are positive. About two-thirds of the brand’s U.S. dealers have signed up, page views at dealer websites are up by 30 percent, and the conversion rate on digital advertising has risen from 0.9 percent to 1.5 percent. That latter number looks small but marks significant progress, Gardiner said.
Providers in the new program offer a variety of options — such as “good, better, best” tiers — which makes it work for smaller retailers. It’s relatively affordable for the industry, and easy to pay for through co-op dollars, Gardiner said.
The solutions are also tailored for Mitsubishi stores rather than just copying other automakers’ programs. The Mitsubishi National Advisory Board helped shape the program.
“Especially with a challenger brand like ours, we need to really work hard on consistency,” Gardiner said. “At any moment in time, a consumer can have a really great experience or have a less than great experience that could really make or break as to whether they would even consider our brand.”
Gardiner’s team vetted multiple providers and negotiated rates directly, so dealers don’t have to. Mitsubishi chose Dealer.com, Dealer eProcess, Dealer Inspire, DealerOn and Team Velocity to start. Gardiner said additional vendors could be added as needed.
One satisfied subscriber to the Mitsubishi program is David Baum Jr., general manager of Lewisville Autoplex near Dallas. Baum added a provider for his Mitsubishi store — Team Velocity — that has brought several new tools for consumer engagement.
Baum and his team can now see users interacting with the website in real time, and tailor engagement to drive a service visit or a vehicle sale. Customers are given individual accounts and can receive digital coupons they can load onto their smartphones.
“In the past, I always had service coupons on my website,” Baum said. “But I can think of only a handful that were ever presented.” With digital coupons pushed to customers through their accounts and through email, “just last month, we had 286 coupons redeemed from service customers, and those were all Mitsubishis.”
Having Team Velocity within the MiDS program made it easier for Baum to pull the trigger on more digital engagement. Part of the reason is the packaging of several services handled by one vendor, and payment through the Mitsubishi co-op program.
‘Point and click’
“I’m always being pitched from different digital marketing companies, but the pricing is always through the roof, so we don’t even consider it,” he said. With his new Team Velocity account through Mitsubishi, “it’s point and click, and they’re paid and we’re done.”
One of Gardiner’s goals as marketing head is to align advertising with media use by consumers, meaning that as people spend more time online, retailers should shift their mix. Digital also allows for visibility on what’s working and what isn’t by tracking engagement.
Toward that end, Mitsubishi added digital consultants for the first time as part of the MiDS program.
They interact directly with dealers, giving them a digital assessment and action plan on how best to use limited advertising dollars and troubleshoot problems.
“I think you’ll see more stories about efficiency, more stories about better meeting customer expectations, and certainly with those things will come more interest in terms of sales,” Gardiner said.
Original Source: Automotive News https://www.autonews.com/dealers/mitsubishi-offers-dealers-choice-new-digital-tools
Marketing Exec Says Dealers are Missing a Golden Opportunity
In an interview with reporter Sarah Kominek, Boice said dealerships’ returning customers should have online experiences that are relevant to their personal details and the cars they’re driving. Here are edited excerpts.
Q: Why do you think dealerships should use customers’ data to serve them online?
A: These are very common data points that every franchised dealership has securely stored in their accounting systems: The customer’s name, address, phone number and email. Their vehicle’s year, make, model, trim, VIN and estimated mileage. Its service history, any recalls, services due, last service and recommended services. The customer’s sales info — the payment type, down payment, term, payoff, trade value, equity, likely upgrade options, next service visit, preferences and their shopping history. These data points are easily accessible to create a personal online experience for their customers.
A: People want personalized service coupons that need to be specific to the car they’re driving. People really like to know their service history: Does the dealership have all the services that have been performed on record and are they accurate? People also expect you to give them a warning if their vehicle just went under recall. Without filling out any forms, they want to be able to schedule service and incorporate the coupons they’re entitled to. You know my name, you know my car and its VIN. I’m not going to fill out a form with the 14 pieces of information you normally ask me for, because I’ve signed in and I expect you to make scheduling a service appointment easy.
Q: What would the experience be like for a returning customer looking to purchase or lease another vehicle?
Original Source: Automotive News https://www.autonews.com/shift/marketing-exec-says-dealers-are-missing-golden-opportunity
Team Velocity® Welcomed as Newest Certified Provider in BMW Dealer Program
BMW has announced Team Velocity as the newest program-certified provider for website integration, digital advertising, and retention strategies.
Team Velocity Announces New Partnership with Audi North America
Team Velocity’s extensive suite of premium digital advertising services are now co-op eligible through the Audi Partner Program.
Team Velocity Named on Inc. 5000’s Prestigious 2019 Fastest-Growing Companies List
Team Velocity makes its 6th consecutive debut for its record-high revenue and employee growth from 2015 to 2019
WASHINGTON, DC – August 22nd, 2019 – Team Velocity, known for its ground-breaking technology platform, Apollo®, was recognized for the 6th consecutive year as one of Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing private companies in America. The Inc. 5000 list honors the most successful and inspiring independent and midsized businesses across the nation based on revenue growth from 2015 to 2018. This prestigious list includes well-known companies such as Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, Timberland, Oracle, and more.
Team Velocity was co-founded by David Boice and Budd Blackburn in 2005. Since then, Team Velocity has taken the automotive industry by storm with its revolutionary omni-channel automated marketing technology, products backed by artificial intelligence, and aptitude for innovation and success. Team Velocity has reached its all-time record high – more than 54 percent – in revenue and growth.
Recognition on the Inc. 5000 list has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success for privately-held companies in the United States for the last 38 years. To qualify, companies must generate at least $100,000 in revenue by 2015 and $2 million in revenue by 2018. This year, Inc. 5000’s honorees aggregated a total revenue of $237.7 billion― surpassing last year’s record high of $206 billion. All together these companies amassed more than 1,216,308 jobs in a three-year time span, increasing the three-year growth rate to approximately 454 percent.
This year’s Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala will be held October 10 -through October 12 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The event brings together all honorees and alumni to recognize their achievements, entrepreneurial success, and contributions to the economy.
“Words can’t describe how honored we are to make the Inc. 5000 list for the sixth consecutive year. We only hope to continue to strive and grow for not only our employees but our clients.” – David Boice, Owner and Co-Founder of Team Velocity
“It all boils down to the people. Without the continuous support of our employees and phenomenal clients, this success would not be achievable. We are forever thankful.” – Budd Blackburn, Owner, and Co-Founder
To learn more about Inc. 5000, its review process and the complete list of recipients’, visit: https://www.inc.com/inc5000/index.html.
