Rorhman on Fixing Dirty Data, Wyler on Why CRMs Fail, Pereira on In-House Tech | Daily Dealer Live
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We're doing better as a result of social media presence.
It doesn't do those three things, then it's on the chopping block.
It's in return on investment discussion.
Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Daily Dealer Live.
I'm your host, Sam Darkin.
Back with us today, co-hosting the Uli DiMartino.
Uli, what's up?
Welcome back.
What's up, guys?
Thank you.
For those joining our live stream today,
we're live across all CDG social media platforms.
Post those comments.
Those comments, we're going to bring them into today's show.
It'll make for a interesting and engaging content.
We've got several topics today
that are intriguing to me in particular and hopefully
to each one of you listening.
For example, CDP, what the heck is it?
Why do I need it?
How do we use it?
How do we fix dirty data?
And by the way, what is dirty data?
That's another fascinating thing.
Plus, Wyler on YCRM's fail, Piera on in-house tech.
By the way, we got Ryan Rorman in the house, which is fun.
I got to tell you, Sam Dark, Ziggler Auto Group.
I'm COO.
Rorman, ride up the road from us.
I love automotive because we can all come together
to learn to grow to share best practices.
And we're going to do that today.
Yuli, what do you think about that?
I love it, man.
I'm pumped.
But first, before we go to that, we
got to do our breaking news.
So first up today, Subaru, props to Subaru.
Topps Toyota for the first time in the United States
customer satisfaction rankings, scoring 85 out of 100.
That ends Toyota's long run near the top,
according to the 2025 American Customer Satisfaction
Index, ACSI Automobile Study.
Toyota and Mazda tied for second at 82,
while Buick, GMC, Honda, and Hyundai clustered close behind.
By the way, Yuli, Toyota and Mazda tying for second place.
Mazda's got to make some noise about that.
That's a hard accomplishment for Mazda.
Stilata's Stellantis brand sank to the bottom
with Jeep Dodge Chrysler and Ram claiming the last four
spots among mass market automakers.
Meanwhile, Lexus surged to 6% to 87.
That's the highest of any brand, and Mercedes
Benz slipped and Tesla slid.
Bottom line, satisfaction isn't just bragging rights.
Satisfaction drives repeat business and referrals,
making it a critical lever for dealer profitability
as affordability pressures mount.
Next up today, so far this year, the average profit
per customer pay repair order is up for nearly all dealers,
regardless of their location.
According to a new report from Reynolds,
and these profitability gains are tied to labor rates,
not just higher prices, but customers
aren't showing resistance.
More are declining recommended repairs,
highlighting a ceiling on how much dealers can push rates
and pricing without losing business.
What's the real differentiator here?
Technology.
Actually, one of our guests, Ryan Rorman,
I think can speak to that a little bit today.
Dealer's using technician recommendation software
or automated tools and processes.
So we'll get this, 1.74 hours per RO versus 1.55 manually,
generating an extra $26.60 in revenue per ticket
before parts markup.
What's the big picture here?
Well, dealers arming techs with automation
and AI driven tools are already pulling ahead
and the gap will widen.
It's not likely to.
It will widen by those that embrace it,
understand it, learn it and train for it.
Next up today, check this out.
Stellanus has filed a patent for what it calls wind harness,
a wind harness system or tiny turbines
built into SUVs that could generate power from airflow.
I'm not making this up.
Design concepts show roof channels
directing air to tailgate and front turbines.
And while it's unclear if the tech
would support EVs or gas SUVs,
it echoes Jeep's experiments with solar panels
and auxiliary charging.
From rooftop tents to wind turbines,
Stellanus is trying to blend adventure branding
with utility focused sustainability
to stand out in a crowded market.
Yuli, what do you make of this?
A turbine on the wind harness?
What is that?
What does that mean?
The asterisk was your disclaimer
that you're not making it up.
I think it's crazy.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
I always thought it was cool
they put the solar panels on these EVs and hybrids,
but it's like, how far can we go?
CDG did reach out for comment.
As of yet, no comment from Stellanus on this
or to any other news outlets so far as we know,
but I'm super curious what this wind harness system is
that they're working on.
And finally up today, Germain Motor Company.
This is in the M&A category.
Remember, you can go to the buy, sell tracker,
the CDG buy, sell tracker.
Germain Motor Company is expanding into Kentucky,
scooping up Bluegrass Motorsports luxury campus.
That's home to Porsche, Jag, Land Rover and Audi.
The deal underscores the appeal of exclusive
single point luxury stores
in fast growing Southern markets like Louisville.
Meanwhile, Louisiana's Matt McKay is cashing out,
selling All-Star Automotive's 13 dealerships
in real estate to Hudson Auto Group
in a deal valued at $700 million.
Props to Hudson for snapping that up.
But moves highlight a market split families
monetizing decades of work
while larger groups like Germain and Hudson Chase Scale
across state lines.
What's the punchline here?
Well, luxury, exclusivity and multi-store portfolios
remain the two hottest buy-sell plays
in today's dealership M&A.
I know here at our Onato Group, we'd love more of it.
I'm sure our next, our first guest day would agree,
but before we get there, we do get a lot of,
and that wraps our news for today, by the way, Yuli.
Before we get there to our
lots of requests to join the show,
we take those requests all to one place.
So dealers, if you wanna be on the show,
go to cdgguest.com, fill out the intake form
to be considered as a future guest.
And just as a setup to our first guest,
I think this is what makes automotive so awesome
is that we all come together to learn from each other,
to grow together.
We can even be in competitive marketplace
and dealers come together.
Our first guest today is no stranger to the geography
I sit in here today,
Ryan Rohrman, CEO of the Rohrman Auto Group.
Welcome to the show, Ryan.
Awesome.
Welcome, Ryan.
I'm excited to join you guys.
It'll be fun.
We're excited to have you.
Respect the heck out of you and your Auto Group
and what you do, and yet we share so many markets
and we work side by side, and it is interesting.
I don't know if there's anything you wanna say
in the very beginning before we ask you the question,
we ask everybody, which is how's biz.
Like, in automotive, we collaborate.
We work together and we compete,
and sometimes we compete vigorously,
but we're at our best when we become better
as an industry in delivering our promises to customers,
and we challenge each other to do that better, Ryan, right?
Yeah, and we need that.
I think that there's an old school mentality
that you and I were talking about it,
that the dealer down the road is your enemy.
That's, it couldn't be further from the truth, right?
You get better together and you gotta push.
I mean, we need to innovate, we need technology,
and your local dealers working together,
this is how we move forward, you know?
So, we're very vocal about that.
You guys are too, and I think it's great, yeah.
Yeah, good dealers make it better for everyone
and bad dealers make it bad for us.
Amen, yeah, right on, yep.
I love all the stuff that you in particular
are doing on social media right now.
You're educating everybody on all things tech,
which is pretty cool.
We're gonna get into that in just a second,
but before we go there, Ryan,
how's biz at the Rormon Auto Group today?
Biz is good.
It's, you know, I feel like it's the year of new car growth.
I mean, it's new cars are phenomenal.
And like you mentioned in the news,
I mean, service profitability is good
and parts are following it, you know?
So, inside of our little ecosystem,
we have an opportunity for used car growth still,
but I would say up the really big silos,
industry is great and I don't foresee it slowing down.
Like all the indicators that we're tracking,
the KPIs that we're following,
it looks like Q3 is gonna end really well
and Q4 it's just gonna keep going
the direction we want it to go.
So I'm excited.
I think it's gonna be great end of the year.
It feels like business is kind of getting back
to some sense of normalcy
after four and a half years of oddities.
So I'm excited for that too, but it's good right now.
So it's interesting, there's a big debate.
You mentioned used cars, narrowing margins,
price fluctuations, where do you get that best car?
How do you recon it?
How do you get it to frontline best position
for the customer?
The big debate that we've been having on the show
for the past few weeks is days turn.
You guys have a days turn policy.
What's your days turn policy?
What is it and how do you treat vehicles,
used vehicles within the group?
Big time.
So I would just say this like innovation
and technology lets us manage our business so well
and efficiencies I think are everything.
And so we know from our own data
that we start losing money on day 35.
We just know that day 35, we're at a loss.
Whether you want to talk about holding costs
or turn or whatever.
So our goal, we do have a hard age rule,
but our goal for turn is to be sub 28 days.
We know that cars turn in less than 18 days.
That's where all the profitability is at.
So if a car doesn't turn faster than 18 days,
like we're getting not concerned,
but we know that the future is not looking bright
in terms of profitability on that vehicle.
I think speed is everything inside of used cars right now.
And like you just said, it's timed a lot, right?
How fast can you get it through your recon?
If you're buying it from the auction,
how fast can you get it onto your lot?
But sub 30 all day long, I think if you can be sub 25,
you're gonna be very profitable.
Yeah.
And you say you're looking at the data to get that.
What data metric or data source are you best looking to
to get that information?
Like where are you seeing that most?
Well, we pull a lot of that right off of our composite,
out of we have an internal 20 group that we do
just for our stores.
And so we can go right to our boarding costs.
And you can see right when it starts to lose money.
And oddly enough, it's the same
for almost every store, multi brands.
It's right in that 34 to 37 days.
Doesn't matter how good you are,
like you're losing money for some reason.
And that's been pretty steady over the last few years,
but it's right there at like 35 days.
And it's, and then if you start to go in,
we use the auto as our inventory management tool,
it supports it.
And we're careful with some of the auto data.
I mean, it's a smokable figure,
but it's not, you know,
we're pulling back from the DMS and from our financials.
So, but they do agree with each other.
So, you know, like we,
we believe that that's a pretty,
pretty believable number and we see it, you know?
So it's, if a car hits 30 days, it has to go.
You know, it's not a good asset for us anymore.
So that comment actually brings us to a post
you recently made to LinkedIn, I think.
So the beginning of the post said this,
I'd love to get your feedback on it.
It says, for too long, automotive marketing
has been plagued by inefficiency
with much of our advertising budget wasted
on outdated data.
And then you talk a little bit about it in the post.
Tell us a little bit about what you meant by
inefficiency and dollar, advertising dollar spend
being wasted on outdated data.
Where is that outdated data?
So this has been, so I'm really passionate about this.
This has been like my journey for the last,
I'd say 14 months at this point.
So I'll try to make this as short as possible
and you guys can take this where you want to take it to.
Okay.
So,
May 31st of last year,
I signed an agreement with Tealium to be our CDP provider.
Now, at that time, I was educated on CDPs a little bit,
but not all the other things that have to happen
for them to work.
And so-
But before you go into that, tell everybody,
what is a CDP?
So the acronym is Customer Data Platform.
And so basically it's a place where data is aggregated
and activated.
And so it's different than a data lake,
they're not the same.
It's where real-time data activation and integration
is happening in real time.
So if someone's on my website
and they partially fill a form out.
Right now, if you don't have a mechanism in place,
you have no idea,
you can go to your ASC events and find out that
you had a unique user,
but you don't know where they left off in their journey.
Like I have Marcom right now,
within three minutes,
I can have something in that person's inbox saying,
hey, Mr. Customer,
looks like you left off on this service scheduler.
Can we help you out
as you finish this appointment request?
Click here for a call
or they can click a link
and it'll take them right back to where they left off.
Wow.
And we've seen,
so that was one of our first audience types.
So in CDP language,
audience types,
that's a buzzword.
And that's just,
you're building out this very micro audience
of when this happens on our website
or engagement happens,
we want this piece of Marcom to go out.
And that's what an audience type is.
So like I didn't give them time instead of a CDP.
I think right now we have 96 activations
across our stores.
And that's very small.
Like that's,
could sound like a larger number,
but it's, I mean,
they building out audience types
in a multi rooftop atmosphere
or environment is,
it takes time,
because every audience type,
you have to,
once you build it,
you have to build the Marcom
for that one audience type
times how many rooftops you have.
So one audience type,
you need people that can just build out
phenomenal digital advertising and marketing
times 22 for me,
times how many audience types you want to have.
So back to the original question
and we can go more into that if you want.
Yeah.
So I signed this contract,
Telegum's a great partner.
They're a CDP,
what I just described,
but I realized like two or three weeks later
that I need the data that I had in my DMS,
which we're a techie on user
and it's not their fault,
but it was,
it was really dirty data.
And what I mean by that is,
a lot of it is coming from just bad input.
So whether,
I mean,
think of how you get DMS data,
you get it from when you sell a car
and you're used,
you get it from your finance managers,
you get it from your service advisors.
So,
we found out at the Roman Auto Group
that we had a really common customer.
They hit all our stores.
It's nonameatnowname.com.
I don't know if they buy it.
I've seen them before.
I've seen them before.
Everyone knows these people.
So like that's an example.
So in the past,
when you use your market,
when you use your database to market with,
whether it's an email blast or direct mail piece,
you gotta realize like,
unless you're filtering it
and actually enriching, enhancing your data,
which no one's doing that,
you're sending out all your marketing
to these email addresses
and to these mailing addresses.
And it doesn't stop there
because dirty dad is also,
when you get like,
I get mail still from the car
I bought my wife in 2009.
Like I've,
she's had many, many cars since then.
And they still want me to service
that car with them.
And I haven't owned that car in 15 years.
So they're paying for that Marcom though,
like that.
And you can be like, oh, it's 40 cents.
Well, or whatever, right?
But the reality is once we actually,
so we partnered with Experian,
we took our entire database
and we realized only 48% of my data
was actually good data.
So wait, when you did that,
when you did that though,
so you got together with Experian,
you're like, hey, I want you to look at all the data.
And then they came back and they said
only 48% is accurate.
How did they make that?
That baffles my mind.
How did they make that determination?
They know, I mean, they,
because Experian's a data company.
Like when I first thought of Experian,
I thought, well, you know,
it's one of the largest credit houses,
you know, in the world.
And they are,
and because of that,
they have everyone's data.
They know when you move.
They know when your car,
when you buy a car and your credits ran.
They know everything.
They know,
and they know stuff faster than the manufacturers do.
Sometimes the manufacturers,
they're basing their stuff on,
from the local DMV or DB,
every state house would be different, right?
And that's all 30 days in the rear.
How much did that cost you
to get that assessment from them
that 40 some odd percent was?
We spent on 22 stores.
It costs us right around $60,000.
OK, for the assessment, right?
No.
Well, it was all.
So OK.
So what that dollar figure was was for what came next.
So they did that assessment.
They said, hey, 40,
48 percent of your dad is good,
meaning that is the right email.
That is the right phone number.
That is the right mailing address.
And they still own that car.
All right.
So that is what we consider clean data.
Those those four high level name,
name, email, phone and ownership and mailing address.
Yep. And mailing address.
And so 48 percent of our dad was had that
and it was accurate.
But then they have the ability
and other companies can do this too.
They can cleanse, enhance and enrich.
So that was the cleanse part.
So then we enhanced and enriched it
which they can go and they can stitch
just because the other 52 percent
didn't meet those standards.
It didn't mean they didn't meet them
on every single one of those.
So they were able and we got,
I think it was a little over 60 percent back.
So of the 52 percent of that 52.
That's right. Yeah.
And then so but here's the next part.
So now I have this like perfect data file, right?
And it had just shy of two million people in it.
That's that's about how much we got back.
Where do you put it?
Right. DMS is don't they won't take it back.
You know, you can't you can't say, hey,
Techian or Reynolds or whoever you're using,
you can't say, hey, here's that clean files.
Can you just go and put these on top of my badge files?
They won't do it.
OK, so I'm going to I'm going to ask the question. Why?
Put a man on the moon.
We ought to be able to like like this goes to the whole question
of why doesn't data integrate from one to the next to the next?
There's no data integration.
I'll tell you this, Sam, what I've learned in the last 14
months is how far behind automotive is in technology.
I started going to some tech
conventions that are not automotive.
And I'm and realizing that where we are today,
we're 10 years in the in the rears of what other industries are doing.
And it's little stuff like you just said, like, why doesn't our stuff talk?
Why can't why can't push and and just make the data cleaner?
You know, so so we've established that it is crazy.
That's something that needs to change.
It needs to change in automotive data needs to be better and interchangeable.
There needs to be some sort of a data standard that everybody plays well
together because there's too many APIs, too many plugins, too much data,
too much information, it's got to it's got to be better.
But so you you arrived at that point.
Now you've got all this purified data.
It's correct. You can work with it better than what do you do?
So now, yeah. So then so where do we put it?
I mean, I have this, you know, we spent, you know, it wasn't a ton of money,
but, you know, for as many stores as we have, you know, but we still got to do something with it.
So we found out that a true CDP doesn't hang on.
It doesn't like to hang on the two data
because a true CDP really only wants activated data,
meaning the customer that profile.
It's it's people that are interacting with your tech stack.
So, yeah, it can sit in there, but it's in a fall off after.
I think I think helium is 18 months.
So if if that big file and we went seven years back,
that big file, if all those people aren't actively engaging within an 18 month time frame,
they're gone. Like they just it falls off and stuff.
But that's common in CDPs.
So what we had to do, we found
and partnered with Snowflake.
So Snowflake is a data lake.
Now, they're a cool company, very inexpensive,
very secure and what they're capable of doing with your data, literally endless.
So they do have some dealers groups in there, but they're big.
So I went to their convention in June this year
and it was as big, if not bigger than the NADA convention.
They use the same setup in San Francisco.
You guys remember, they had the two convention centers
across from each other, full packed, 18,000 people.
CEO of ChatGTP was there as a keynote speaking.
I mean, all the people from all over the world is a global event.
And literally the ability to utilize your data in any way,
like literally any way.
So that's and that's that's so huge.
So we put all our clean data.
We put it into our Snowflake instance.
So just so I can understand this, because I have tried, I'm working on this.
So you pull the data out, you purify it.
It sits in this CDP for 18 months.
It falls out as it becomes not actively engaged.
So now you put it in a data lake.
And what's a good way to think about a data lake?
It's just, is it like a DMS?
Is it like a CRM?
Just just what I was going to say is a data lake is is I would say it's
how our DMS is should be like, OK, there is the way a DMS should be.
It's just a place that is extremely secure.
And you can bring as much into it as you want, and you can direct
as much out of it as you want.
And it's that's what it is.
It just you can rely based.
What's that? It's cloud based cloud based.
Yeah, it it respects your store boundaries.
So does it allow your individual stores to operate independent?
And then you can look at data collected or you can look at it individually, right?
Any way you want to do it. Yeah, you can do it.
You you can literally it's literally endless.
So if you like the power users are inside a snowflake,
if you say, hey, I just want to look at just my Toyota stores, boom,
like you could you could do that if you just want to look at a Toyota store
or you want to look at your whole enterprise.
If you have regions, you can set up any way you want.
And it literally if you have a power user, it takes minutes to do.
And it's real time.
And it's real time as well.
So it's constantly updating based on all the information
that you're you're pushing into it.
Yeah, so you've got a pretty forward thinking DMS.
You use tech on right that like they are they are newer than,
you know, CDK and Reynolds, some would say, hey, those are older bones.
Like if anybody supported a data like it would be tech on,
what's the objection of a DMS provider like tech on to a to a data lake?
Or is it just gently outside their sphere of operation?
It's funny you ask that.
It's funny you ask that question.
So I I was out actually at that snowflake conference.
Tech on his headquartered right outside San Francisco.
So we went to the quarters and met their executive team.
And I was like, come on, guys, we have to be able to figure this out.
And they're like, we are.
And I don't know if I should be saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Only between us, Ryan, only between right back on anywhere else.
Only our few thousand listeners, five thousand dollars.
So they're partnering with another data lake.
I wish it was snowflake because it'd be seamless,
but they're partnering with data bricks, which is another.
It's a competitor.
It's I couldn't tell you what the difference is between them.
They're both data lakes.
So we will, at one time in the near future,
be able to push that data back.
But it still won't truly live in the DMS.
It will live in the DMS snowflake instance.
You don't want it to live in the DMS, though, do you?
Because who owns this data lake?
Is it Roman or is it the DMS?
Yeah. And so I own my data lake.
So my snowflake is mine.
So like I no one owns any of our data besides ourselves.
We own all the data.
But even with what Techian's proposing to do,
it would be part of your DMS, but not in your DMS.
It's a separate instance that lives
on top of or inside of the standard DMS file.
So we want to pull on this thread.
But before we get into the what you've been able to do with this data lake
data and then quantify the financial impact of it, go back to the number again
from, hey, we realized we had a problem.
We knew we needed to do something to we've got a data lake.
What was the dollar price tag on that between the experience survey
and then actually setting it up with Tilium and then migrating it
from Tilium over to snowflake data lake if you're OK sharing.
Yeah, I'll share it.
So snowflake is extremely inexpensive.
My first snowflake bill was 17 cents.
Oh, so I got it.
I was like, what is reasonable?
Yeah. Yeah.
And would you got to realize inside of automotive?
I mean, we're not we're not the biggest auto group
out there by any means, but they look at us and be like,
yours, your data, you fall into a triple X, small data size.
Oh, really? OK, they're they're dealing with monsters
and, you know, that people have tens of millions of
files, even in the billions.
Like, think of like,
like Abercrombie, for instance, like worldwide company,
every single user that's on their side or in their store,
what, you know, so on and so forth, AmEx, American Express.
Like, yeah, huge, right?
So we're small.
Your bill through snowflake is wind data whenever something
is queried or activated.
So it can sit in there for no cost.
But when you tell them to do something, it's going to that
that dictates a charge.
And they a lot of these companies, a lot of these tech
companies, they don't put a dollar amount in the charge.
You buy credits and the credits are, you know, like you buy.
I'll make this up, you know, like ten thousand dollars
would buy hundreds of thousands of credits, potentially.
And that could last you a whole year, potentially.
And then they'll just pull off your credits as
as your as you query and activate.
So so snowflake, I pull this to a lot of dealers.
Even if you don't want to do a CDP, you should still do
the first step in this process.
Get your data out of your DMS, clean it, enrich, enhance it,
put it in a snowflake and mark it from there.
So like if you're, let's say you're still doing direct mail,
find whatever, like have them pull from your
snowflake instance, so you're not paying for 52 percent
bad email, bad email services.
So.
Good.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably one of the harder
things to do, right?
And it's so redundant.
And we see it all the time.
I have the same exact thing.
I have a Lexus that I haven't owned in ten years at this
point that I'm still getting, you know, marketing mail for.
And I always think back to one of my first GM's, you know,
preached garbage in, garbage out.
So yeah, it's very interesting to see that you've spent so much
time to, you know, pull that thread, connect these dots
and clean this up.
And we only have a, we only have a few minutes left, Ryan,
and I love this because I'm learning so much.
And hopefully our entire dealer audience is, but are
there any other data sources that you're putting
into your data lake, aside from DMS CRM?
So yeah, so you have, you have CRM, you have your DMS.
And then you have GA4.
So that's the other power of a CDP provider, a really good CDP.
Like most, a lot of them, this point will be contested.
But a lot of CDPs use a tag and the tag will live on your site.
But then you have to make sure that every single thing on
your website that the tag works on.
I talk about tech stacks all the time.
And so we found that out 30 days after I signed the CDP that our,
our tech stack was not compatible for two reasons.
The first reason was it's outdated and the tag won't work on it.
The second reason is that the provider of the partner wants
to charge me for my data.
So that's very common in automotive right now.
Because a lot of DMS, DMS is a great, it's a great example, right?
Yeah, that's your data.
Why would they ever charge you for you to get it?
So I found three or four partners that they're like, sure, Ryan, we'll give it.
Yeah, it's going to be like this much money and you can have your data.
And I was like, yeah, no, that's what worked for me.
So we had to redo our entire tech stack.
Make sure that they're all talking with, you know, we were big
believers in ASC events through GA4, you know, to make sure that that's all in sync.
Because then the other big source that's pumping into
helium is all our GA4 data.
Because that's all active.
We can activate almost every single ASC event that that happens.
And what's GA4?
So GA4 is your Google Analytics.
Yeah, it's just, it's your, if you have access to your Google
Analytics, they call it GA4, yeah.
Yep.
And those are the events are automotive standard council.
It's a weird term, but it's, it's, you know, if anyone's ever pitched you
on why you should use them as a partner and they bring in your Google Analytics
and they'll pick the most random column and be like, because we drive
this number like crazy.
So it's like, well, what's really important inside Google Analytics?
So ASC events tried to, it's specifically for automotive.
And it said, these are the key 28.
I think there's 28 events.
There's 28 key ASC events that we want to track.
We want to drive.
And they're all, they're all waterfall events.
So you can do sub ASC events off of those main 28.
And as you build that out, you can activate it all.
So, Ryan, this is, this is an absolute masterclass in science.
I got to tell you something.
I've had, we've had so many different people on from different companies.
Like everybody wants to sell you something, but your insight is super
valuable to process the cost.
And then I want to get into, before we have to go, the producers, the producers
are like, Hey, we're time, time, but I need a few more minutes.
So settle down in there.
Um, give, give me the quantified impact on the other side.
So obviously your goal is to take this data.
It's to make your advertising more efficient, effective, your communications
with customers.
What's the ROI or the impact that you've seen since you've implemented this?
So it's pretty, it's pretty substantial.
Um, so it's, I mean, it's hard for me to say, Hey, we're up this, but
I can tell you we track net sales as a big indicator.
So we're up over 1% this year net sales.
Wow.
I wouldn't put it all towards this.
But a lot of it expense control is huge inside of automotive and we're
seeing compressions, you guys have talked about that.
We're seeing compressions in gross profitability.
So expenses, expense savings while selling more cars, it's kind of
like the magic, right?
And so that's what this is letting us do.
So we have a really cool, um, test going.
It's, it's on, uh, my like, my LinkedIn and it's following one of my
stores in the service pickup from abandoned shopping cart, uh, customers.
So abandoned shopping cart is the audience type.
And these are people that started to make an appointment for
service and for some reason they stopped.
And there's a million reasons, right?
Your boss walks in and you turn your phone off.
Uh, you're in the car driving and you turn your phone off cause
you need to drive forward, you know, someone calls you.
How often do you go back and finish?
Not very often.
That's why we always, we always have all these like windows open, right?
Yeah.
By the way, I'm that customer.
I do that on purpose because of how aggressively they, they
retarget you usually with a discount code.
You know, so we did this with, um, I can never remember the brand,
it's a shoe brand.
We did it and we, they had a great, um, abandoned shopping cart.
We got up to 35% off, um, after just messing with it.
So it was like, you said to interact with it.
And then it was like, here's 10% to finish.
Here's 15.
So we're in, that's what we're doing that now.
Um, not 35% off, but you know, in our own automotive way, but
we've seen a 20% increase in service pickup in this one store.
Wow.
Because of abandoned shopping cart, CDP activation.
So like, and I would imagine also like your, your marketing, if
you're doing a campaign, you're probably seeing much higher
you know, click through rates, open rates, things like that.
I mean, you're now marketing to the right list.
Yeah.
This will be controversial, but my goal is to get off third
party providers.
Um, I've been very vocal about that for years.
So I'm down to two now and I'm driving more leads than I did
with, when I had four of them, because a lead from your website
is a better cleaner lead.
And I preach on that your close rates, like my average
close rate for the year.
So far, when I blend phones, walk-ins and, um, internet HTML
format of leads, we're at 30% right now.
No smoke in that number.
It's, yeah.
So who are the two lead providers that you've hung on to?
We have trader and cars right now.
Okay.
And, and, and what made you decide to hang onto them through
the elimination of everybody else?
Well, I mean, a lot of it is just how they perform.
Um, and I'm in talks with both of them, um, to get their data.
Cause like really what I went to both of them on is that I don't
want leads.
It's like, like, I really don't want your lead.
Give me your data.
And so they both have differing opinions on what that could
look like.
And we're just, we're early in conversations about how I can,
how we can digest their data.
You know, because now that I have a snowflake instance,
that's where we go.
It would go right into my instance.
And then I can, it's a, it's an audience type, right?
It's an audience type and I can activate on it.
So, um, it's, they're not geared for that though.
I mean, I, I'm not going to draw their names, but they're like,
we built these lead generators and you just want data.
I'm just like, yeah, I don't want your lead.
And they're like, I've spent hundreds of millions of dollars.
I can't, I'm not, they start like stuttering because it's
like, I, I can't do that.
I'm just like, okay.
I mean, that's where we're going.
So it's the first one that there is going to be the
winner inside of this thing.
So we just got to figure it out.
Ryan, I got to tell you what a fascinating conversation to
hear your evolution through this entire process.
And I think you've given, uh, so many dealers listening and
watching today, kind of the, again, the, the steps and the
stages and the benefits of doing it.
I, I'll be fascinated.
I, my last question was going to be, well, what do you
see kind of that next step in your evolution?
It seems like part of that is eliminating all third party
lead providers.
You want to do your own website.
Is there anything else you're thinking about in terms of,
innovation as you go beyond this data lake, uh, and, and,
and what you're doing on the lead provider side.
It's all about data.
I mean, that's, you know, like Facebook has proved that
Google has, has proved that, you know, over and over again.
And so now we're, we're, we're moving on now to how can
I get more data, you know, and, and companies sell data
and it's not expensive.
Data is not expensive.
Um, because you don't need to own it.
Um, I want to own what I have, you can lease it.
And as soon as they activate on your website, it's yours.
So that's magic.
So you lease some monster data files, you mark, your
mark com is, you guys remember, just remember this, when
you are marketing with a CDP, um, and you get micro
audience types, you're giving the customer the right
message at the right time.
It's not this vanilla old school car message.
It's, it's very personalized to them inside their shopping.
Um, like inside what they're shopping for right now, like right
now, so if they activate, meaning they click, it's mine.
It's my, that becomes my customer.
So yeah.
And to a customer that feels good, I think to be served
like that personally.
It shows you care.
It's intentional.
It's not a shotgun blast.
It's a direct line of communication to that, uh, it's a
direct line of communication to that individual, uh, customer.
It's helpful.
You know, it's, we talk about CX all the time.
It's huge.
That's, that's what we, we have to care about the
experience.
And if I'm giving the right message at the right time, the
customer's response is like, Oh, perfect.
I want, I, I wanted to finish this.
I do need to get my own change or yes, I was looking
for this, you know, so, so you have so many different OEMs.
You have so many different brands and the producers are
going to kill me because we're way long, but this is such a
fascinating conversation.
I refuse to end it just yet.
So everybody in the room, you just calm down here.
Uh, so you've got Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Hyundai,
Kia, Ford, Chevy, Buick, GMC, Volkswagen, all, Acura,
Lexus, you've got a lot of OEMs.
Data is a hot point with OEMs as you're seeking to
purify and own more of it and engage better with it.
What are the, what are the friction points with the OEMs?
And who's writing your toughest problem?
Yeah.
The toughest problem there, honestly, is OEM overreach in
terms of, um, like products that you have, I'm trying to
get my fingers half to half, you know, so like, I, I can
prove that my market, uh, strategy for SEM is better than
Toyotas, but I have to use Toyota's pay-per-click program
because if I don't, I'm just competing against myself, which
is dumb, you know, so like my Toyota stores, they don't get
the same return on their spend because it's an inferior
process because they're, they can't use all the data
warehouse and silos that I have to, to, to negotiate with Google
to get a, the better placement at the right time or the right
person.
Um, and that's really frustrating.
Uh, so that's, you know, like, so right now, like Toyota, that
was a big one.
And that's not new.
They've had that.
The nice thing with Hyundai, because they just change
theirs, but I got my ad company approved as a provider.
So we're still able, I was concerned that our Hyundai
stores would have the same thing, but at least Hyundai was
open enough to say, Hey, if you can show that you're, uh, that
you're effective in doing it and you're spending next
dollars, you can be a preferred vendor.
So we, we cross that, but I would say that's the biggest
one is just barrier to outdated tech, you know, um, stuff
that I have to put on my website.
It really doesn't work.
But man, is that enriching the OEM.
I mean, they make so much money off those programs.
So it's, that's a hard part for sure.
So your call to the OEM would be get in line with this because
it's coming, it seems right.
Like this is the next logical step in dealer to your point, the
auto industry is so far behind.
It's the next logical step.
And we thought, we thought over data OEM dealer franchise
model for so long, like this seems to make sense, right?
I mean, my message to them would be, you know, if you
have really innovative dealers, like wire, like do what you're
good at, you know, like they make and manufacture
phenomenal cars.
Okay.
Like that's enough, you know, like give us more cars or make,
make more better innovative cars.
They don't need to be involved with our marketing to the
point of you can't, you don't even have options, right?
Like monopolies are terrible.
We know this, you know, capitalism is great.
When it works and it's, you know, you, you need competition.
And so when you have OEMs that have, you know, it's these
three website providers, it's like, all right, there's better
ones out there, you know, but you have to choose one.
So they're too far removed.
It's, it's, it's the dance.
Well, Ryan Rorman, CEO, Rorman auto group.
We appreciate you being in here.
You're just up the road from us.
Yeah.
And it's fun to have this conversation.
And again, an absolute masterclass on all things CDB, CDP data,
data lakes.
You've, you've cleared up things that for a lot of us are, are
just beginning to crystallize.
So thanks for being on the show today, Ryan.
Hey, it was fun.
Thanks for having me.
I appreciate it, guys.
Hey, thanks, Ryan.
The, by the way, the social comments are just a light.
Cardiola ship guy himself, very insightful, Lauren Klein,
fascinating, Michelle, great information.
People wanting to know about other things like ASC events.
We need to, you know, you'll see really Cardiola ship guy.
You'll see how to get Ryan on the CDG pod and go through and
just do a full deep dive into this because just a fascinating
topic and we're not done yet.
We're going to extend the length of the show just a
little bit because this was great and super interesting
content.
But before we go into that, I just want to share a little
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Let's dive straight into our next guest assistant
head coach of marketing.
I love that title.
By the way, at the Jeff Weiler Automotive family,
welcome to the show, Michael McDonald.
We've pumped you out of here.
Glad to be here.
Yeah, thanks for being here.
So you just heard a extensive conversation on CRM,
DMS data and data lakes and all this.
You've got some experience in that as we continue
this conversation.
What are you doing in the CDP world?
Yes, Sam.
So here at Weiler, you know, we took the long game
approach, you know, Ryan made a good point earlier
of, you know, you get into it, you know, probably
about three years ago, the buzz acronym CDP started
to kind of float around the space and we got
into it immediately realized, you know, this is
this is a long project and the first large
heavy lift is going to be getting all of this
data together from all the different sources,
unified, cleansed and then enhanced.
Before we could ever activate upon it and then
of course show the return, which many operators,
you know, that's that's going to be their
operators and CFOs that's a primary focus.
So yeah, I've been working with Orbi here
a while for about a year and a half.
And it has definitely been a journey.
So Orbi is your version of Ryan talked about
Tilium, right?
So they create the CDP for you.
Did you go through a process where you tried
to figure out what percentage of the data is good?
What percentage is not?
Yeah, I think we had similar results to
to Ryan and roughly about 60% could be considered
so good, which wasn't a shock.
We had had many discussions previously
across the network and within
our one of our CXO meetings where we had
discussed this and so we kind of expected to
see see that.
That's exactly why we had, you know, decided
to make that investment.
So you've said previously in the past a quote
that I think is relevant to today in our day to
day as this is turning out to be.
You've said no existing CRM and automotive
can truly handle data correctly, which I
think is fascinating.
Tell us what you mean by that.
And you've also got to tell us who you're
with from the CRM standpoint.
No shade to them, but.
No, for sure.
So I'll go ahead and put that out there.
We're in solutions and really it's no shade to
them. This is across the industry.
And as a matter of fact, I will, you know,
a little shameless plug.
I do think they're headed in the right
direction, but you know, that's about the
details I can share.
But, you know, Ryan made a comment earlier
that, you know, a data lake is what
DMS should be.
And, you know, I agree with them there
and I will take it further and say a CDP
does a lot of things that our CRM should
be able to do.
Realistically, when you when it comes
down to it, CRMs were built for the showroom,
not the web, not for not just today's
data day, but, you know, the data world
we live in today.
I mean, data is arguably the single most
valuable asset a dealership has, but
and especially from a dealer group
standpoint, it's important to be able to
unify that.
I think yourself and Ryan can both
agree, you know, with large dealer
groups and having stores across a
geography, you want to provide as
much consistent branding and messaging
across the board as you can.
And that starts with, well, frankly,
unifying that data and making sure
you don't have different stores
overlapping communications with
different individuals.
But where CRMs, you know, lack
in that capability is they're
largely static and siloed.
You know, they rely upon manual
input from salespersons, from BDC
representatives, and they're
disconnected from your website.
So they're not receiving behavioral
signals for the customers
and what they're giving off as Ryan
mentioned, it's not receiving the
information on the GA4 ASC events
that's firing.
So you don't know if they're
browsing the inventory, they're
clicking on your ad scheduling
service, or if they're engaging
with your emails, which is all
helpful information that to me
arguably would benefit the
operation for a salespersons
perspective. If you're sitting
there, you can see this roll up
of that customer activity.
And frankly, they can't reconcile
duplicate records without manual
input. They can't track anonymous
sessions, and they cannot ingest
first party behavioral data.
You know, so from my standpoint,
right now we've all come up with
this, you know, what we didn't
create it, but the automotive
industry inherited this
customer data platform to be
able to do what the CRM is not
doing in unifying, enhancing,
cleansing that data.
And we've learned how to begin
activating up on that data from
a marketing standpoint.
But where I stand is there's a
whole nother aspect to this, and
that's the operation right now.
The operation has no access to
this data because the CRMs do
not have the modern capabilities
to cleanse this data to unify it,
nor do they have the ability
to ingest data back from the
CDP. So, you know, yeah.
So why not just create a better
CRM? Why didn't somebody go
out and say, hey, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna re-engineer a CRM.
And by the way, Techian is
the newest entrant into that
space, seemed a pretty logical
partner to do that.
Why not recreate the CRM?
Why to go out and create this
CDP instead?
Well, and if you look at the
players in the MarTech space
that have actually invested
in building out these software
solutions for customers.
One, it's a separate profit
source in the MarTech space.
But secondly, it's not
the current CRM providers
making this investment in the
software. They're separate
vendors. And, you know, I love
Cox, got a great partnership
with them. But the reality is
I'm waiting for them to buy
somebody who will build it
themselves. Historically, you
know, they'll buy a solution
and be able to integrate it
within their within their
systems. But so would you
predict that's coming?
That's probably coming at
some point, right?
I would like to hope that
that's what's coming.
I'm definitely at conversations
with the various CRM providers.
Like, ironically, my previous
company was one of the first to
pilot the Tiki on CRM back in
its beta phase. And I think
they have, I think they're
headed in the right direction.
You know, I think it's just
a slow growth period.
Nobody knows what you're
talking about. It's gotten a
lot better now. We're
having sessions like this
today. But a lot of vendors
aren't getting these requests.
That's one of the biggest
thing is when I reach out to
a web or an advertising
provider for one of our
stores, and I say, Hey, I want
you to leverage our first party
data for these campaigns. And
they're like, Oh, and I'm like,
have you not done this before?
And they're like, No, I was
like, All right, well, let's
learn together.
Right. And not a lot of
companies are great at
learning. So I have a
question for you. How many
rooftops do you have in
your group in your auto
group?
Officially, I'll say 23.
That includes our animals.
So there are a lot of larger
groups were one that says,
Hey, look, each individual store
needs to be worked by a
general manager. They have P&L
command control.
Help me understand this.
The CDP combines it all,
cleans it up, aggregates it and
makes it possible to engage
with it a group level.
What would you say to a GM
that's like, Hey, I'm one
store of 50. I'm part of a
50 store auto group.
What's the benefit to me of a
of a CDP that drills up
to the group and doesn't
serve my individual store?
How can a CDP serve the
individual store equal to
the group? Or is it more of a
group play?
No, I think that's a brilliant
question. So we were able to
I'll guess I'll say silo it
down to the individual stores
within the CDP.
It's just important from a
while perspective that if we
have any, you know, I'll say
corporate level initiatives that
we have access to build those
segments from a larger
standpoint. And there's also
the ability to scale
because with a lot of
different marketing strategies,
you have to have a certain size
audience and you may not be
able to build that with one
store, but you came from the
other.
What I'll say is it's
definitely been tricky.
Sam, you know, it's
I will say that we've been
able to silo and do specific
activations at the individual
store level. So for instance,
if we're taking this now
much cleaner data and we're
running equity money
campaigns, which aren't
exciting, right? They've been
around for a long time,
but they've been around
running on inaccurate data
that's to Ryan's point
matching a 50% rate
accuracy rate to ours,
roughly around 60%.
So now you take those same
campaigns and you've got,
you know, I'm going to say 99.99%
accurate data, you're going
to get more better results.
Now, but that's broken out
at the store level in the
same way we're tracking users
and their activities on each
individual store's website.
So if they're on their
website, we have their data,
we've de-anonymized them
and they don't submit a
lead. There'll be a notification
comes through to the system
and we'll be able to send out
emails trying to get them back
on site, trying to get them
converted so that the store
can have those opportunities.
So if I'm a general manager
of a single point store
as part of a large group,
I can engage with this CDP data
just like an auto group
at the group level can.
Like I don't have any reduced
ability to engage with it,
get leads from it,
send out campaigns, right?
I can still interact, right?
Okay. So Orbi,
Orbi is your CDP provider.
Is that what she said?
Yeah.
And then did you go the
extra step of what Roman did
to create a data lake?
Yes. So we do have one
in a cloud on AWS
just to keep it all backed
up there. And it works
very similarly.
And did you find that with
Orbi the experience was
similar to Ryan,
which is after 18 months
it drops out of this
CDP or it becomes
inactive. And that's why
you've got to have the data lake
or help us think about that
in a different way.
Or how does that work?
So our objective is to keep
so everything's housed
in that data lake.
And the think of Orbi
is like a middleware software.
So Orbi ingested all of this
and helped us push it
into the data lake.
Now if I'm trying to pull
specific audiences,
we're essentially pulling that
back out of the data lake
through Orbi is kind of like
that middleman.
If that makes sense.
So the data is not necessarily
ever consistently active
sitting in Orbi.
It's resting in our data lake.
And it's backed up on our cloud.
So
I got to tell you something
as an old school car guy
that got in the car business
in the late 80s
that at night in the early
90s I went and took the
tapes home at night
so that if the building
burned down,
we still had our tapes.
Right.
So the whole thing about
this and what you're
sharing with us
is it's a whole different way
to think about automotive.
And really when you think
about data ownership
and you think about
like this is needed
in our industry
to understand this better.
And so props to you
for helping us figure this out.
So Orbi, that's your
CDP provider.
Are there other providers
in the space
beside Trillium and Orbi
and what caused you to go
with Orbi to create this?
And is there a lesson learned
there?
Like if you could go back,
would you have created it
with another company?
Was it the right play?
Decided to go down the road
of Orbi here?
Yeah, you know, I will say
as I mentioned earlier,
and they market themselves
in this way that
they're a middleware software.
So they've got a great team
there.
Kevin and I both have
a really good relationship
with the tools
in the team there.
I will say I think
there's not a lot
of use case within
automotive of how to activate this.
And so you're kind of pioneers
in that sense.
Obviously, I'm not alone.
You heard Ryan,
they've been going through
this same journey
and there's other
dealer groups out there
as well.
And we compare notes,
but it's, you know,
getting vendors on board
and what have you,
that's something we've had
to do ourselves.
And I bring that up to say
there are other providers
out there in the space.
You've got the full path
suite.
You've got auto miner.
And in a lot of cases,
they will handle
a lot of the activation
themselves.
The limitation
and it's not necessarily the case
now, but the reason
we went in the direction
Orbi was the limitation
was if we want to,
you know, flex who we're using
as an advertising provider
or who we're using
for this email service
or this texting platform,
you were kind of,
you know, boxed in.
So, you know,
the way we've described it is
it's an out-of-the-box solution.
It's perfect.
If that's what you're looking
for,
and I think for like
probably a smaller,
a much smaller group
or like a couple store
that makes a lot more sense for us.
We wanted to have the flexibility
to get customized.
But to answer your question on,
you know,
if I went back
when I choose a different provider,
I think we went with
the right provider for us,
like I said,
to get it set up.
Now, what we're challenging
Orbi to do
is take some of
their existing partnerships
with companies
such as Automotive Mastermind
and let's,
you know,
collaborate and see
what we can create
in order to get
a better activation,
you know,
execution going
because that's definitely been
So online,
Lauren Klein is asking this question.
Can this replace Automotive Mastermind
to give better data
or other equity minor products?
Absolutely.
100%.
I think,
you know,
there's a lot of work
in the background of that.
But one thing I can say
the big benefit
of doing it yourself
is you own that data.
It's now within
your ownership.
Now, obviously,
you might say,
okay, we're already on that data,
but let's say you get
with an Automotive Mastermind.
They ingest the data.
They activated it for you.
If you decide to change
all that ingested unified data,
it's not,
it's not yours.
And like,
it's yours.
If you don't get to keep it
within the Automotive Mastermind platform.
So I think the benefit
to going the direction
that both Ryan and I
have kind of discussed
is you're taking ownership
of that data.
You're intentionally going after it
and cleansing it,
enhancing it,
and to me,
a big important part of this
has been unifying it.
Meaning,
you've probably got
the same household
at different stores,
especially in mileage days
because we have stores across
a very,
you know,
all over Cincinnati.
And so naturally,
they've interacted
with multiple mileage stores
over the
existence of their experience
with mileage.
And so it's important
for us to be able
to unify those records
and make sure
we have all the information.
So,
Ryan's part of his strategy
is to reduce
the number of digital
lead providers.
And he shared AutoTrader
and I think cars.com
are the two he's held onto.
Do you have a similar strategy
there?
Are you looking to reduce
the number of lead providers
or create your own leads
with this?
Or how are you thinking
about that?
I thought that was fascinating.
Yeah, you know,
it is fascinating.
I will say my approach
and I'm not knocking that.
I think there's a lot of
operators and GMs out there
that want to get rid
of those sources.
The reality is
the way I see it right now
if you sign up
with a third party aggregator
like AutoTrader
they're going to run
VLAs
on behalf
with your inventory
they're going to give you
a lot of exposure
that you may or not
otherwise get.
Sure, you can trade it
with something that's more
efficient.
I will argue that
and I've got tests
that I've run
that leveraging
your own first party data
and running these campaigns
yourself or do a provider
you're going to get
a much lower cost per click.
You're going to reach
the right people
at the right time
with the right message
and that's perfect.
I wouldn't personally
I don't intend
to replace anything
with that.
I'm simply trying
to enhance
what's already in place
because
the wiler way is
let's get as many opportunities
as we can to let
sell as many cars
as we can
and just keep growing
and to me
that's the way
we're going to get there.
So just a couple
of other questions
we get here
and we appreciate
you being so giving
on your time.
So OEMs
you've got a lot
and I asked Ryan
this question
I think it's fascinating
there's been a poll
on data
who owns it
who can engage
with it
who gets to keep it
two questions for you
the first one is
with all the different
OEMs Chevy Buick GMC
Cadillac Ford Chrysler
CDJR Tood
I mean you've got them all
right how many stores
again did you say
you've got
20 through 23
but not breaking
out the franchises
within the AutoMalls.
Perfect so 23
different stores
are there OEMs
that are kind of
threatened by this
CDP concept
or like
Ryan talked about an example
or is a little bit tougher
to work with
and easier to work with.
Have you had any experience
on that side?
I will say there's
I haven't had any
like push back necessarily
from anybody.
I will say there's
definitely OEMs
that do not know
what's going on
you know when we talk
about the CDPs
but then you've got
a few
such as
Mazda and Mercedes Benz
so Mazda started
a CDP play
early last year
and it's very simple
it's very basic
it's simply
ingesting the data
sending out
email campaigns
but Mercedes Max
has taken things a step
further to where
you know
they're now trying to
so any
you have the access
to this back in log in
they've got your data
ingested
it's combined with theirs
you can then
set up any
display campaigns
paid social campaigns
direct mail
what have you
you just go in there
they'll have a recommended
budget boom
you know what have you
I'll say
has I think attempted this
with their partner Epsilon
use leveraging
here like the SSR program
and I will say
in my experience
I think there's
definitely some opportunity
for birth there
there's just a lot of
transparency
in how the data's
being compiled
and where the sources are
who's behind the
eight ball on this
in your opinion
OEM wise
oh I mean
those are
those are easy guys
come on
anyone I didn't mention
right
but specifically
I mean
the easy to
are still land to send
these on
I think these ones
you know
definitely done a lot
to step up the play
they're trying to
you know refresh
their inventory
and they are a great
partner of ours
but I
I haven't
currently
that they don't
haven't released
any plans
to kind of move
in this direction
but realistically
you know
it's benefited
our monster store
and we're still
testing in a Mercedes
store so
I don't know
as long as
as long as
you've had this
and how long
has this been in place
because I want to ask
a question about
by cells
quickly
we've had
the CDP
ready and launched
since adult
Jamie Mary
okay
have you guys
sold any stores
since then
have you had any
by cell activity
since the CDP
was created
in the data lake
no but we have had
a new point
that we built
so how does that work
like how do you
write the CDP
into the by cell
because it's all
aggregated
cleaned
like is it
owned by that
individual location
and subject to the
to the asset agreement
like how does that work
who knows
I have to speak
to our attorney
on that one
you know
I think
that's a really
good question
I think
I have had a lot of
experiences
with by cell
someone
biggest challenges
has always been
trying to
get that customer data
from them
when we get there
and typically
all they have
is what
was in
the TMS
or what was in the
CRM
and typically it's
I mean frankly
just straight up garbage
and
so I don't know
I haven't
had a situation
you know
realistically
that's definitely
so that's a
consideration
well
you know
Michael
I have a question
regarding practical
use cases
I mean
what are you saying
your your number one
campaign
let's call it
that's actually
driving
measurable results
using the CDP
like could you give us
an example of
how you could
use that
yeah it's
it's a little complex
because there's been
some ad hoc stuff
and then we have
our natural automated stuff
I will say
just across the board
any equity mining
whether it's
going after service
to vectors
whether or not
it's going after
like
desirable equity
for trade acquisitions
and what have you
when comparing it
to what was
coming out of
the CRM
our open rates
are far better one
because well
we're sending it
from a domain
that hasn't been
spamming people
for
two three decades
yeah
and then too
because
we're able to
ensure this is the
accurate email
and make sure it's
personalized to that
consumer
but I've also run
some kind of
AV tests
you know
so an example is
and you asked
something earlier
same about
you know
at the group level
we wanted to
push commercial vehicles
so I'm able to
select the models
and I know the models
that we're trying
you know the people
like commercial models
we want to sell
so I take that
and I filter out
all active
and loss leads across a
you know
I like to go with
like a two to three year term
because I don't want to
risk it being too out of date
and then
we pulled that list
and pushed that
out to
out onto paid social
and ran some campaigns
trying to promote that site
at the same time
I reached out to
experience
and I said
hey
within the same
mile range
I want
all people interested
in these models
active shoppers
right
they send me that list
our list performed
far better
from a volume standpoint
fairly similar
not going to lie
but
I was able to go into
GA4
and see that
the people coming
from our first party data
were far more engaged
in our sites
results
and far more
conversions
and ultimately led to
a lower cost per click
so I
I don't have
a specific campaign
you know
that is just
an automated one
but I've just seen
those results
and comparing
side by side
and now what I'm working
to do
is take
you could say
any campaign
is the right campaign
to run
when you're running
on purified data
right
and now what I'm hoping
to accomplish
and I've been working
and Kevin
and I have been working
with X time on this is
we
in a lot of cases
you know
we're de-anonymizing
these users
so
you know
I may not be able to see
exactly who this person is
but the system can
when they're visiting
our site
and they're in X time
for instance
Cox also knows
who these users are
they're like
probably the biggest data
source within
automatic
right
and so what we're
trying to do
is if
service defection is
well let me
let me clarify
what I'm saying there
service
scheduler
of pain and
mint
is atrocious
you look at
the top
of the board
you know
yeah Ryan talk about that
yeah
yeah
and so what we're
what
we're trying to set up
right now
is where
if someone starts
the process
but doesn't finish
we can get
that sent
either a notification
sent to the CRM
of course
or sent into a system
where
you know
if we want to
partner with a call center
and have them call
this person
and try and help walk them
through it
maybe they
had a question
or were confused
to target them
on Facebook
and Instagram
and all their socials
like
be like hey
you know
pick up
where you looked off
I'm trying not to
be too big brother
too
too creepy for these guys
because as you know
the BC
you'll be calling me
about the complaints
but
you know
the objective there is
I mean
we're just really
getting into
being able to
to grasp
what all we can do
with this
and so I would say
yes
any campaign
you can do
with your own
cleansed
and
enhanced
first party data
is
is going to be better
and to that point
it is interesting
this
topic
I think is so important
as automotive comes
into these
next five years
right
welcome to 2025
and automotive
as we struggle to like
go from
solely brick and mortar
to a more digital world
and engage
and
and meet
customers
where they want to
meet
be met
personally
not shotgun approach
but
very individually
it's awesome
the work that you're
doing there
Michael McDonald
assistant
head coach
of Mike
marketing
at the Jeff Weiler
automotive family
thank you so much
for joining the show
today and providing
your perspectives
on all these topics
thanks for being here
absolutely thanks
thanks
fascinating
I have like
six pages of notes
every time I look down here
like
I know like
normally people are like
stop looking down
I'm like
no I'm taking notes
because I'm learning
yeah
this is stuff
I'm just
an actionable stuff
yeah yeah
that's all actually
and
and it's stuff
again
you know
I got in the business
in the very early 1990s
like
this is a different way
of thinking
the CRM
and the DMS
have become
sacrosynced
and
to pop outside of
I'm super fascinated
by the whole buy sell thing
if anybody in
automotive
has something to post
to social with that
like
like
if you have a CDP
and it's all combined
purified clean data
how does
how does that work
through a buy sell
contractually
can you like carve it out
take it out
and
toss it over
or is it impossible
to pull out
I'd be
super
fascinated to hear that
but let's dive
into our
last guest today
Carolina
with marketing director
and technology director
at Weston
Nissan
Volvo
Carolina
I call this
welcome to the show
I got it wrong
you got it wrong
I can't hear the difference
anymore
everyone calls me
Carolina
I tried so hard
sorry about that
sorry about that
Carolina
thanks
to the show
welcome to the show
thanks for being so patient
we went a little
long today
for those of us
that don't know
who you are
why don't you give us
a little background
before you answer our
age old question
how's biz
well you know
in Florida
we're a heavy
heavy
lease market
so
it
business
is driven
by the programs
by the lease programs
on the Volvo side
we're about
90% lease penetration
and then on the Nissan side
we're about 65 to 75
depending on the
on the programs
and then
this group also owns
a Ford store
and Ford
has a pretty strong
summer
lease program for
for the era
so it's been
it's been strong for
the summer
but that came after
May and June
that were pretty
you know
now you're
the marketing and
technology director
at western Nissan Volvo
correct
correct
so
what's your role
what's your day to day
inside the dealership
so those two things
are totally different
I'm kind of like
you know
the marketing side of
things would be
anything product related
anything vendor related
contract negotiations
and then understanding
you know
the different KPIs
the metrics
what Ryan
and Michael
were talking about
just recently
you know
how do you look at that data
what do you do with that data
and then you have the
technology portion
and I am kind of like
the old school
new school type person
anything that you don't see
is what I do
if there's anything at the
dealership
no matter if it's fixed
operations
FNI
sales
the GM
the DMS
CRM
I have to understand it
from front
back
put it in
how do you
how do you
roll it out
is the technician
going to use it or not
is the service advisor
going to use it or not
so that's
that's just a more
detailed back end
type thing
or the phone network
and everything that entails
technology at the dealership
well and I'm also
seeing your instrumental
in the creation of
dash B
right
am I pronouncing that
right
yes dash B
what is that
what is that
it's a dashboard
and a business intelligence
tool
that
we built
because
it was
it's nothing
it has nothing to do
with the dealership
it became
something that
when I came to the store
I'm actually originally
from South America
where
my family owns
dealerships
and the dealer world
is totally different
because the owners
of the franchise
are the distributors
of the product
so the marketing
is not regulated
the way that it is
in the US
so my perspective
on marketing
and automotive
here in the US
is different from
you know
South America
so we developed that
because when I came here
at this store
this is a very data driven store
but there's too much noise
right
you have
the CDP
the CRM
the DMS
everything
and I wanted
the the data to be live
like how can we make decisions
today to affect
the actual bottom line
versus waiting at the end of
the month to see any report
that you've ran
so that's why
we build
department by department
on the dealer's perspective
a CRM and DMS
visualization platform
that instead of only being a
dashboard
became a business
intelligence tool
because you can open up
everything
every single product
that you sold on a specific deal
every single lead
that you got from the CRM
is it a duplicate or not
and then the biggest
issue that you have
at the dealership
and it has to work
with Ryan and Michael
we're talking about too
is the relationship
between technology
and people
yeah
so what do you think
then the biggest data problem
you're solving for
in the group on a daily basis
I mean is is
dash B critical in this
yes we use that daily
because
because we have
the dashboard
and the business intelligence
tool per department
and you can see
the data live
we built it
in the perspective
of each
of those managers
right
and we grabbed
different dealerships
I worked at
different dealerships
and rooftops
throughout my career
and it's basically
what is it that
a sales manager
cares for right
every store visit
what happened with it
who
who took it over
how
what is their closing
percentage
that fixed operation
side of things
also the data would be live
how many arrows are open
how many closed
what is the effective labor rate
everything live
so that you can act on it
throughout the whole month
so every department
even F and I
right F and I would be live too
you have deals pending
are they
are they booked
are they're final
and we normalized it
throughout all the DMS
CRMs
are the major ones
right
so we went straight to the DMS
straight to the CRM
and that's the same issue
that you know Ryan
and Michael are talking about
how
how restrictive the data is
but what you do with it
is
is is how
you go to the bottom line
I'm more of a money tracker
right then just
the marketing part of it
for sure
so for a dealer with messy data
or no dashboard
I mean where do you even start
well you have to look at your tech
stack
right what is it that you have
who's your CRM
what is the capability of that CRM
who's your DMS
and what's the capability of that DMS
the issue that you run into
is that not all your sales managers
or not all your managers
know how to use those tools
they're just not going to tell you
they will not tell you
I'm serious
they will not
I've never seen that
no
who's in your
your tech stack
so who's your DMS
and CRM provider
well
this is the thing
I was in one
when I started my career
I started here
and then I went to one
Tech Yon pilot store
so I've seen Tech Yon
from back in 2019
so Ryan most likely will say
that it evolved a bunch
and it did
it has
yeah yeah no question
yeah but I were
and in this store
we use CDK
CRM
we're still with dealer socket
and
but we've worked with dealer socket
and during
you know the development process
elites
min solutions
Tech Yon CRM
and then
what's that
CRM the new one
drive centric
there we go
drive centric CRM
but we currently have CDK
and the CRM is dealer socket
is there any metrics
the dealers are obsessing over
that you think don't actually
move the needle today
in August 2025
I would definitely
and this one is going to be
controversial
but it has to be the
internet closing percentage
because the internet closing
percentage is kind of like
the end of a full process
if you don't have the right
leads then you're not going to
create enough opportunities
out of those leads
and if you don't have enough
people or enough things
that make that appointment
that you created
show
you're not going to get enough
people to sell
right so the internet closing
percentage is actually
furthest out in the funnel
and everyone's like no
my internet closing percentage
is X
but if you didn't do
the process right
if you didn't have the correct
vendors the correct leads
then it doesn't matter
really you can't
you can't get there
and then if you don't have the
correct programs
even if the people show up
you're not going to close that
lead
so you're saying you're not
monitoring lead to sale
and something like internet
or you're still keeping track
of the lead to sale
a hundred percent
but it shows you that
you have to have a very
connected dealership
right you need to connect
your bdc
or your internet people
with your sales
management team
the sales manager needs to know
that someone's coming
they need to know
what we quoted them online
they need to know
whether we can close them
or not
because
or else
if you didn't do the process
from the beginning correct
then it doesn't matter
the internet closing percentage
right because at this store
for example
we run at 50 percent
showroom close rate
it's crazy
wow that's awesome
yeah that's great
it's just it's just very high
the reason being is
that we connect the sales
management team
with the internet team
very well too
but my job let's say
in the technology portion is
that we have the correct leads
to create those opportunities
in the first place
for there to actually be
a good closing percentage
on the internet
so carolina does the
source provider matter
are there top two or three
source providers that you're like
that you like best
here in august 2020
100 percent
100 percent they matter
and it also matters
based on location
because at the end of the day
what works in indianapolis
doesn't work in
davie florida
right
because of the market
because of the audiences
usually it also has to do
with credit scores
what does the area look like
so you have to have expectations
of what do you want to close
out of those sources
and what opportunities
they're
they're generating
for your store
this is just fascinating
and we just
to have you on the show today
and kind of round out our three
guests with your perspectives
about the importance of data
making sure it integrates
seamlessly across the showroom
it echoes actually
some of the
the sentiment we heard a couple
weeks ago from glenn londi
about
you know there is no internet
sales department they're just
frontline sales
and you integrate
bring everybody together
and everybody working
in the same direction
on a goal
and everybody wins
and in in that way
so carolina
marketing and technology director
at west and nissan volvo
thanks for being on the show
today and sharing your perspectives
it's awesome to have you
thank you
thanks so much
dan c uh julie said
90 minutes of action packed info
nice twist to the show guys
totally williams of fixed ops
has some competition
as technology is moving up the
ranks quickly
we also hear from brook bill
whore think
whore thanks
lots of great commentary
for those going back
into the comments and
we've run long
which is awesome
i mean it was a
it was it was a master class
so i don't know how we topped
this on friday but
julie
we will try
we will
so to all of our fans
and everybody watching
daily dealer live today
thanks for watching the daily
dealer live where we break
down the biggest moves
in the car business
as they happen
don't forget we're here live
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thanks everybody
and see you guys
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