Today's marketing activities are increasingly complex and expensive, due to more complicated products and more sophisticated and demanding customers. One area that you may not have considered when striving to satisfy these demanding customers is the Internet. In fact, the more computerized your operation, the more likely you can optimize customer follow-through and follow-up from the moment a person walks through your door.
Boosting Future Sales
Nothing boosts the effectiveness of direct mail more than a targeted mailing list. When you can match the features and benefits you are offering to your audience, your response rate soars and you increase your chance of moving to sale tenfold. What if you had at your fingertips all the information garnered from all credit applications filled out at your dealership - not just those resulting in a sale, but pertinent information from each and every one at the click of a button? Dealers have experienced the power of this instantaneous information as part of e-fin Electronic Marketplace. The primary design of e-fin functions as an independent, electronic credit application forum, allowing automobile dealers to publish credit applications to all lenders simultaneously and all lenders to evaluate, close and document financing transactions on a real-time basis; yet experience has shown that an electronic database that is a result of your credit application process is an invaluable marketing tool - one that requires no additional funds or "manpower" to develop and implement.
Increasing Quality
Also, you should consider how the computerization of a seemingly simple function - i.e., filling out a credit application - can affect your marketing effort. Several dealers have increased the quality and number of their credit applications simply by placing a computerized kiosk on the showroom floor for instant, paperless submissions. Dealers connected with computerized credit application services are already experiencing many of the marketing advantages of the Internet as it is applied to the industry of automobile financing.
Today's marketing activities are increasingly complex and expensive, due to more complicated products and more sophisticated and demanding customers. One area that you may not have considered when striving to satisfy these demanding customers is the Internet. In fact, the more computerized your operation, the more likely you can optimize customer follow-through and follow-up from the moment a person walks through your door.
Boosting Future Sales
Nothing boosts the effectiveness of direct mail more than a targeted mailing list. When you can match the features and benefits you are offering to your audience, your response rate soars and you increase your chance of moving to sale tenfold. What if you had at your fingertips all the information garnered from all credit applications filled out at your dealership - not just those resulting in a sale, but pertinent information from each and every one at the click of a button? Dealers have experienced the power of this instantaneous information as part of e-fin Electronic Marketplace. The primary design of e-fin functions as an independent, electronic credit application forum, allowing automobile dealers to publish credit applications to all lenders simultaneously and all lenders to evaluate, close and document financing transactions on a real-time basis; yet experience has shown that an electronic database that is a result of your credit application process is an invaluable marketing tool - one that requires no additional funds or "manpower" to develop and implement.
Increasing Quality
Also, you should consider how the computerization of a seemingly simple function - i.e., filling out a credit application - can affect your marketing effort. Several dealers have increased the quality and number of their credit applications simply by placing a computerized kiosk on the showroom floor for instant, paperless submissions. Dealers connected with computerized credit application services are already experiencing many of the marketing advantages of the Internet as it is applied to the industry of automobile financing.
Michael Hucks is vice president of e-fin Electronic Financial Marketplace, the world's first fully comprehensive electronic financial marketplace for automobile credit applications. If you have specific questions or require more information about this subject, please check the appropriate box on the reader response form on page 3. mhucks@dealeronline.com