2005 NADA: The Cobalt Group's Online Retailing Solutions Gain Exclusive Endorsement

NEW ORLEANS--Jan. 2, 20059, 2005--The Cobalt Group and the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA(R)) today announced that NADA has extended its exclusive endorsement of Cobalt's online retailing solutions for the sixth consecutive year. Cobalt's 2005 NADA-endorsed dealer website program features a complete, integrated set of tools that help dealers attract more customers to their websites, generate more leads, and capitalize on every customer opportunity. Cobalt, the leading provider of retailing solutions for the automotive market, is the only e-business provider to ever be endorsed by NADA.

"A successful online retailing program needs to help dealers draw more customers to their websites and more buyers into their showrooms, and Cobalt does just that by offering the best package of essential tools and features in the industry," said Charley Smith, NADA's chairman. "NADA is proud to endorse Cobalt's comprehensive online retail solution to help our member dealers leverage their online presence into a stronger bottom line."

The NADA Premier Solution offers a suite of customizable e-business marketing and management tools that help grow key areas of a dealer's business:

Generating more traffic

-- Online content management: Dealers can create professional, fresh, compelling websites with the industry's most versatile and extensive content management tools, such as Cobalt Website Manager for Nitra, Marketing Library Manager, and the AdWizard Plus ad-building tool. The NADA Premier Solution also includes customizable content pages, email forms and autoresponders, finance pages, interactive service and parts pages, and detailed reports from Cobalt Site Reporter.

Driving more leads

-- Inventory presentation: Powerful, user-friendly and flexible inventory presentation means customers can find the vehicles they are looking for and submit more leads to dealers. The NADA Premier Solution offers sophisticated inventory functionality including advanced inventory search, display of up to four photos per vehicle, a powerful inventory browser, and AutoShow, which presents online inventory polled automatically from a dealer's dealer management system (DMS). Dealers can also easily export inventory to popular consumer portals.

Closing more sales

-- Lead Manager Customer Central: The industry's top Internet lead management tool, Lead Manager Customer Central (LMCC) helps dealers maximize every sales opportunity by capturing leads from all sources and helping dealers respond to those leads quickly and professionally. LMCC also tracks sales staff performance in key areas such as response time and closing ratio while it tracks leads as they move through the sales funnel.

-- Media Tracker: Internet managers can capture detailed information about phone leads generated from the dealer's website and better evaluate the return on investment of their online retailing program through Media Tracker. Dealers can track and record every call coming into the dealership, and determine the closing ratio and cost per lead. The product also serves as an effective training aid for dealership staff. The package includes call tracking and reporting with one toll-free number included.

"Over the past six years, NADA and Cobalt have worked together to ensure NADA member dealers have the essential tools they need to motivate online shoppers to buy from their dealership," said John Holt, president and CEO of The Cobalt Group. "Cobalt is pleased and proud that our partnership with NADA continues to add value for America's new car dealers."

To sign up for any of Cobalt's NADA-endorsed solutions or to get more information about Cobalt's industry-leading products and services, contact Cobalt at 866-439-2258 or email sales@cobaltgroup.com.

About the National Automobile Dealers Association

The National Automobile Dealers Association represents more than 20,000 new car and truck dealers with more than 43,000 separate franchises, both domestic and import. For more information, please visit www.nada.org or call 703-821-7000.

About The Cobalt Group

The Cobalt Group is North America's leading provider of automotive retailing solutions. For a decade, Cobalt's exclusive mission has been to help automobile dealers and manufacturers leverage online retailing and customer relationship management (CRM) technology to increase their effectiveness and profits and to enhance the car-buying and ownership experience for their customers. Cobalt provides automotive retailing products and services to more than half the automotive dealerships in the United States, Canada and Mexico and is endorsed by more than two-thirds of the world's major automotive manufacturers. Cobalt has also received six consecutive annual endorsements from the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA(R)).