Success Story
Rick Case Honda Selling 60% More Cars in Service at the #1 Honda Dealership in Sales Rick Case Honda of Davie Increases Profitability with Integrated Marketing Strategy Many dealers face the ongoing challenge of how to effectively reach the right customers with the right message, bring those customers into their showrooms and service bays, and keep them coming back again and again. As consumer behavior patterns have changed in recent years, so has a dealer’s ability to attract and sell customers. The effectiveness of traditional mass marketing, TV, print and radio, has waned and given way to more successful marketing efforts that combine highly targeted traditional and digital components that include direct email and mail, internet, mobile applications and more. Dealerships that do not understand these targeted traditional and digital mediums and how to successfully integrate them continue to see diminishing returns with mass marketing which remains costly and nearly impossible to measure.
The most successful dealers are using targeted and digital mediums that are less expensive, more measurable and give a better return on investment than traditional mass marketing. The key to their success is integrating all their targeted traditional and digital advertising to maximize results, but this can also present a challenge as the average dealer works with multiple vendors to execute their entire marketing strategy which results in different strategies, messages and designs that too often are not integrated with one another. One innovative and extremely successful dealership, Rick Case Honda of Davie, the No. 1 Honda dealership in the Southeast and No. 3 for Honda nationally YTD, has taken things to the next level. They are not only integrating multiple marketing mediums to effectively attract, sell, service and retain more customers with one marketing partner to execute their strategy, but they are selling customers right inside their own service bays – you can’t get much more targeted and effective than that.
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“We’ve increased sales in service by over 60 percent since launching this initiative back in November 2011,” said Richard Bustillo, General Manager of the Davie store. “We went from selling 45 units to 105 units per month on average.” Their integrated strategy included many steps that began with a comprehensive five-year historical analysis of their sales and service transactions to determine customer trends. Those findings were then compared to leading third-party and industry data to establish consumer patterns within their local market. “Our retention rates and gross profit numbers were already good and we were already mining our own customer base, we just weren’t expanding it. I wasn’t satisfied because I saw an opportunity to do both,” said Bustillo. The results of their assessment enabled Rick Case Honda to identify vehicle owners with the greatest probability of buying or servicing with their dealership, as well as identify samebrand owners who had never visited Rick Case Honda, and off-brand owners with a historical pattern of crossing over to Honda.
With their market more clearly defined, Rick Case Honda of Davie began implementing a comprehensive targeted and digital marketing strategy using variable direct email and mail campaigns that consistently speak to customers throughout the 60-month life cycle of their vehicle with custom messaging that includes: a thank you and welcome message for recent purchasers, maintenance reminders for newer vehicles not yet in-equity but that may
“We’ve increased sales in service by over 60 percent since launching this initiative back in November 2011,”... “We went from selling 45 units to 105 units per month on average.” RICHARD BUSTILLO General Manager
RICK CASE HONDA OF DAVIE
be due for recommended maintenance, and ongoing targeted email and mail sales communications to customers in an equity position. Using high-end creative campaigns, Rick Case Honda promotes its best sales offers with custom service offers that reflect the service status of the customer’s vehicle. For example, active service customers who routinely come in for service receive a $29.95 Oil & Filter Change coupon, while customers who are categorized as lost, or who do not regularly service with Rick Case Honda, receive the same offer but for $17.95 to encourage them to back. Rick Case Honda also aggressively targets conquest service customers within their primary marketing area who own Hondas but did not buy from them. This is unique because most dealers use the manufacturer’s service marketing program which limits a dealer to only communicate with customers that have purchased directly from their store and as a result also limits the dealer from contacting numerous conquest opportunities within their market. If a dealer only has 30 percent market
Rick Case Honda share, they are essentially missing out on an additional 70 percent of the area’s service market. Rick Case Honda recognized the opportunity to broaden its service marketing program with conquest customers and has greatly expanded their reach of potential service customers. Another component to their strategy is that every outbound targeted email and mail campaign directs customers to an online Campaign Conversion Site that not only displays the featured promotions of the email or mail campaign they have just received, but also shows them every sales and service offer that Rick Case Honda is currently running. If a customer is not in the market for the specific offers they just received they can check Rick Case Honda’s campaign conversion site, www.rickcasehondaoffers.com for other available offers. “This site is invaluable, it’s professional, it ties in with all our sales and service promotions and we’ve seen an increase in the customer traffic printing coupons from the site,” said Bustillo. “Plus it’s completely low maintenance for us because it’s updated every month by our marketing company.” Their advertising message is further supported by POS merchandising throughout the store that validates the promotion the customer recently saw online or received in the mail, like Rick Case Honda of Davie’s “Vehicle Exchange Program”. Their Vehicle Exchange Program is integrated across their targeted direct mail and email, web site, campaign conversion site, showroom and service lanes and has helped them increase sales from inside service over 60 percent, from 45 to 105 units per month, and total RO counts are up by over 30 percent, when compared to the same period last year. They are the No. 1 Honda dealership in the country for net profit and No. 1 in volume for the month of June.
“We were servicing an average of 3,000 customers monthly with an average spend of $350 per RO. Since implementing the Vehicle Exchange Program, we’ve increased our active customer base by over 1,200 customers and we average more than 3600 ROs a month now – that is what I call ROI,” said Bustillo. “Plus, when you factor in the boost our used car department has received from our increase in quality low mileage trade-ins and the $1,300 RO associated with reconditioning those vehicles to make them CPO units, this gets really exciting.” “Everyone focuses on the new car sales numbers but that’s only part of the story. The real beauty of this program is that it generates revenue for all three of our major profit centers. It increases our new car volume. It increases our service revenue because of the reconditioning required to turn a trade-in into a retail unit, and it has a huge impact on our used car business because it allows us to take in hard-to-find used cars for less than what our competition has to pay at auction. This allows us to make more money on every unit even though our pricing is very competitive,” explained Bustillo. Overall Rick Case Honda’s certified pre-owned sales are up 50 percent. “We no longer look at our customers as ‘Sales Customers’ or ‘Service Customers’ they’re all Rick Case Honda customers. Unifying our efforts has allowed us to get very good at doing one thing many times versus doing several things once,” said Bustillo. “The best customer any dealer can find is one they already have because customers who have an active service relationship with a dealership are seven times more likely to purchase with that dealership,” said Budd Blackburn, owner of Team Velocity Marketing, the company that Rick Case Honda uses for their sales and service marketing. Rick Case Honda also provides customers with a free mobile app that is custom branded for their store. This app gives the customer free
tools to improve their ownership experience and customer satisfaction. The Rick Case Honda Auto App features a one-click to roadside assistance, a car finder to help them find their vehicle in a crowded parking lot, a parking meter alert, a flashlight, a gas savings navigator, links to navigation and notifications that remind the customer when their vehicle is due for service and when they are able to upgrade their car for the same payment or sell their car when they have equity. This free app helps improve the ownership experience and encourages an ongoing relationship between the customer and the dealership. Once a customer takes delivery, Rick Case Honda stays in contact with them by thanking them for buying and asking for referrals and online reviews, which helps to build their reputation when consumers search for them online. They now regularly receive over 200 positive online reviews every month. To measure the effectiveness of all their marketing strategies and ensure quality customer care, Rick Case Honda uses a callmonitoring system to track their advertising, employees, and how their customers are treated by listening to every call that comes into their dealership. They receive daily, weekly and monthly reports that enable them to see which ad campaigns generate the best response and pre-empt any potential customer concerns before they escalate – which improves their overall CSI and helps create lifelong satisfied customers. Spend more than five minutes with Bustillo and his team and you will see that there are a lot of things happening at Rick Case Honda of Davie. They have great facilities and a lot of inventory; however, you will see that what pulls all these moving parts together and attracts customers to the dealership is not just their state-of-the-art facilities and highly reputable products, it’s a winning strategy created with a proven marketing partner and executed by a dynamic and dedicated team.
Success Story
Success Story
Rick Case Honda
“WE WERE SERVICING AN AVERAGE OF 3,000 CUSTOMERS MONTHLY WITH AN AVERAGE SPEND OF $350 PER RO. SINCE IMPLEMENTING THE VEHICLE EXCHANGE PROGRAM, WE’VE INCREASED OUR ACTIVE CUSTOMER BASE BY OVER 1,200 CUSTOMERS AND WE AVERAGE MORE THAN 3600 ROS A MONTH NOW – THAT IS WHAT I CALL ROI,” -RICHARD BUSTILLO GENERAL MANAGER OF RICK CASE HONDA, DAVIE SPEAKING ABOUT THEIR CAMPAIGN CONVERSION SITE
IN A NUTSHELL
Selling 60% More Cars in Service at the #1 Honda Dealership in Sales Rick Case Honda of Davie Increases Profitability with Integrated Marketing Strategy
• Define your ideal local market by finding the perfect customers and prospects with the highest statistical probability of buying and/or servicing with your dealership now and in the future.
• Create dynamic, cohesive campaigns that consistently speak to your customers throughout the 60-month lifecycle of their vehicle.
• Consistently target in-market same-brand prospects, and consumers who drive off-brands with a historical trend of crossing over to the brands you sell.
• Drive consumer traffic to a custom campaign conversion site that promotes all your sales and service offers to help increase your internet sales and service leads.
• Establish a sales-in-service program to sell vehicles from your own service bays for your in-equity customers before they shop the competition.
• Provide free mobile apps to improve the customer ownership experience and encourage
ongoing owner participation with the dealership – creating customers with the highest lifetime value for your dealership.
• Monitor inbound calls so you know what ads are generating better response rates and pre-empt CSI issues before they escalate.
• Work with a marketing partner like Team Velocity Marketing www.teamvelocitymarketing.com to implement an integrated targeted and digital marketing strategy across multiple mediums that promote all your profit centers, new, used, finance, service and parts.
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