F&I and Showroom, April 2014

Industry Spotlight human interaction and the dynamics that go on there to move the customer through the process Its critical ChannelNets mission of leveraging technology to drive sales increase revenue and strengthen customer relationships hasnt changed but its toolkit has We used whatever means we could whether it was a salesperson using a laptop whether it was a 5 or 3 inch diskette that was sent to the customer in the mail she says The Internet and mobile has supercharged all that Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web which was invented by Tim Berners Lee a British scientist ChannelNet had already been toying with digital marketing campaigns for BMW GM JPMorgan Chase and Ford Then in 1995 the fi rm launched Ford com and the worlds fi rst dealer websites for the OEMs 5000 dealers at the time Technology and the strategies of ChannelNets core automotive customers including BMW Financial Services Volkswagen Credit Audi Financial Services Hyundai Motor Finance Kia Motors Finance and Southeast Toyota began to align in 2005 Customer retention became a key focus with captives realizing the critical role they could play beyond fi nancing vehicle purchases They were ready to start adopting these new techniques Tompkins says They started to think beyond the old way of doing things and saying OK what are the new ways we can do things that enable our customers retain our customers and help us acquire new customers The new way at least for ChannelNet was developed in 1999 and patented in 2010 and 2011 It was an Internet based software platform for building personalized customer microsites Today the platform is creating personalized URLs or PURLs to help captives deliver what Tompkins refers to as targeted lifecycle communications The old saying is It is eight times cheaper to sell an existing customer 16 F I and Showroom April 2014 Paula Tompkins began her career on Wall Street in 1974 She arrived in Californias Silicon Valley in the late 70s before starting her fi rm in 1985 another vehicle than to conquest a new one Tompkins notes And this is where the industry really has a lot of trouble because remember all the money goes into new car sales But then the brand has to wait until the customer is ready to purchase again So if we can communicate with them across the ownership lifecycle through the fi nancing company and bring all these various tools and capabilities to them it makes it so much easier to get them into their next new vehicle A New Cadence Once a vehicle is sold and fi nanced by one of ChannelNets captive customers they receive a welcome email with a link to their PURL At a minimum the vehicle owner can use the microsite to make their monthly payment but Tompkins says theres a lot more a captive can do Not many people buy two new cars on the same day so its important that you start what we call a cadence of communicating relevant information she says BMW Financial Services won several awards after implementing ChannelNets PURLs in 2006 Ally Auto took things a step further by allowing dealers to populate the sites with pictures of customers with their new vehicle The sites also included contact information for the salesperson the customer worked with They