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Thursday, October 22, 2009
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Issue 43
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VOLUME 4
ISSUE 43
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
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Issue 43
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VOLUME 4
ISSUE 43
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News
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Study: Auto industry a spam magnet
If you've had the unsettling sense that your store or group is a big target for spammers, you're not alone. A new study by Panda Security found that the automotive industry and its employees are targeted with more spam and malware-laden e-mails than any other sector, InternetNews.com reports. The three-month study conducted by the cloud-based security software firm from July to September analyzed more than 503 million messages sent to 867 companies in 11 different industries located in 22 different countries. The automotive industry was spammed at the highest rate, according to Panda Security researchers, with a ratio of 99.89. In other words, just 0.11 percent -- or a little more than one in a 1,000 e-mails -- was a legitimate e-mail and not a come-on for Viagra or porn sites. Ranking next behind the automotive industry -- which includes manufactures, dealers, parts suppliers and other automotive services -- were the electronics sector and government institutions at ratios of 99.78 and 99.60, respectively. See more details inside.
[FULL STORY]
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Move Ahead of your Competitors with Content Based SEO Strategies
By leveraging free and low-cost web publishing platforms, dealers can target any search phrases with effective content-based SEO strategies for Google page one dominance
More info on the Digital Dealer Conference
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Getting to the Inbox is No Longer Enough
What’s hot in e-mail marketing now
More info on the Digital Dealer Conference
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Ford outpaces industry with 25% digital spend
Ford Motor Company is spending 25% of its marketing budget on digital and social media programs, double the amount of any of its competitors, reports marektingvox.com, citing a report in BusinessWeek. Industry experts expect that other auto companies are soon likely to follow Ford down the same digital path, though perhaps not quite as aggressively. J.D. Power & Associates estimates that the average automaker allocates currently allocates 9% of its spending to digital, a figure expected to rise to around 12% by 2012, as more companies transition to social media and online gaming programs from traditional TV and print campaigns. Ford defends its decision to put a lot of its eggs into one basket, asserting that it is going where its future customers already are interacting with each other - online. "If you are trying to communicate, as we are, that you have been reinventing the company, you can't just say it," said James Farley, Ford's chief marketing executive, at J.D. Power’s recent Internet Marketing Roundtable in Las Vegas. "You have to get the people to say it to each other."
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New Google tool mines display-ad insights
Google has launched a new tool that promises to help marketers judge how, or even whether, a particular online ad campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest - an ROI metric that is still surprisingly  difficult to capture, Media Buyer Planner reports. Called Campaign Insights, it is being made available for larger display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network in the U.S. and U.K. Existing measurement tools typically use clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and Website visits from a display ad campaign. Campaign Insights is designed to compare two data sets: a large group of thousands of users who saw a particular ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see it, writes MarketingVOX. The tool then measures whether there is any significant difference in searches and visits to the advertiser’s websites between the two groups. Campaign Insights leverages data from several sources, including the advertiser’s own campaign information, ad serving logs and sampled data from Google Toolbar.
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Social sites send loyal, but few, visitors your way
Visitors are good, but loyal visitors are even better. Where can you find them? According to research by ad network Chitika, social sites Facebook and Digg are more likely to send returning traffic your way than search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing, emarketer reports. More than one-fifth of users referred to a site by Facebook visited at least four times in the course of a week. Less than 12% of Google-referred visitors were as loyal. But it's not all upside. Visitors coming from Twitter were the least likely to return among the sites studied. Also, social media sites are only sending a tiny fraction of traffic. An earlier Chitika Study concluded that “the overwhelming dominance of search engines is facing little, if any, threat from social networks.”
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Cablevision pushes interactive ads
Cablevision Systems Corp. ad sales team will be busy this week, showing off a suite of interactive ad units that it hopes will help to keep local ad sales buoyant despite the down economy, Contentinople, a digital media industry publication, reports. Cablevision employees will be meeting with 85 media buyers over the next three days to demo interactive ad capabilities, including its newest ad unit, called "Optimum Select." The Optimum Select interactive ad unit allows brands to market their products direct to consumers with a call to action overlay that opens up to enable free offers or discounts sent to a subscriber's home address. It's still early days for Optimum Select, which launched earlier this month with a campaign from Gillette. That campaign began on October 5 and issued free samples of Gillette body wash to the first 30,000 subscribers that opted in. But the program finished early, as the free samples were all distributed in just over half the time planned. Cablevision has also signed up Benjamin Moore, New York-based retailer Century 21, and Unilever as early adopters of the Optimum Select ad unit. In addition to Optimum Select, Cablevision will be showing off telescoping overlays that run against 30-second ads, addressable ads, and same-day video-on-demand (VoD) ad insertion.
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Volkswagen first automaker do exclusive mobile launch
Volkswagen of America, Inc. today announced the launch of the all-new 2010 GTI via the App Store by making available a free version of the popular Firemint Real Racing game that exclusively features the all-new 2010 GTI. This is the first time an automotive manufacturer has used the App Store to launch a new vehicle, Volkswagen said. Additionally, users of the Real Racing GTI App in the U.S. can compete for the chance to win one of six, limited-edition 2010 GTIs that are fully-customized inside and out. Photo credit: Volkswagen via PR Newswire
[FULL STORY]
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Brand.net enters automotive category
Brand.net, the online advertising network for Brand advertisers, announced the company`s entrance into the Automotive category. Brand.net says its Web-wide measurement capabilities set it apart from other networks.
[FULL STORY]
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Smart Auction in deal with CenterOne Financial Services
SmartAuction, a remarketing industry wholesale auction Web site, has signed a deal with CenterOne Financial Services LLC to begin listing its off-lease vehicles for sale. CenterOne is the division of World Omni Financial Corp. that handles remarketing for numerous financial organizations and captives including Southeast Toyota Finance (SETF).
[FULL STORY]
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Izmocars acquires Performance Drive SVC
Izmocars this week announced it has aquired Performance Drive SVC Service Management Solution for Automotive Dealerships. The company said Perfonce Drive's solution is an advanced technology platform that enables automotive dealers to integrate online appointments into their DMS systems and manage their service bays profitably. The platform is designed to offer seamless DMS integration with a host of features hitherto unavailable to dealers.
[FULL STORY]
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Stop Chasing Shiny Objects
How to get ahead and stay ahead by changing the way you manage everything about your Internet marketing
More info on the Digital Dealer Conference
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Selection, Hiring, Orientation, and Training
Giving new hires a S.H.O.T. to be successful in the Internet department
More info on the Digital Dealer Conference
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Deloitte’s 2009 Technology Fast 500 cites Dealer.com
Dealer.com, an online marketing solutions for the automotive industry, announced that it ranked number 214 on Technology Fast 500, Deloitte LLP’s ranking of 500 of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America. Rankings are based on percentage of fiscal year revenue growth during the five year period from 2004–2008. Dealer.com grew 629 percent during this period. The company ranked 236 in 2008.
[FULL STORY]
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Dealer Advocate
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You can’t win if you don’t play
by Jim Ziegler
Excuse the rant that follows if it does not apply to you. We are on the brink of an incredible resurgence in business.jpg?i=102309123634) and an upsurge in the economy. That is…if some of you, a very slight few of you, don’t get on it…get moving and get motivated. In recent months, as I have repeatedly predicted, there have been extreme winners and severe losers in our business. Some of those who have lost heavily lost through no fault of their own…but they went down fighting. I’ve seen great dealers taken down and broken, even though they had invested heavily in the manufacturers’ agenda…and financially furthered the manufacturers’ position. And I’ve seen a few (very few) weak-ass suck-ups rewarded with survival and then additionally given the plunder taken from other dealers who were more deserving…while productive dealers were taken down, incompetents, entitlement mentality bottom-feeders, and factory-lackeys were given the spoils. These pretenders were rewarded not so much for their sterling business acumen, but more so for their ability to kiss the appropriate butts and donate to the proper political party. While I write this, west Texas particularly comes to mind. But, once again, after the dust has cleared, some people played and lost, but the only winners were those that played…regardless of the odds. If you weren’t in the game to start with…then it stands to reason you’re not still at the final table. Without exception, every non-player has left the building. That’s where I’m coming from. Last December, when the odds said I should fold my hand and go out of business after 23 years, my choice was to aggressively attack the market. It was a lot of work and a lot of risk…but now I’m back and business is stronger every day, financially solvent, and extremely vibrant. Will it last? Who cares – I’m in the moment. I’m certainly not going to project and dwell on possible future negatives. I’m cashing the checks now. Read more
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The Best of Digital Dealer magazine
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Learn more about the CRM solution chosen by the Holman Auto Group (as featured in July 08 Digital Dealer magazine). Read about Holman Auto Group here, and visit us online at www.autobase.net.
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SEO sleight of hand
by Jason Ezell
A salesperson from an ad agency walks into your store and tells you your web site isn’t optimized. He or she types in fancy-looking search characters with colons and spaces while talking about indexed page counts and long tails. You start to feel a tinge of panic over the possibility that consumers aren’t finding your dealership online. Sound familiar? Yes, search engine optimization (SEO) is a very important marketing strategy for your business. If a web site doesn’t appear on the first page of search results, chances are new-vehicle shoppers won’t be visiting that site. According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 New Autoshopper.com Study (NAS), 84 percent of new car buyers who shopped online used search engines to locate automotive information. In that same study, only 15 percent of shoppers who were not satisfied with the first page search results went deeper into the results. But don’t panic. You can easily adjust your web site to be well optimized for search engines by remembering a few simple rules: Read more
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On the Web
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Dealer Communications
Copyright © 2009 Dealer Communications Inc.. All rights reserved.
Information in this newsletter is provided by both proprietary and public sources. Dealer Communications makes no claims as to the accuracy of information provided by third party providers.
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