Embarking on a social media strategy for your dealership can be a daunting task! Setting up facebook and twitter sites is enough work, but that’s only the beginning. The real blood, sweat and tears come in developing and sharing effective content. If you can engage your customers effectively through relevant content, your effort will be more likely to pay off in real dollars.

This article serves to share three main principles of developing effective content for your social media sites:  Content should be unique, dynamic, and transactional.

1. Your Content Should Be UNIQUE

When someone visits your social media site, they should find an environment different from your website, different from your email newsletters, different from your mailers. Your facebook and twitter sites should complement your other marketing efforts, but in order to get people to spend time on your social media sites, you must offer them something new. Add articles that might interest car enthusiasts, post about your Service Advisor’s new baby, or share an inspiring story. But let’s face it, your customers will most likely head to your social media sites for some kind of coupon or offer, so give it to them! How about an additional 5% twitter discount, or just post your monthly coupons on your facebook site where they can easily be printed, or shared. People have so many places to go on the internet these days, it’s important to engage them as quickly as possible and offer them what they are looking for.

2. Your Content Should Be DYNAMIC

As important as it is to draw customers to your social media sites, it is infinitely more important to keep them there. You can do this through the use of dynamic content. Offer monthly or quarterly drawings for gadgets such as ipods, or navigation systems…or even drawings for free vehicle details, or oil changes. Use monthly or quarterly events to incentivize your friends and followers to stay. Make sure to vary your content and keep it fresh so your customers remain interested and engaged. Don’t know what to post that will be dynamic? Ask your audience! Send questions out through facebook and twitter like “What’s interesting you guys this month?” or “What’s your favorite coupon to receive?” or “What feature do you want to see on the cars of the future?” It doesn’t really matter what the questions are, as long as you are keeping your customers talking and coming back, although you can gain some valuable feedback from customer input. The bottom line here is, keep your content changing, relevant, and constantly offer incentives and offers to ensure that staying connected with you on facebook and twitter is more valuable than leaving.

3. Your Content Should Be TRANSACTIONAL

If you are thinking about using social media for your dealership, you are most likely looking to draw business and increase profits, so keep this goal in mind as you are posting content. If you are having a slow day on the service drive, tweet out a “TODAY ONLY: $10 Oil Change Special” to bring customers in, or if you are trying to move cars off the lot, share photos and videos of those vehicles on facebook along with a cash bonus coupon. Your social content should not solely be about business, but in order to bring dollars in, you have to make it easy for your customers to see a value on your site, and turn it into a real transaction at your dealership.

In all, there is no specific recipe for posting content to your social media sites. Pretty much anything is fair game, and everything varies depending on the demographics of your customer base, and the current situation in your local area. The best thing to do, is to take the time to get to know your customers, consistently post a variety of content they are interested in,  and offer them valuable incentives to not only remain connected with you, but to come back to the dealership and spend money. Social Media marketing is relational and requires a steady commitment to maintain, but it will be worth the effort in the long run when you can retain customers and gain new ones.

It’s a new year which means a fresh start for all of us. At CIMA, we invite you to join us in making this year a successful one. Here are a few tips on how you can maximize your experience with CIMA and use our services to promote greater customer retention and higher profits.

1. 1. Utilize our holiday and seasonal event templates. Each month, we send you our pre-designed CIMA holiday and seasonal templates for you to choose from. Simply contact us and tell us which template you wish to use, your desired incentives and your target audience. Shortly after that, we will send you back your completed template, ready to be approved and sent! This is the easiest way to ensure you are sharing specials with your customers on a regular basis and it’s of no cost to you!
2. 2. Plan your marketing strategy ahead of time and request campaigns early. Your email marketing strategy will be most beneficial to you if it is well planned out. Take the time to think about what sort of events you want to run ahead of time. Do you want to start sending monthly coupons? Do you want to offer a weekly special? Thinking about a quarterly newsletter? Now is the time to start a new strategy and turn your marketing practices into habits that will last. Let your emails complement all your other marketing practices. Make sure when you have that tent sale, or safety clinic, that CIMA is contacting your customers to share that information. It’s easy to do, and again it’s free!
3. 3. Use our system to the fullest. Are you aware of all the different daily campaigns you can run with CIMA? Are you sending out coupons to your customers on their birthdays? Or on the anniversary of their vehicle purchase? Are you sending out recall notices, parts ready notifications, or 12 month service reminders? We have a wide variety of campaigns we can send to your customers automatically every day with minimal setup and virtually no maintenance on your end! Contact us today to discuss what campaigns to add that may be of great benefit to you. And yes, once again these are all included in your CIMA package at no cost!
4. 4. Try something new. It’s a new year, and your customers are always changing and growing, so it’s time to adapt to this new environment. Make 2011 a year of trying new things – experiment with a Facebook page, or grab a Flip Camera and shoot some videos at your dealership to share on YouTube. Maybe even try to tackle Twitter! Just make sure whatever you try out, keep committed to it. You may not get 100 Twitter followers in the first week, but keep consistent with your strategy and your work will pay off. And be sure to include CIMA in your plans, we can link your emails to your social media sites and work to make sure our campaigns complement all your new efforts.

We are here to work with you to make 2011 a profitable and exciting year for your store. Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions about our services, and make sure to use us to our fullest potential.

*Unlimited events are included in most, but not all customer contracts. Please contact us for details. Some daily campaigns may not be compatible with all DMS systems.

DMS data, to drive marketing campaigns and sell service, is especially effective right now. And those campaigns are even more powerful when you can use the exact communication channel that your customers prefer.

Check out this great article on how to leverage social media to turn your disguntled customers into fans!  Not sure how you can use social media for your store? Talk to us! Just send an email to pmason@cimasystems.net and we’ll be happy to help.

source: Automotive News | April 19, 2010 | Lindsay Chappell | located here

Anyone who was a friend of Florida resident Thomas Alascio might have gotten the following Twitter tweet from him last October:

“Took the kids to Sonic for dinner. Great food and service. Route 60 Hyundai should take lessons.”

Tolstoy, it isn’t. But as millions of Americans link together on chatty outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and Internet message boards and product review forums, auto dealers are grasping that social media offer an explosive new opportunity to market themselves and their vehicles.

They are also an explosive new source of negative publicity and customer kvetching.

Just as customers easily can tell the world about the wonderful dealership experience they just had, they also can blanket the nation’s laptops and Blackberries with angry denouncements and warnings to stay away.

Dealerships are scrambling to protect their reputations online, and ad agencies and online marketing shops are offering to help.

Speeding word-of-mouth

The Alascio case illustrates how social media can propel bad word-of-mouth far faster than ever before.

Alascio had received a loaner car from Route 60 Hyundai in Vero Beach, Fla. The dealership said he had damaged it. The two parties disagreed over Alascio’s financial obligations.

So last October, after an altercation at the dealership, Alascio took his beef to the airwaves, tweeting critical remarks about the store once or twice a day.

A typical post: “Beautiful nite. Pretty moon and btw. Route 60 Hyundai sucks.”

The dealership wasn’t amused. In December, Route 60 had its attorney write Alascio a letter demanding that he “cease and desist” making what the attorney called defamatory comments. The letter warned Alascio that his Twitter comments “entitle Route 60 Hyundai to bring an action against you for defamation and tortuous interference with an advantageous business relationship.”

The letter closed with a stern warning to the customer in all capital letters and underlined: “PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY.”

That warning sparked a longer letter from Alascio’s own attorney. It challenged Route 60′s legal claim and urged it to drop the matter or face a lawsuit from Alascio.

In a more conciliatory conclusion, Alascio’s attorney proposed that Route 60 instead consider actually inviting the unhappy customer into the store to discuss ways to improve its customer service.

That never happened, and the case simply disappeared, says Alascio’s attorney, Marc Randazza of Miami.

Stark advice

Randazza offers some stark advice for dealers upset at comments posted by disgruntled customers.

“If you are confronted with a consumer complaint and you pick up the phone to ask your lawyer to try and intimidate the consumer into silence, you should fire yourself for being an abject imbecile,” he says.

“Even if the consumer is wrong, it might cost you a few hundred bucks to make the consumer happy, which then would turn into positive word-of-mouth advertising.

Read the rest of this entry »

CIMA Systems Receives “Top Rated” Award for Dealer Satisfaction in Database/Ownership Marketing Category

Read our reviews from drivingsales.com

Pleasanton, CA– February 22, 2010 – CIMA Systems, the leading provider of multi-channel marketing communications technologies to the automobile industry, has won the “Top Rated” Database/Owner Marketing award in the 2009 DrivingSales Vendor Ratings Awards.

CIMA Systems was chosen as the “Top Rated” vendor among 22 other Database/Ownership Marketing category vendors.

“We are extremely honored to have earned the Top Rated award in the Database/Ownership Marketing Vendor category,” said Gary Nixon, President & CEO, CIMA Systems. “We continually hear from our clients the tremendous increase in business CIMA Systems is driving into their store and how much they appreciate our pro-active dedicated support staff. The 5 star rating they gave us is truly a tribute to our entire team”.

CIMA Systems works like a virtual Business Development Center using multi-platform marketing and communications to enhance customer loyalty and drive vehicle, service and parts sales. It can replace from one to four vendors and drive down expenses while providing dealership management with insightful demographic insight, and sales and marketing data to fine-tune their sales and marketing efforts.

The 2009 DrivingSales Vendor Ratings Awards, presented at the 2010 NADA Convention and Expo, measure satisfaction with vendors by allowing dealers to rate and review their vendors online at DrivingSales.com. Only vendors who achieved top rankings in dealer satisfaction in each category, as determined by the thousands of dealers who are part of the DrivingSales.com community, received awards.

“We are proud to present this award to CIMA Systems which has achieved a standard of excellence that is clearly resonating with dealers,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “This year’s award winners have won recognition in one of the most challenging years on record for our industry.  We salute them for their ongoing commitment to provide value to their dealer clients.”

Ensures More Service Business for Auto Dealers“>

Interactive Automated Marketing and Customer Service Solution Ensures More Service Business for Auto Dealers

LEVITTOWN, New York – (February X, 2010) – Parayil & Mann Dealer Services Inc. (PMDS), today announced it has added the powerful CIMA Systems suite of service customer communications and profit-building tools to its DealerUps Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

Called ServiceUps, this module complements DealerUps front-end CRM, and adds dynamic, multi-platform customer communications and marketing tools to drive business in fixed operations departments.  ServiceUps communicates to customers in their preferred method – email, phone, text, Live Chat, etc. – and automatically so no opportunity to bring customers back into the service lane is missed.

ServiceUps powered by CIMA Systems, offers:

• AutoRemind: Unlimited marketing campaigns, including new service appointment reminders, vehicle ready notifications, special order parts arrival notifications, service thank you letters, service CSI surveys and service-due notifications, among others.
• AutoAppoint: Automated service scheduling that allows customers to schedule confirmed service appointments 24/7, 365 days a year via web or automated phone.
• S.M.A.R.T Service Menus: Interactive online service menus marketed proactively to customers based on each customer’s vehicle parameters. Dealers can capture more service business when customers know beforehand what services are required for their vehicle with respective prices.
• eCapture: An email appending tool which captures valid email addresses for those customers without one within the dealerships DMS.
• CIMAVision ROI Analytical & Reporting Tool: Reports regarding customers, communication ROI’s, employee productivity, customer satisfaction and revenues.

“One of our primary goals for 2010 was to add an effective set of tools to DealerUps for the service department to create a true full-fledged service and sales CRM. ServiceUps powered by CIMA Systems more than fulfills that goal,” commented Guy Manasse, DealerUps President.

“It was critical for us to offer a system that is both affordable and helps dealers find lost opportunities within their own service department database. The icing on the cake is that the CIMA System enables dealers to communicate all these marketing ideas with very little added cost, using email, the web, text, Live Chat, IVR and more in a single tool that is simple to use,” Manasse added.

CIMA Systems President & CEO Gary Nixon agreed. “ServiceUps added to the DealerUps CRM gives dealers the flexibility, speed and robust technology to communicate in all the emerging formats, interactively, to drive service business and retain more customers.”

PMDS’ DealerUps (www.dealerups.com) is a state-of-the-art CRM system that enables automotive dealers to effectively manage current and prospective customers from one database. Tracked and reported in real time is information such as Internet leads, sales, service, walk-ins, and incoming telephone calls.  Dealers can also receive and respond to any in-coming email leads using web-enabled cell phones, PDAs or iPhones, with all incoming and outgoing data captured and pushed directly into DealerUps and the customer’s record.

About CIMA Systems

CIMA Systems provides interactive automated marketing and customer service solutions to the automotive market. Its comprehensive software solutions enable dealers and automotive service businesses to communicate with prospects and clients throughout the client lifecycle. CIMA System’s automated, real-time, communications-management solutions provide immediate 24/7 customer feedback to front- and back-end marketing campaigns, resulting in higher sales, increased client interaction and lower overhead. For more information, visit www.cimasystems.net.

About Parayil & Mann Dealer Services, Inc.

Parayil & Mann Dealer Services, Inc. (PMDS) is a privately held automotive consulting and technology company specializing in the optimization of dealership processes and customer relationship management (CRM). PMDS is lead by industry experts with more than four decades of extensive automotive retail experience. The company has headquarters in Long Island, New York and regional offices in Dallas, Texas.  For more information visit www.dealerups.com.

Are your customers contacting you to see if their vehicle is ready yet? Timely customer communication is critical to maintaining customers for life and driving service profits. From the moment the appointment is made until the time your customers pick up their vehicle, how you communicate and the timeliness of those communications is one of the keys to how they rate their overall service experience.

*CIMA’s Vehicle Ready application is designed to CALL, EMAIL, or TEXT your customer when it’s time to pick-up their vehicle. Dealers utilizing this feature are saving up to 40 minutes a day per Service Advisor.

CIMA is currently offering special pricing for
Vehicle Ready application thru February 28th, 2010.

The Vehicle ready feature for us was the biggest selling tool for CIMA, we wanted our customers to know their vehicles were ready the moment the invoice was printed. CIMA does just that. The system seamlessly alerts our customer by phone, text or email that their vehicle is completed. We no longer have to rely upon the human memory to make that call, and better still, CIMA never calls in sick or is affected by being short staffed.

Andrew Gates

Victorville, CA.

*Available for ADP or Reynolds + Reynolds DMS only.

Would you be interested in finding out how your service department performance compares to NADA benchmarks? Would you like to increase your service and parts gross profit by 40% or more? What would achieving 100% service absorption do for you and your dealership in these tough economic times?

If we peaked your interest, CIMA would like to introduce you to DEALERPRO Training Solutions www.dealerprotraining.com, a CIMA Preferred Vendor and a Preferred Partner of the newly created NADA University. NADA will be announcing this exciting new training format at the NADA Convention in Orlando.

DEALERPRO has helped over 700 auto dealers over the past 10 years to dramatically improve their fixed operations gross profit with side-by-side, hands-on training and coaching of service and parts personnel. DEALERPRO shows your people what to do and how to do it by working with them and actual customers in your service drive. This is not classroom training or short-term consulting. DEALERPRO spends the first two weeks installing processes, procedures, software, sales boards for techs and advisors, menus and beginning the training process with your people. After that, a DEALERPRO trainer returns one-week each month for the next 13 months to make sure that the processes and procedures they installed are being followed. DEALERPRO trainers average 20 years of retail dealership experience and must have been at least a service manager to qualify for the position.

The good news? DEALERPRO training is performance-based, so if they don’t generate a revenue increase for your dealership, they don’t get paid!

DEALERPRO has generously offered all CIMA dealers a NO COST Profit Potential Evaluation of your service and parts departments, a $995 value! They will come to your dealership, collect and analyze your fixed operations data and show you where you are today. Even more important, they will show you where you could be with a first level business plan based on your specific dealership’s opportunities.

This is a limited time offer! Call CIMA Systems CEO, Gary Nixon at (925) 461-4601 or DEALERPRO CEO, Don Reed at (888) 553-0100 now for your FREE evaluation. Just mention the CIMA Systems/DealerPro offer.

As you are aware, in May of this year CIMA Systems developed a partnership with Stone Eagle to acquire the data necessary from your DMS to allow for your custom marketing communication campaigns. We chose Stone Eagle due to their advanced security and efficiency in pulling data for marketing communications through their SecureLink program as well as being a Reynolds certified vendor. As you are aware, this application runs on a local PC within your dealership.

This past week, Reynolds sent out a letter advising you that effective January 4, 2010 you and your vendors will not be able to access your DMS data via modem. As noted above, we do not pull data from your DMS via modem and therefore CIMA Systems has and will continue to send out your daily marketing communications campaigns without interruption. If you have any questions please contact our support team. We look forward to continuing to assist you in driving increased revenue to your dealership.

We are pleased to announce that CIMA Systems will be moving to 4305 Hacienda Suite 360 Pleasanton, CA. Our phone numbers and email addresses will remain the same.

The physical move will be on Friday, November 20 2009. During the switch-over, our phones will be down and the best method of communicating with us that day will be email.

The move will not impact the ongoing operations and daily customer communications, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you. We would like to thank you for your patience during this time.

We look forward to serving you.

Sincerely,
CIMA Systems