Wagonmaster Group and CIMA Systems a Customer Interactive Management Application (CIMA) that serves as an automated business development center (BDC) for dealerships, are proud to announce a partnership that will bring CIMA’s communication solution to all of Wagonmaster Groups dealerships. CIMA’s patent-pending solution works in the background like a Virtual Business Development Center (BDC) for your dealership by capturing any vehicle, parts and customer data out of your dealer management system (DMS) and automatically communicates two-way unlimited marketing/advertising campaigns to your customer based on this data.

CIMA Systems has been rated as the number one Ownership Marketing System in the auto industry (as voted by thousands of dealerships on drivingsales.com). Dealerships that have implemented CIMA are seeing dramatic increases in revenue while decreasing their monthly expenses. Under the agreement, as a valuable customer of Wagonmaster Group we will co-op a major portion of your CIMA Systems billing to encourage you to take full advantage of their offering. Further, CIMA Systems is the Exclusive or Preferred Ownership Marketing System of several auto manufactures which also offer you special co-op toward your CIMA System.

Click HERE for more information on CIMA Systems.

 Car owners are more likely to trust and approve repair recommendations when visual evidence is provided.  CIMA CarView is a mobile application available on iPhone and Android devices.   This service is included at no charge per month as part of CIMA’s Basic System.

Click Here for a live demo of CIMA CarView.

We at CIMA Systems are continually searching for new ways to promote your dealership offerings in an effort to drive more traffic into your dealership. Many of our dealers have had us design their Facebook and Twitter accounts, which have resulted in additional ways to market to your customers, their family and friends. We are proud to announce our new partnership with Thrupons (competitor to Groupons) which allows us to announce your CIMA generated email promotions automatically to your dealerships Facebook page, Twitter page and now Thrupons Social Buying Network. With CIMA Systems Now your customers can access all your deals through your CIMA generated emails, your website, your Facebook account and now via Thrupons.

For a small FLAT monthly fee, we will add custom features to your Facebook page, including a “Special Deals” tab that will always house your latest and greatest coupons. it’s automatic, you do nothing! Plus, we will work with you to gain more followers and traffic to your social sites, website and dealership. Partner with us to make the most out of your online presence. Ask us for a demo today!

In fact, 80 percent of customers who participate in a rewards-based customer loyalty program say their membership in the program influences their purchasing decisions.

Creating loyalty with your customers is the key to building your brand and increasing profits. A comprehensive, value-based customer loyalty approach builds loyalty with a broad set of customers. But even more importantly, it focuses on your most profitable customer profile—those who are frequent patrons, and those who buy a variety of your products and services. The program builds loyalty by rewarding these customers, and provides incentive to the casual customer to buy more goods. This strategy fundamentally changes your customers’ buying behavior so they buy more—and more frequently—from you.

If you are interested in seeing a demonstration of the new CIMA Systems Loyalty Rewards Program, please contact our office.

“It has always been our policy to listen to our dealers and add the best in technology to help them stay competitive. Our dealers have asked for us to provide them a loyalty rewards program and we teamed up with MediaTrac’s LoyaltyTrac due to their advanced technology in this area. The addition of CIMA Loyalty Rewards to our existing product set allows us to continue to remain the most advanced and complete Owner Marketing Communications System in the industry. CIMA Loyalty Rewards enables dealers to manage every possible customer touch point, be it email, phone, text, social networks, blog, loyalty rewards, etc. Dealers now have the most comprehensive and effective loyalty rewards program on the market,” said Gary Nixon, President and CEO, CIMA Systems.

 This extensive release from CIMA offers major enhancements that allow for trends in the latest communications technologies and tools on the media horizon. Further, the new release enhances CIMA’s already advanced reporting tool allowing dealers to view trends in market penetration and zip code mapping analysis on all car deals and service repair orders.

 “As new ways of reaching customers continues across society, these improvements to our system give car dealers more flexibility, speed and robust technology to communicate with their market base using the newest forms of emerging media, helping them to increase their business through more interactive marketing and customer retention communications,” said Gary Nixon, President & CEO.

Reflecting this dramatic upgrade, CIMA also announced new branding, resulting in a new logo and tagline — “Building Customer Loyalty Through Innovative Communications” – and a new, more comprehensive website. This new branding reflects several new system technologies as well as new marketing and communications products such as hosted live chat and blogs that help auto dealers grow their business more efficiently and effectively.

 Unlike a typical one-way “blast” promotion, the CIMA system works like a virtual business development center, delivering unlimited two-way communications to dealership customers and prospects. It automatically communicates to customers based on their individual or vehicle needs to increase customer loyalty and response rate. Working automatically in the background, CIMA promotes the entire dealership based on any data which resides in the dealership’s dealer management system.

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 responses/feedback to front- and back-end marketing campaigns, resulting in higher sales, increased client interaction/retention and lower overhead. For more information, visit www.cimasystems.net.

 Contact:

Jim Leman, Leman Public Relations

847-543-1090/847-840-0784 cell

jim@lemanpublicrelations.com

CIMA Systems, a Customer Interactive Management Application (CIMA) that serves as an automated business development center (BDC) for dealerships, introduced CIMA Hosted LiveChat, an innovative new take on the LiveChat feature. Unlike other LiveChat solutions that are placed on a dealer Web site and hosted by dealership personnel, the CIMA Hosted LiveChat proactively engages the customers/prospects visiting a dealer’s Web site and email marketing campaigns.
 
“By embedding CIMA Hosted LiveChat into emails in addition to placing links on the dealership’s Web site, dealers will experience greater LiveChat opportunities resulting in connecting with the prospect/customer sooner and more often” says Gary Nixon, President & CEO of CIMA Systems. “CIMA’s Hosted LiveChat actively engages the recipient in one-on-one interaction pro-actively 18 hours per day, seven days a week,”

The system takes the load off of dealership personnel and is designed to promptly deliver Hot Sales Leads to your dealership so you can put your best sales people on them. Statistics show that 99 percent of people use LiveChat for immediate answers so 99 percent of the time you must follow-up immediately.

“Our customers really enjoy the live interaction with the dealership. CIMA LiveChat has greatly assisted us in consistently driving more sales and service appointments to our dealership,” states Leonard Harrington, Dealer Principal of Turlock Auto Plaza.

Each of CIMA’s highly qualified agents is trained to handle inquiries about your inventory, vehicle price and service requests and turn them into ups and service appointments. In this way, CIMA Hosted LiveChat delivers a more pro-active LiveChat option without the need for dealership personnel. Each CIMA agent has access to a custom Dealer Knowledge Center which is developed for each dealership allowing agents to access the dealership’s products and pertinent information. The system also provides detailed lead information and transcripts immediately following a LiveChat, as well as weekly reporting and analytics to provide dealers with the insight that drives performance.

By Emily Prawdzik Genoff
WardsAuto.com, Apr 12, 2007 12:28 PM

Dealerships considering entering the world of blogging need to determine if their needs will reap the benefits, which, at this point, are fuzzy at best.

A blog essentially is someone’s personal opinions published online. While many blogs might be considered drivel, others are insightful and professional looking. And blogs that follow specific industries, such as automotive, are becoming more popular.

Although blogs have existed for a few years, they still are a fairly new – and untested-tool for dealers.

According to one weblog tracker, August 2002 saw the creation of a new blog once every 40 seconds, or more than 60,000 per month. By early 2006, this number jumped to more than 160,000 per month.

What this number fails to show, however, is the number of blogs abandoned shortly after they are created. Taking this into consideration, the number of active blogs decreases from 160,000 per month to 100,000 new, continually maintained blogs.

Dealers are starting to take notice but are doing so with an air of caution.

“The question is should you consider blogging, not why don’t you,” says Brian Epro, director-Automotive Services Group for iMakeNews, a company that publishes e-newsletters for dealers.

“The hallmark of success of a good blog is the same as a newsletter; it’s interesting content that’s updated regularly. The key component for failure for a blog, which you see in the industry all the time, is to start up a blog, post twice and never post in it again.”

Gary Nixon, president and chief executive officer of CIMA Systems, a firm that provides automated real-time communication solutions to dealerships, says his company is seeing increased interest in blogging from dealers.

“I think it was just an idea a couple years ago,” he says. “Dealers are the type to see who else takes it on, like the Internet. What they’re finding out now is that it’s here to stay.”

Fiesta Ford Lincoln Mercury, in Indio, CA, started a blog on its website in February.

General Manager Teddy Stephens says the idea came about when his dealer principal noticed other dealers launching their own blogs.

“It’s the most technological-savvy thing to do,” Stephens says. “It’s less costly than sending newsletters out and paying for postage, and we just thought it was a great idea to tie our customers to us.”

Stephens updates the blog himself every morning.

“I get e-mails from Ford daily about their advancements, and I also post what’s going on in the local community,” he says, adding that it takes only moments to update the blog each day. “Now it’s become a habit where I go and post it.”

Stephens shares news of charitable events, dealership news, including employee of the month updates, and industry trends. He also posts coupons. The blog can be found at http://fiestaford.wordpress.com.

Although the Fiesta Ford blog is still in its infancy, Stephens says it already is attracting readers from across the country. Stephens received positive feedback from a reader in North Carolina responding to an article posted about the Lincoln MKZ.

“He had just bought one and he talked about what a great car this was,” Stephens says, adding he hopes the blog will attract further positive comments about products and dealership services.

“The best customers we get are the ones we already have,” he says. “We find most customers want to be contacted by e-mail or Internet, and this is just another way to keep them in the family.”

Earl Stewart, of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach Lake Park, FL, has been blogging since last summer. The idea came after a local newspaper asked him to write a weekly column. His son, General Manager Earl Stewart III, suggested that his father post his columns online.

The elder Stewart says much of his entries occur with day-to-day life in the dealership.

“I don’t have a problem coming up with a subject every week because there’s always something,” says Stewart. “There’s always a new customer that will bring something to my attention or an old customer with a problem that occurs with the dealership.”

Customers have the option of leaving comments on dealer blogs. Dealers can receive peace of mind by having control over the comments posted.

“If I get 50 (positive comments), I get one negative,” Stewart says, adding that he is always upfront and honest when giving advice to his readers.

“They see I’m willing to bare my soul and share truths with them,” Stewart says. “A lot of awareness comes from the blog site. (They say) ‘here’s a dealer who’s telling the truth. He’s not trying to take advantage of us but telling us the safest way to buy a car.’”

Customer Jeremy Tollberg left this comment on a March 11 post:

“I just want to take a moment and thank you for all your great insights and tips for buying a car,” Tollberg writes. “It would be nice if the majority of dealers had your level of fairness and class- the business of buying a car would be much more pleasant. In the meantime, thank you for taking some time to put the focus on the customers’ well-being.”

Stewart’s blog is at oncars.blogspot.com.

Epro, though, wonders what blogging’s true value is for dealers.

“I’ve seen people in the industry make this a pet project, but what I haven’t seen anyone effectively do is see how a blog is truly helping monetize those eyeballs reading it,” he says.

A way blogging can help dealers, Epro says, is by providing “a tremendous boost to search-engine optimization.” It depends on whether the blog is appropriately created and formatted.

“An auto dealer needs to consider whether he or she can provide that level of content and whether it is worthwhile,” he says.

Even though Epro is skeptical, his firm offers blogging services for dealers, as does Cima Systems and Izmo Cars.

Jordan Hardy, director-online marketing for Izmo Cars, believes dealers should blog, mainly because it is another avenue to drive search-engine traffic to the dealership website, along with keeping shoppers on the site longer.

But he realizes dealers have better things to do with their time, and may want to consider using a vendor to manage their blogs. “Imagine a dealer having to update blogs daily,” he says.

Epro, though, believes the value is minimal. “Do I think consumers will be actively looking up blogs from their dealer website?” he asks. “I’m not too sure. Blogging that helps with search-engine optimization is good. Blogging for the sake of the sake of blogging – I tend to question whether it has any validity to the dealership.”

Read the original article at Ward’s online.