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.

Anyone sending emails on a regular basis knows the plague of writing a good subject line. You need to grab your reader’s attention as they skim through their full inbox of emails… but how? What does a good subject line have to do with spam filters? How do I tell my readers what is in my email, without overloading my subject with ‘spam trigger words’?

There are a lot of questions and theories out there about email subject lines. Heck, if you google ‘email subject lines’ about 12,000,000 entries show up! But don’t be overwhelmed, we are here to help you understand the facts of the subject lines and spam.

As the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and web email clients get more sophisticated in accessing emails, the sender’s reputation ends up being the trigger for ‘spam’ filters rather than the subject line. Luckily, here at CIMA Systems we are always checking our reputation and our email deliverability. BUT the subject still plays the major roll of who really decides what is spam: the customer.

What we know:

• The FROM name is one of the most important items in a subject line. It lets the reader know who the email is coming from and that it is a trusted name.

• The subject line is the second element the user sees, after the FROM Name. Where they are viewing this email can depend, so you want to make sure that your bottom line information is right there to persuade them to open.Don’t Lie. That is a sure fire way to make someone unsubscribe, and it violates the The USA’s Can-Spam Act which bans emails that are…”…likely to mislead a recipient, acting reasonably under the circumstances, about a material fact regarding the contents or subject matter of the message…”

• Rest assured, you CAN Say ‘Free’ or ‘Sale’ or ‘$50 Off’ in your subject line! Gone are the days of emails being filtered just by subject line alone. There are hundreds of variables that mail filters use when checking spam vs legitimate marketing emails. A good rule of thumb: if it sounds spammy, then it most likely is. Instead of saying “FREE FREE FREE!!!” try “A Free Car Wash, our way of saying thanks!”

You may be thinking to yourself “But I have SO MUCH good stuff in my email, how can I fit it into a short subject line?” Fear Not, for now we have…

• The Pre – Header. The Pre-Header is the first line of text that the email shows above your HTML and graphics. This can also act as a call to action by flowing with your email’s FROM name and the subject line. Within the Pre-Header we have a little more room to play with our words, and our call to action.

To This:

Keeping those items in mind we are now allowed to focus on the customer and what would get them to open up the email. Trying to convey a sense of urgency, or by letting the user know that they have “exclusive” savings is also known to help open rates. By putting your email’s call to action first in the subject, letting them know who it is from, and keeping good template standards will help keep your emails to stay out of the spam box!

OpenTrack is an interface into the DealerTrack DMS. It gives best-in-class third-party solution providers real-time bi-directional access to a dealership’s data. CIMA Systems is now OpenTrack certified which allows us toPUSHBACK service appointments made through CIMA into your DealerTrack DMS.

Open Track also allows us to notify your customers when their vehicle is ready for pick-up (via email/phone/text) in your Service Department

If you have DealerTrack/Arkona as your DMS and are interested in either of these enhancements, please call CIMA today.

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.”

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.

Today, it is highly doubtful that you will find a dealership that is not using some form of customer relationship management (CRM). Some efforts may be as simple as recording contact information and products and services purchased, while others may keep detailed records of every client contact and send out automated email and voice messages. No matter what form it takes, some type of customer relationship management is a necessity for dealerships to retain and grow their business. In fact, a recent study from the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business, conducted with CRM provider Autobytel, found that dealerships using a customer management system perform 23 percent better than the competition.

There are a number of providers in the automotive space who offer well-designed and effective CRM systems, such as Reynolds & Reynolds, ADP, Autobase, DealerUps and CallCommand. So whats puzzling is why so many CRM systems are under-utilized or fail altogether. Why do so many systems not live up to the hype? Is this a function of overly complicated technology, a vendor issue, a dealership issue, or a combination of any or all of these?

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Dealer Magazine

By Gary Nixon

I grew up practicing the maxim that every cloud has a silver lining, and you’ll find one even in this dark-cloud market if you’ll simply look at the situation as opportunity.

I realize many readers are doing the best they can just to hang on today. Each dealer I speak to is looking closely at every single expense with the goal of dramatically reducing each while increasing business. One expense that can be reduced significantly is marketing and promotion.

Yet many of the dealers I speak with continue to use expensive non-technology-based means for advertising their products and services, such as hardcopy mailers. I encourage these dealers to reconsider those expenditures and look closely at email marketing as a better alternative.

Email marketing continues to be the most cost effective way of communicating those important dealership promotions/announcements and service due notifications with customers and prospects.  A recent Aberdeen Group study confirmed this fact: “While 60% of marketers plan to cut their traditional marketing budgets this year, 47% of marketers plan to boost their email marketing budgets,” the study reported.

Now more than ever before, dealerships must look at the most cost effective way of marketing/communicating to their customers/prospects resulting in achieving the most effective return on investment (ROI).

Email marketing continues to reign as the lowest-cost, most-effective marketing medium to promote business to your dealership. However, as effective as email marketing is, let me state as an important aside that email marketing is not always the kind of communications every customer wants to receive from you. As you go about building your customer and prospect base, be sure you give customers the opportunity to tell you how they prefer to be contacted. For instance, while most customers will desire email communications, some still prefer phone contact, traditional mail or, in growing popularity, text messaging and related communications (e.g. live chat). A majority of our dealership customers offer each of these variations to their customers to ensure their message has the highest probability of being acted upon.

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