DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -

Today's consumers are driving fewer miles, keeping their cars longer and researching more, all of which combine to cost dealerships millions of dollars in lost service revenue each year — so says Mike Walther, chief executive officer of DMEautomotive.

To help dealers and OEMs achieve what the company calls Total Customer Retention, Walther and DMEa on Tuesday introduced Journey NXT, a retention marketing solution targeting the realities of today's service customer.

Built on a platform that combines DMEa direct consumer and industry research with the latest technology advances, Journey NXT offers an automated platform that delivers five key retention tools, the company said, each backed by rigorous consumer research.

Those five “pillars” are: 

—Direct Behavioral Targeting, which segments and then targets a dealership's or auto service provider's customers based on loyalty. Customers receive communications based on their exact, individual buying behavior and loyalty, which DMEa said can help service providers increase revenue and reduce overall costs.

—auto[mobile], a suite of mobile marketing technologies including DMEa's Driver Connect dealer branded mobile app, and Responsive Email Design, a mobile email marketing technology the company says can increase email open and click-through rates by automatically reformatting emails for optimal display on the device being used.

—Mid-Interval Communications, powered by predictive technology developed by DMEa to help reduce service intervals, avoid customer defection, and increase service revenues by identifying and communicating to customers who may be in the market for big-ticket, customer-pay items.

—Loyalty, a turn-key program for dealers minus in-store applications or cards and integrated with Journey NXT and Driver Connect.

—Prepaid Maintenance Programs, offering marketing specifically targeted to remind PPM customers to use their program, ramping up retention and loyalty. DMEa said its research shows that 56 percent of consumers who use PPMs are likely to keep servicing at the dealership even after the plan expires; that percentage jumps to 72 percent for millennials.

“Service customer behavior has changed drastically and, as a result, the average service interval has increased over the past year to 145 days from 140, costing dealers, on average, approximately $91,000 a year. Yesterday's vehicle-based service reminder program is now a failed strategy, which is why we developed Journey NXT,” said Walther.

“Journey NXT gives our industry the tools they need to achieve total customer retention. This means first transitioning sales customers to service customers, and then those service customers into long-term repeat service customers who purchase their next car at that dealership,” he said. “And this can only be accomplished with new era technology and techniques, and by marketing to the customer and how they behave, not to the vehicle.”

Journey NXT, available now, is supported by DMEinsights, which generates comprehensive analytics for every stage of the auto service customer lifecycle.

 

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