Outsell marketing platform is even more valuable in challenging economic times, as its impact on auto sales, service and retention is completely measurable

Outsell announced today that Q1 2019 was one of the strongest first quarters in company history.  The company added new Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) bookings at 142 percent ahead of plan, thanks to robust sales to large auto dealer groups.

While overall U.S. auto sales were weak in Q1, Outsell sales did not suffer. Outsell founder and CEO Mike Wethington believes that the Outsell platform is even more valuable to dealers in tough economic times. “Outsell is designed to help dealers not only drive more sales and service, but also retain existing customers – that’s crucial when industry sales are declining,” said Wethington. “And Outsell makes it simple to measure the impact of every marketing dollar, something dealers need to pay more attention to in a challenging sales environment.”

Other highlights from Q1:

• Outsell introduced several new innovations for customers, including on-demand campaigns, private offers and social ads integrated with Inventory Mover – all leveraging AI to help dealers better target and personalize their offers.
• Outsell hired Jon Ochetti as CFO. Ochetti was most recently Vice President – Business Strategy and FP&A at the Star Tribune Media Company. Prior to that, he held senior financial roles at publisher Meredith Corporation’s marketing services agency, MXM, and at McDonald’s Corporation and KPMG.

“Retention is the name of the game right now for our customers, and Outsell plays a big role in helping dealers mine their own data to identify opportunities,” said Wethington. “With Outsell, dealers can work smarter, not harder, to stand out from the competition and win more business.”

Finance, marketing and media experience made Jon Ochetti ideal candidate for Outsell CFO

Outsell announced today that Jon Ochetti has joined the company as CFO, responsible for all areas of finance and accounting.  As part of Outsell’s senior leadership team, he will also play a role in determining the company’s growth strategy.

Ochetti was most recently Vice President – Business Strategy and FP&A at the Star Tribune Media Company. Prior to that, he was Vice President – Finance for publisher Meredith Corporation’s marketing services agency, MXM. He also worked in finance positions at McDonald’s Corporation and KPMG.

“Jon has deep experience in media and marketing, and understands the challenges of moving from traditional to online media,” said Wethington. “That, combined with his financial background and expertise, made him the ideal candidate for Outsell’s CFO position. We’re excited to have him on board.”

“Outsell is doing so many exciting things in the automotive marketing world,” said Ochetti. “I think that the industry is at an important inflection point in that digital is really overtaking traditional media as the most effective communications channel. It’s a space I know well, and I’m thrilled to join this team.”

Outsell Wins AWA Award & Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award

Outsell announced today that it was honored with two sought-after industry awards. Outsell won the 2019 Automotive Website Awards (AWA) for Marketing Automation and with agency partner DSplus, was named the winner of the Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award (MEA) for the 2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign powered by the Outsell platform.

Brian Pasch of PCG Companies announced that Outsell won a 2019 AWA Award in the Marketing Automation category for their Outsell 5.2 platform. Outsell’s marketing automation platform driven by artificial intelligence increases customer engagement and drives more revenue by transforming how dealers engage with customers and prospects throughout their individual lifecycles. Outsell launched at NADA last month major update to its flagship platform. Outsell 5.2 includes new features that make it not only the best solution for managing and optimizing cross-channel marketing campaigns, but also greatly enhance auto marketers’ ability to create and share engaging content to increase customer retention and ultimately sales.

The 2018 Toyota CH-R launch campaign was honored with a Summit MEA Platinum level award in the category Consumer Integrated Campaign. The campaign was designed to create awareness, encourage test drives and drive sales for 200+ participating Toyota dealerships throughout North America. The Summit Marketing Effectiveness competition recognizes marketing campaigns in 20 categories that change, influence, or reinforce a target audience’s knowledge, attitudes or beliefs. There were more than 1,400 submissions in this competition from 10 countries, approximately 9% of the entries were awarded and 3% received Platinum status.

“Thank you again PCG Companies and Summit International for recognizing Outsell,” said Michael Wethington, President and CEO, Outsell. “Our goal is to help automotive dealers transform their marketing and I am pleased to see we’re hitting all the marks. The Toyota campaign we developed with our agency partner is a perfect example of a well executed marketing communications plan that leverages the power of our AI-driven platform.”

2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign

Outsell and DSplus devised a multi-step, individualized cross-tier marketing campaign that was central to the launch, and provided dealers with templates and directions, which meant very little work for the dealers. For several months prior to the launch, each dealer sent teaser emails regarding CH-R in order to gather behavioral data and measure interest in the new 2018 model. The results were impressive: more than 200,000 consumers interacted with the CH-R launch emails and microsite, moving thousands of CH-Rs off the lot for participating dealers, resulting in close to a million in sales. To view the award-winning campaign, visit 2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign.

About AWA

Brian Pasch, President of PCG Companies, produces the Automotive Website Awards. This year, the AWAs took place on January 24th, 2019—the night prior to the start of the National Automotive Dealers Association Convention. The City Club of San Francisco hosted the award show which presented dozens of awards to the best website and technology products on the market for car dealers, and two individuals. For more information about all the winners of the AWAs, please visit http://awa.autos/.

About Summit International Awards

This US-based organization, pilots three separate awards – the Summit Creative Award, Summit Marketing Effectiveness Award, and the Summit Emerging Media Award. It is not tied to an advertiser, magazine, trade association, ad club or other outside influence. The Summit Awards is independent, and international in its scope, and focuses on identifying superior creative and effective marketing. It conducts impartial, ‘blind’ judging events and, once completed, recognizes, celebrates and promotes creative, effective marketing on behalf of winning companies and individuals. Its judging process is impartial and free from outside influences. It withholds both the names of the judges and entrants throughout the entire evaluation process. This anonymity shelters all involved from any vested interest that may attempt to influence the award’s outcome. To learn more, visit https://summitawards.com/marketing-effectiveness-award/about-mea/.

About DSplus

DSplus connects brands, retailers and customers to help sell more cars. Using sharp insights and spot-on analysis, we put the right offers in front of the right people at the right time, so dealerships can turn shoppers into buyers – and buyers into loyalists. With our team of steadfast, hands-on account managers, award-winning creative whizzes and ultra-analytical social strategists, DSplus is ready to work with any Toyota and Lexus dealership to start driving sales. Check out our website or contact us at support@dsplus.com to learn more.

Direct mail integration, Conquest enhancements, and inventory in social ads make Outsell 5.2 a standout marketing solution

From the NADA Show 2019, Outsell, which offers the only AI-driven marketing automation platform for the automotive industry, announced a major update to its flagship platform. Outsell 5.2 includes new features that make it not only the best solution for managing and optimizing cross-channel marketing campaigns, but also greatly enhance auto marketers’ ability to create and share engaging content especially in social media channels.

“Dealers struggle to measure ROI on marketing investments,” said Mike Wethington, Founder and CEO of Outsell. “In a competitive environment – and most dealers agree the economy has become more challenging over the past year – Outsell is an essential tool for helping auto marketers optimize results and the effectiveness of each marketing dollar.”

Specific enhancements in Outsell 5.2 include:

• The ability to create and execute on-demand campaigns for specific audiences
• Private offers that dynamically include personalized test-drive, sales and service incentives in email campaigns
• Direct mail integration, for true integration between online and offline campaigns
• Inclusion of new channels – display ads and direct mail on existing Conquest product – to drive increased reach and conversion
• New social ads features including Facebook Marketplace tools and the ability to promote specific inventory in social ads
• New content management capabilities that really separate Outsell from the pack – including new templates, brand compliance tools and the ability to measure/optimize content performance.

To learn more about Outsell 5.2 or to book a demo during the NADA Show 2019, visit booth #6258W or contact info@outsell.com.

Outsell will also convene a gathering of its Customer Advisory Board during the NADA Show 2019, bringing together auto dealer marketing leaders to discuss 2019 trends, long-term objectives, and how Outsell can improve its value to dealers.

“Outsell’s CAB meetings are the most valuable meetings we have all year long,” said Wethington. “We get to hear directly from customers about their objectives and challenges. The learnings from these events have a big impact on Outsell’s roadmap every year.”

Also at the NADA Show 2019, Outsell will broadcast a Facebook Live session with well-known auto dealer consultant and author, Brian Pasch, CEO of PCG Companies, to talk about how marketing automation is key to digital retailing.

2019 shaping up to be another strong year for Outsell, as auto dealers look to definitively measure return on marketing investments

From the NADA Show 2019, Outsell, which offers the only AI-driven marketing automation platform for the automotive industry, announced strong 2018 financial results, with direct revenue up 45 percent over 2017, and direct bookings up 28 percent.

“AI-based marketing solutions are in high demand as dealers seek to individualize their customer communications to enhance the overall customer experience,” said Mike Wethington, Founder and CEO of Outsell. “Outsell was the first to bring AI to auto marketers, and we are well established as the technology leader in the space.”

Outsell also offers the best platform for definitively measuring the impact of every marketing dollar invested, said Wethington.

Highlights from the year include:

• Launching Outsell 5.0, enhanced with even more artificial intelligence capabilities, providing automotive dealers with unprecedented insight into buying behavior and the ability to take targeted content to the next level, with automated, multi-channel campaigns that are individualized to each person’s exact preferences.
• Launching Outsell 5.1, an upgrade that makes Outsell the first to auto-generate individualized customer incentives proven to drive store visits and sales.
• Winning 10 awards for its products and its work with customers and partners, including the2018 WebAward Automobile Standard of Excellence Award, a Gold Stevie® Award and a Gold 2018 Summit Creative Awards.

“In 2018, we made major improvements to the Outsell platform, laying the groundwork for all kinds of enhancements in 2019,” continued Wethington. “Today at NADA, we announced Outsell 5.2, with new features that make it not only the best solution for managing and optimizing cross-channel marketing campaigns, but also greatly enhance auto marketers’ ability to create and share engaging content especially in social media channels. We are also working on some exciting enhancements around what we call private incentive offers that will help dealers provide the right incentives to motivate each individual customer without over-incentivizing – critical in an industry where dealers often spent 4-5 times as much on incentives as they do on advertising.”

LEARN MORE

First data study focused on marketing ROI for auto dealerships finds that many dealers invest to the point of diminishing returns

Outsell announced today that along with partners RXA and Vistadash it has completed the first data study focused completely on Marketing Return on Investment (ROMI) for U.S. auto dealerships.

Conducted in September and October 2018, the study spanned 300 dealerships, and looked at data on 420,000 customers, 3.5M customer interactions, and $72M in media spend. Outsell, RXA and Vistadash sought to measure whether auto dealers were allocating marketing spend across channels for optimal return. The study’s key finding: Half of dealers surveyed were overspending on at least one marketing channel – meaning they had invested to or past the point of diminishing returns.

Dealers struggle with measuring ROMI, and especially to attribute specific campaigns to a sale when there are always multiple touches. Outsell, RXA and Vistadash developed a methodology that enables them to calculate ROMI using the dealer’s Google Analytics and DMS data plus their self-reported media spend. This multi-touch attribution model optimizes gross profit by not wasting any money, not leaving any opportunities on the table, and finding the sweet spot for each place a dealer puts its money. 300 dealers provided these details for study analysis.

In addition to finding that half of dealers were overspending, the study found:

• Dealership size has an impact on ROMI, with smaller dealers seeing solid returns from paid media and referrals whereas larger dealers have the scale to see better performance from display and email.
• When it comes to conquest marketing, dealers need to go big or go home – if you can’t do it at scale, you shouldn’t do it at all as you’ll never achieve positive ROMI.
• About half of dealers are underspending on social media marketing.
• One out of every three dealers is overspending on Search-Engine Marketing (SEM). Most of that overspend is in branded search – paying for clicks for your dealership name. While this tactic works well for smaller dealers, it’s unnecessary for large stores who are already well known and get good results from organic search.
• While dealers have often believed they need to spend more on marketing in a large market, the study found that market size does not impact ROMI.
• Often, dealers could optimize their investments simply by shifting budget around – they don’t necessarily need to invest more.

“As John Wanamaker famously said, ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half,’” said Mike Wethington, Founder and CEO of Outsell. “We set out to try to measure that, to set benchmarks for the industry and eventually to help any dealer calculate their own marketing ROI. The methodology we developed for this study could be applied at the dealer level to help them better understand how they can shift their marketing budget around for better returns.”

“Multi-touch attribution is a problem that’s been vexing auto marketers since the introduction of the Model T,” said Brian Pasch, founder of PCG Companies and a well-known advisor to auto dealers. “Outsell, RXA and Vistadash have cracked the code with this methodology – this data provides valuable insights that every auto marketer should take a look at.”

James Kurtenbach, Marketing Director at Schomp Automotive, was one of four representatives to the Dealer Advisory Board for the Outsell research project. Kurtenbach had the opportunity to dive into the data for one of the company’s dealerships, Schomp BMW. “This data is gold for an auto marketer,” said Kurtenbach. “We were able to see where our marketing dollars are going the furthest, and where we need to reconsider investments. By re-allocating a portion of our existing spend – and not even adding any spend – we were able to generate a 17 percent increase in gross profit.”

To learn more about the study, please contact marketing@outsell.com.

About RXA
RXA is a cloud-based software company that offers machine learning and artificial intelligence applications to help you make smarter, faster decisions. Learn more at https://rxa.io/.

About Vistadash
Vistadash is the automotive industry’s premier marketing intelligence tool, giving automotive dealers the ability to consolidate and simplify reporting, as well as measure the quality of their online and offline marketing campaigns based on engagement. Its clear, user-friendly interface displays all the latest data trends at a glance, allowing users to quickly and easily analyze information and encourage smarter marketing decisions. For more information, please visit www.vistadash.com.

Learn more about Outsell at NADA 2019.

Latest AI-driven marketing automation features help drive higher direct-to-dealer sales

Outsell announced today that it closed out Q3 with stellar financial results, with double-digit growth in direct sales.

“Q3 was an outstanding quarter for Outsell,” said Mike Wethington, Founder and CEO of Outsell. “Our main focus was completing a major upgrade to our marketing automation platform, Outsell 5.1, which launched this week, and helps further democratize the use of analytics and AI among automotive dealers.”

Highlights from the quarter:

• Outsell’s revenue continued to grow quarter-over-quarter, with direct sales revenue growing by double digits.
• Year-to-date, direct sales revenue is 43 percent higher than the same period last year.
• A big effort to deliver its latest technology platform, Outsell 5.1, at this week’s DrivingSales Executive Summit, that took place Oct 21-23 in Las Vegas. With this launch, Outsell is the first to auto-generate individualized customer incentives proven to drive store visits and sales.
• Outsell and partner DSplus were named the winners of the 2018 WebAwardAutomobile Standard of Excellence Award for our 2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign.
• Outsell and DSplus were also named finalists for the Digiday Technology Awardsin the category Best Marketing Automation platform. Overall, Outsell and DSplus have won seven awards so far this year for the co-created Toyota CH-R launch campaign.

Dealers can also now create and send on-demand micro campaigns and craft multi-channel conquest campaigns in minutes

From the DrivingSales Executive Summit, taking place Oct 21-23 in Las Vegas, Outsell announced significant enhancements to its AI-driven marketing automation platform for the automotive industry.

The first vendor to bring AI-driven solutions to auto dealers, Outsell has added key new features intended to help boost incremental sales and service bookings, including:

• A new integration with AutoHook that enables marketers to, for the first time, automatically incorporate customized test-drive incentives into campaigns;
• On-demand campaigns that enable marketers to quickly create and send custom messages and offers to micro audiences; and
• Continued data processing and storage enhancement improvements that make Outsell’s proprietary recommendation engines run faster than ever before.

“Today’s economic environment demands that dealers improve and measure the impact of digital marketing programs, and adjust their approaches to optimize marketing ROI,” said Mike Wethington, Founder and CEO of Outsell. “These new enhancements to the Outsell platform are all designed to help dealers make sure they are getting the most bang for every marketing buck by individualizing every customer interaction across every channel.”

Outsell leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to help automotive dealers improve marketing relevancy and targeting. Its AI brain tracks the behavior of individual consumers (both customers and prospects), forming a predictive model of their future behavior, and fueling Outsell capabilities such as buyer detection for identifying in-market shoppers and Inventory Mover for matching prospects with specific inventory.

Outsell will demonstrate its latest platform at the DrivingSales Executive Summit, taking place Oct 21-23 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  In addition, Outsell’s Jon Petron, Vice President of Advanced Services at Outsell, together with Paul Schnell from Wilsonville Toyota and Subaru will present on “Sleepers: How to Maximize the Hidden Value of your Database” on Tues., Oct 23 at 9.50am PT.

Outsell and Agency Partner DSplus Win WebAward & Finalist for Digiday

Outsell announced today with agency partner DSplus, that it was named the winner of the 2018 WebAward Automobile Standard of Excellence Award for the 2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign. Outsell’s technology platform behind the Toyota CH-R campaign was also named a finalist for the Digiday Technology Awards in the category Best Marketing Automation platform. This is the seventh award this year that Outsell and DSplus have won for the co-created Toyota CH-R launch campaign.

“Thank you Digiday and Web Marketing Association for the recognition and I want to also congratulate the teams at Outsell and DSplus,” said Michael Wethington, President and CEO, Outsell. “The CH-R campaign proves that individualized communications can make a measurable impact on sales and overall customer engagement. Toyota knew it had to amp up its marketing to rise above the noise and this campaign clearly demonstrates that timely and relevant digital marketing can effectively attract customers and have an impact on the bottom line.”

The 2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign
DSplus and Outsell devised a multi-step, individualized cross-tier marketing campaign that was central to the launch, and provided dealers with templates and directions, which meant very little work for the dealers. For several months prior to the launch, each dealer sent teaser emails regarding CH-R in order to gather behavioral data and measure interest in the new 2018 model. The subsequent launch campaign consisted of three main elements. First, a targeted initial trigger email to spread awareness and send traffic to a second element – a custom Toyota CH-R microsite. Next, consumers were encouraged to schedule a test drive and browse local dealers’ inventory via the exclusive microsite. The third launch element was a targeted follow-up drip email to consumers who engaged in the initial email and microsite. Each email was individualized to the consumer’s past behavior and stated interests.

The overall goals were to drum up excitement, create new dialog with interested consumers and close the deal on a new Toyota CH-R. The results were impressive: more than 200,000 consumers interacted with the CH-R launch emails and microsite, moving thousands of CH-Rs off the lot for participating dealers, resulting in close to a million in sales. To view examples of the award-winning campaign emails and microsite, visit 2018 Toyota CH-R Launch Campaign.

Outsell provided the technology behind the campaign, a marketing automation platform driven by artificial intelligence that increases customer engagement and drives more revenue by transforming how dealers engage with customers and prospects throughout their individual lifecycles.

About WebAward and Web Marketing Association
The Web Marketing Association was founded in 1997 to help set a high standard for Internet marketing and development of the best websites on the World Wide Web. The Web Marketing Association is the producer of the WebAward Competition. Now in its 17th year, the WebAward program is the longest running annual website award competition dedicated to naming the best Web sites in 96 industries while setting the standard of excellence for all website development.

About Digiday
The Digiday Technology Awards, formerly the Digiday Signal Awards, recognize the technology bringing transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness to the media and marketing processes for brands, agencies and publishers. The Digiday Awards programs are dedicated to recognizing innovation, creativity and excellence in the fields of publishing, content marketing, advertising, advertising technology and video. The awards programs are considered to be one of the most influential in the industry.

About DSplus
DSplus connects brands, retailers and customers to help sell more cars. Using sharp insights and spot-on analysis, we put the right offers in front of the right people at the right time, so dealerships can turn shoppers into buyers – and buyers into loyalists. With our team of steadfast, hands-on account managers, award-winning creative whizzes and ultra-analytical social strategists, DSplus is ready to work with any Toyota and Lexus dealership to start driving sales. Check out our website or contact us at support@dsplus.com to learn more.

Live discussion with senior digital marketing execs from Dream Motor Group and Titus Automotive Group

Outsell announced today that it will co-host a webinar with Automotive News on August 9, 2018 about marketing strategies that apply to single-point dealers and multiple stores. The live webinar, titled “Dealership Marketing Strategies: Group vs. Single Store,” features experienced speakers Amy Rothenberger, Director of Marketing & Business Development at Dream Motor Group, Courtney Titus Barr, Digital Marketing Manager at Bruce Titus Automotive Group, and Jess Johnson, Senior Dealer Success Representative at Outsell.

Single-point dealers and groups alike are looking for more modern-day techniques to market smarter and use marketing automation driven by Artificial Intelligence to create more individualized customer engagement and efficient marketing plans. AI-driven marketing automation delivers 1:1 marketing that consumers expect today and allows dealers to create lasting relationships with customers while leaving the heavy lifting to marketing automation.

This webcast will provide dealer attendees with examples of real-world tactics and an overview of the solutions they used that resulted in marketing success as well as the relevant challenges they faced throughout the process. Attendees will also learn more from an expert point of view on:

• Expert points of view on developing a modern marketing organization
• Real-life stories about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to analyzing marketing efforts
• Practical advice on how to capture the most value from dealership marketing investments

Who:
Amy Rothenberger, Director of Marketing & Business Development at Dream Motor Group, Courtney Titus Barr, Digital Marketing Manager at Bruce Titus Automotive Group and Jess Johnson, Senior Dealer Success Representative at Outsell. Moderated by Hannah Lutz, F&I Editor at Automotive News.

What:
“Dealership Marketing Strategies: Group vs. Single Store”

Where:
Online webcast at registration link

When:
Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 2:00 pm ET