Your one-stop strategy for car dealership data management

Dealerships need to manage their data with efficiency and accuracy to thrive. This entails maintaining data consistency to keep data uniform across all systems, whether internal or external. To develop an effective dealership data management strategy, you need to know what elements to include. Here, we'll review the various aspects of a solid data management strategy to fuel your dealership's long-term growth.

Data sources

There are three main types of data sources: first-party, second-party, and third-party data.

First-Party Data

First-party data sources are those that you collect within your dealership, such as sales and leases. This data also includes all of your prospects and leads who have yet to purchase, along with other information. Additionally, this data applies to engagement metrics like open and click-through rates for email or social media marketing campaigns and other analytical data.

The right analytical tools will help you collect and make sense of this data, enabling you to optimise your campaigns and perform dealership data management more effectively.

Second-Party Data

You collect this data from various partners, including business partners like OEMs or affiliates. It may also include data collected from certain events. The quality of this data is often clear to dealerships because they know their partners well. It's essentially the same type of data as first-party data, only you get it via a partner.

Third-Party Data

Data from third-party sources is licensed and could include any data you purchase. For dealerships, this data could consist of locations, demographics, and aftermarket services, among others. This data is good to have, but your most important data will be that from your first-party sources. This is because first-party data involves your customers and leads with whom you can directly connect. In addition to collecting data from these sources, you must practise data cleansing to get real value.

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Data cleansing

Data cleansing entails certain processes that "clean up" the data you collect, whether this involves scrubbing email lists, validating email and physical addresses, or other forms of cleansing. In addition, you need to practise householding, which requires the identification of specific records and discernment between unique and duplicate records within a household.

With the help of the right data management tool, you can better organise your data and increase overall data consistency through data cleansing. You'll be able to eliminate any unreliable and inaccurate data that could otherwise hinder data management and the customer experience. This is far more efficient than manual processes that might otherwise create more work for you, such as filling customer data fields with temporary placeholders until you gather the necessary details.

You may not be able to completely prevent errors in data management. However, reliable data cleansing strategies and solutions will minimise the risk of data inconsistency and inefficiency. In the process, you can also gain actionable insights into customer engagement and attribution. For example, you may be able to see more clearly:

• Where people are along the customer journey
• What types of vehicles or services they're considering
• Top-performing channels in your campaigns

Data enhancing

To succeed with dealership data management, you must also enhance your data. You can do so by making full use of second- and third-party data. To properly enhance data, you'll need dependable data management tools to consolidate and help you understand the data you gather. For instance, the right solution would give you specific insights, including customer-owned VINs, purchase history, and other data like demographics. With this knowledge, you can learn more about each consumer and determine how to convert them into loyal customers.

With richer data about consumers and their behaviour, you'll also be able to gauge your marketing and sales performance. This information lets you optimise your campaigns to yield better results and meet long-term business goals.

Reliable software such as SalesLogs and HubSpot can also automate third-party data collection. They also grant the ability to automatically pull data from LinkedIn. This gives you easy access to high-quality data while allowing you to focus on growing your dealership.

Dealership data management systems

You need the best resources available to drive the best performance with your dealership data management efforts. If you're searching for the ideal data management system to collect, cleanse, and enhance your data, integrate SalesLogs into your operations. SalesLogs is a centralised business intelligence platform that fully equips auto dealers with a comprehensive data management solution.

Using SalesLogs, you can access several key features that make it one of the best software solutions available in the automotive industry. With access to a KPI dashboard, you can instantly view powerful analytics on a centralised dashboard, allowing complete data transparency. You can also upgrade from traditional spreadsheets with our synchronised DataGrid, which features the same familiarity and ability to do much more. If you want to see how well individual employees on your sales team perform, our leaderboard feature visualises each employee's performance.

Together, the features included with SalesLogs empower your business with everything necessary to fuel its growth. Our software is specifically designed for automotive dealers, making it optimal for improving your dealership's performance. Want to learn more about SalesLogs and how it can help your organisation flourish? Book a free demo today to discover all the features and capabilities of SalesLogs.