Car marketing platform, PureCars, recently released a sales attribution and business intelligence platform which is the first of its kind to fully track the path from a potential customer’s online research to the dealership visit.
Dubbed Signal Pro, the attribution platform is complementary to PureCars’ existing Smart Advertising marketing automation platform for dealerships, which enables multi-channel campaigns. CEO Sam Mylrea said clients can use Signal Pro in conjunction with Smart Advertising, or separately.
Since buyers spend a lot of time conducting research about various cars and deals, Mylrea says that their platform will provide a unique solution to users, as it is designed keeping the dynamics of this industry in mind.
So how does it work?
Signal Pro gets a feed from the inventory management system of about 3,000 dealerships in the United States. It tracks user activity at dealer websites, engagement activity with ads run by its client dealerships, and through third-party data services, engagement and impression data on car-related ads that are run by others, like automakers.
All of this helps the platform algorithm to match the user to a cross-device graph, which employs IP addresses and other indicators to match anonymous users to persistent identifiers, like phone numbers.
These identifiers then help match the customer who walks into a physical showroom and buys or leases a car to an ad engagement or a site visit. Previously, Mylrea said his company could track ad campaign engagement, as well as specific attribution signals like a user filling out a contact form or a user calling a specific phone number. Now, with Signal Pro, dealers can link the online research to the physical purchase, and also predict where each customer is in the buying cycle.
According to Mylrea, Signal Pro can accurately link about 80% of dealership purchases to the relevant marketing or advertising impetus.
Given that a car is generally the second largest purchase after a home for most consumers, knowing which advertising spend or website content converts into more sales can be a valuable piece of the marketing puzzle.
