It’s a logical conclusion that customer retention and loyalty are important to the survival and growth of any dealership, yet many dealers focus on growth by intangible metrics, simply looking at numbers – 100 units last month vs. 125 this month, or $125,000 in service revenue last month vs. $175,000 this month – without knowing whether that growth was influenced by customer acquisition or retention.

Most dealers spend a lot of money on marketing every month and it’s very easy to attribute any growth to successful marketing campaigns, technology or vendors, when, in fact, it could very easily be coming from successful retention strategies.

An excellent article on Customer Think spells out precisely why loyalty in the automotive industry is incredibly important, and how you can better leverage retention, loyalty and acquisition strategies to increase growth, revenue and volume.

The article suggests the use of data to predict when sales are ripe as one way to help your dealership thrive. Your CRM has many data points which can help indicate that a customer is ripe for a new vehicle based on things such as marriage or kids, along with many others. Hopefully, these customers are coming to you for service, which gives you a running profile on what has changed in your customer’s lives. This allows for more targeted, personalized and relevant offers which ultimately will convert into sales.

Of course, service plans (pre-paid maintenance) are also huge retention drivers, with a retention rate of close to 60 percent, according to the article. Pre-paid maintenance keep customers visiting your dealership for years. Assuming they’re having a good experience, this also helps them decide to get their next vehicle from your dealership, rather than a competitor.

You can’t always rely on your customers to tell you when lifetime changes occur that could indicate they are ready for a new vehicle. Pro-active marketing and continual, relevant communication with your customers is imperative to retaining their business – for both service and sales. Without a continuous conversation, it’s very easy for the competition to conquest away your customers. This worst-case-scenario, when it happens, means it’s too late, in most cases, to continue the customer relationship. It may not even be that anything went wrong, simply that a customer was attracted by a competitor’s offer. However, it’s very hard to win them back. So, keeping in touch, being relevant and anticipating your customer’s needs, rather than reacting to them, is incredibly important.

Also, be sure that your dealership always offers a superior customer experience. It’s much harder to conquest a loyal customer than it is a satisfied one. Don’t mix the two up because they aren’t the same. A satisfied customer simply means that they are fine with the service they are receiving, but are still vulnerable to competing offers. A loyal customer, on the other hand, is much more likely to stick with your dealership.

In the end, it’s important to develop a way to measure, manage and cater to both new and existing customers. If you can’t differentiate between the two, growth is easily attributed to acquisition efforts, while retention gets ignored.

Remember that it’s much less expensive to keep an existing customer than acquire a new one.