Comprehensive Study of 68 Dealerships using Gubagoo’s ChatSmart Platform Shows 77% Chat-to-Lead Conversion

West Palm Beach, FL - October 8, 2014 – A comprehensive study[1] of 68 Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealers using a next-generation “smart” chat solution versus old-school, passive chat has shown consistently high chat-to-lead conversion rates of 77%. Dealers who had used another chat product reported a marked improvement with Gubagoo’s managed chat solution, ChatSmart.

Unlike first generation “passive” chat, “smart” chat is powered by an “intelligent” platform that identifies website visitors and proactively engages them with relevant, targeted information, rather than simply interrupting and talking at customers with no knowledge of what the customer is actually interested in.

In recent years, dealers have refocused their digital marketing spend away from high-priced, low-closing 3^rd party Internet leads to driving traffic to their own websites with SEO, PPC and display advertising. However, these efforts often fall short because of a failure to engage car buyers once they land on the dealers’ websites. In fact, NADA data shows that 95% of the average dealership’s site visitors will defect from the site due to lack of engagement, meaningful information and relevant offers.

“Many dealers have adopted chat tools as a means of stopping the consumer from fleeing their websites but, too often, that chat is ‘passive’ versus ‘active’ – or ‘dumb’ versus ‘smart,’” said Brad Title, CEO of Gubagoo Inc. “This study of Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealers proves that smart chat can massively increase the effectiveness of their websites to drive qualified leads to their sales team.”

STUDY’S KEY FINDINGS:

TOYOTA – 74% Chat to Lead Conversion

LEXUS – 71% Chat to Lead Conversion

SCION – 84% Chat to Lead Conversion*

ChatSmart is proven to be more proactive and higher converting because it utilizes click activity, frequency of visits and predictive models to improve the consumer experience. It is the first chat platform to match vehicles of interest to website visitors, as well as serving up relevant incentives, offers and inventory in real time.

“Gubagoo’s ChatSmart is extremely effective at converting chat into leads because of all the data it collects and because, as a fully managed chat solution, it requires minimal staff involvement until a lead is generated,” said Internet Marketing Manager, Jesse Walker of Pembroke Pines Lexus. “Visitors to our website like that our chat operators are ‘smart’ enough to know what pages they are looking at and are then able to suggest relevant offers on both service and sales - it makes for much quicker and more productive chat sessions for our customers.”

Pembroke Pines attributes ChatSmart with 30 incremental car sales a month at an average cost of $33 per sale. “Obviously, we use a lot tools, but for ROI, you can’t beat Gubagoo,” said Walker.

Toyota of Renton/Toyota of Kirkland in Washington switched from another chat company to Gubagoo and, Mark Brushears, E-commerce Director, for O’Brian Auto Group, reports that “Twenty-six percent of our Toyota of Kirkland website sales are now generated by Gubagoo. The results are so good that there’s no comparison with the previous vendor.”

Gubagoo’s ChatSmart is based on an advanced, intuitive behavioral analytics platform called the BEAST (Behavioral Engagement and Scoring Technology), ChatSmart knows what each site visitor is doing, from the exact vehicles they are looking at, to how many times they have visited the site, to how long they are spending on each page. It then puts that rich data in motion: assigning each visitor a unique score based on their real-world behavior and using that score to precisely engage and re-engage individuals with calculated messages, chats and offers/coupons, about the right vehicle at the right time, as well as pushing relevant dealership inventory – and in real time. And, importantly, ChatSmart takes the onus off in-dealership staff by providing a fully managed chat solution and then delivering extremely detailed leads directly to the dealership.

Full case study can be found here: http://www.makingleadshappen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gubagoo...

About Gubagoo 
Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, and staffed by a team of veteran technologists and innovators in lead conversion, Gubagoo offers revolutionary behavioral engagement and scoring technologies for automotive websites. With a mission to provide a smarter, more cost-effective alternative to the old lead generation model, Gubagoo is the first dealership website solution that successfully makes anonymous traffic identifiable, and converts the 95% of dealer site traffic that traditionally defects. Incorporating smart predictive matching and the best chat technology available - and powered by its proprietary behavioral engagement and scoring engine, ‘B.E.A.S.T.’ - Gubagoo engages new and repeat dealer site visitors with unprecedented relevance. Over 1,000 dealerships, including some of the nation’s largest dealer groups, as well as OEM-certified programs, already have adopted Gubagoo-powered websites. Gubagoo has been named a finalist for the DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2014.

Gubagoo Media Relations: 

Melanie Webber, mWEBB Communications, (949) 307-1723, melanie@mwebbcom.com 

Cassandra Cavanah, mWEBB Communications, (818) 397-4630, cassandra@mwebbcom.com