Dealership Campaign Management Software

Most stores do not have a campaign problem. They have a list problem, a reply problem and a measurement problem wearing a campaign costume. Here is how LeadLocate handles all three.

Generic marketing platforms treat a campaign as content. In a dealership a campaign is mostly logistics, and the content is the easy part. Before a single message or ad goes out, a campaign has to answer five questions:

1. Who is the audience, and where is the market?
2. What is the offer, and does it match the vehicles you actually have?
3. Who reviews it before it launches?
4. What happens when someone replies or submits, and who owns that lead?
5. Afterward, what did it produce in appointments and deliveries, not opens?

Most campaign failures happen in those five, not in the copy. A text blast that lands two hundred replies in an inbox nobody owns burns goodwill. A Market Area set too wide pays for shoppers who will never drive in. Good dealership campaign management software handles targeting, offers, review, replies and measurement as first class problems, inside the CRM where the leads live.

That holds for every store we serve: franchise rooftops running conquest and service to sales campaigns, independent and used car stores working aged shoppers, buy here pay here lots with credit focused offers, RV and boat dealers with seasonal pushes, and brokers who want buyers without running an inventory feed.

LeadLocate splits automotive campaign management the way a store actually works.

Lead campaigns in your Market Area, built and run by our team

In Leads Manager, opened from Lead Targeting in the CRM menu, your store makes the selections: the Market Area, the campaign type, the prescreening questions and your Custom Offers. Our team builds and runs the campaigns from those selections on the managed webXintel Ads Network, which is included with every plan, and on request under your dealership's own ad accounts, set up for you by our team. Every lead goes to you alone and lands in your CRM inbox.

Your own outbound campaigns, sent from the CRM

• Text: Bulk Texting to a recipient list, with replies landing on each customer's thread, and Texting Chatbots for keyword campaigns.
• Email: Bulk Email to a recipient list, sent from your own domain once email domain authentication is set up.
• Voice: Voicemail Drops to a list, one recorded message delivered to many customers.
• Creative: Design Studio Image Ads, GIF Ads and Video Reels built from your live inventory and offers, sized for social, print, text and email.
• Landing pages: Lead Pages, so each campaign gets its own destination instead of your home page.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

The Market Area is the first decision and the one stores most often get wrong. Set the Market Area too wide and you pay for shoppers who will never drive in. Draw it too tight and you starve the floor.

A campaign in Leads Manager starts on the Market Area step. Enter the dealership address or a landmark to center the map, set the Market Area radius, then shape it ZIP by ZIP so it covers where you actually sell and deliver. Zip stats show the population and households inside the Market Area as you adjust it, and Scan My Market reads the area before you commit, so its size is a decision rather than a guess.

Two rules make the Market Area worth setting carefully. Every lead goes to you and only you. And leads arrive prescreened by the questions you chose at capture, with a replacement review for any bad lead after delivery, so every lead from the Market Area you set is worth a call.

A campaign is only as good as the reason it gives a shopper to respond. LeadLocate keeps the offer tied to the vehicles you have.

• Custom Offers. Under Custom Offers, Add Offer for each thing the campaign leads with: the event this month, a trade appraisal, a financing offer you run all year.
• See Samples. Preview sample ads built from your selections before you submit, so nobody is surprised by what runs.
• Inventory that is real. Inventory Link imports your vehicles from your website or feed, and its incentives engine covers twenty plus makes, so offers match what is on the lot.
• Design Studio. Image Ads from live inventory and OEM offers with your own logo, multi vehicle Lineup ads, GIF Ads sized for text and email, and Video Reels. Text it to a lead or Email it to a lead opens the composer with the ad attached, and nothing sends on its own.

A handful of campaign types do most of the work at most stores. Each one pairs a segment with a tool you already have in LeadLocate.

• Aged unsold shoppers. Leads from the last ninety days who never bought. The warmest audience you own, worked with Bulk Texting and a Follow Up Process.
• Trade acquisition in your market. An Acquisitions Campaign in Leads Manager for local owners who want an offer on their vehicle, run by our team.
• Buyer leads in your market. An Inbound Campaign for shoppers near the store, with Custom Offers that match your lot.
• Service to sales. Service customers loaded through Contact Import, then a short text or email campaign about trade values.
• Seasonal pushes. RV and boat dealers ahead of the season, with Design Studio creative built from the units in stock.
• Credit focused offers. Buy here pay here and independent stores pair a financing offer with a follow up text that carries a secure credit application link.

A used car store is short on clean trades going into spring. The general manager wants an acquisition push and a reactivation campaign to last quarter's unsold shoppers.

Monday: plan. The used car manager opens Leads Manager, clicks Create a New Campaign and picks Acquisitions Campaign. She centers the Market Area on the store, sets 20 miles, and trims the ZIPs across the river where the store never buys. Scan My Market confirms the Market Area is the right size.

Monday: offer. Under Custom Offers she adds the store's trade appraisal promise and a note about the trucks it pays most for, then opens See Samples to preview sample ads. On Schedule and Effort Level she sees that the campaign stays active all period, her plan's Marketing Effort Level and the estimate for her settings.

Tuesday: review and launch. The general manager reads the Review step back, Market Area, offers and volume, and she submits. Our team builds and runs the campaign from those selections.

The leads. Each owner who requests an offer lands on the store's LeadLocate feed, rotates to the next buyer on the team, gets the first text from the Acquisitions Lead Automated Templates, and starts a Follow Up Process.

Thursday: the outbound side. The internet director builds a recipient list of last quarter's unsold shoppers, runs it through the Phone Validator, and sends a short Bulk Texting campaign with a GIF of three trucks from Design Studio. Replies land on each customer's thread for the owner of the lead.

Thirty days later. The manager filters the Leads view by source to read the campaign's leads, appointments and sold statuses, checks Reports for the team's activity on them, and reads the replies and clicks from the text campaign.

Nothing in a well run campaign should surprise the store, so review happens before launch, not after.

• Lead campaigns. The Review step lays out the Market Area, the offers and the volume, and See Samples shows sample ads, so a manager signs off before the campaign is submitted. Changes to a live campaign go to our team with every selection, and our team applies them.
• Your own sends. A manager approves the list and the message before anyone clicks send. Validate the list first, read the message on a phone, and send a test to yourself.
• Scheduled items. Anything set for later, texts, emails and voicemail drops, sits in the Scheduled Messages slide-out, where a manager with Whole Team View can read, edit, send now or cancel each one.
• Timing. Scheduling a text or voicemail drop outside 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM shows a heads up before it is saved.

Assign the reply inbox before the first send, not after the first hundred replies. Round robin and the per source assignment rules decide who owns each response.

This is the unglamorous half of campaign management, and it quietly decides whether anything else works.

• Validators. The Phone Validator and Email Validator check a list before a send and show validity dots on each lead, which protects your sending reputation and your team's time.
• Your own domain. Email domain authentication sends email as your dealership, set up on request by our team.
• Opt outs everywhere. A STOP reply takes a number off every text campaign list the store has, adds it to the DNC Blacklist and confirms by text. Anything scheduled to a Do Not Call customer reads Will not send.
• Do not call. The DNC Blacklist runs a live do not call lookup and imports the suppression list you already keep.

Texting is consent based, and your own counsel should review your practice. The TCPA compliance for dealership texting guide covers the ground in plain language.

Open rates do not sell cars. The numbers worth reporting are leads, contacts made, appointments set and shown, and units delivered, tied back to the campaign that produced them.

• By source. Every lead carries its source, LeadLocate feed or your own, so the Leads view and the Reports dashboard show what each campaign brought in, with activity, company and management reporting.
• Calls count too. Tracking phone numbers per source attribute calls to the same source as the forms, which closes the loop most attribution misses.
• Send results. Bulk Text History and Bulk Email History record who sent each campaign and how many went out, email lists show opens and clicks, and trackable short links show who clicked the vehicle or offer in a text.
• Bad leads. A lead that is not real goes through the replacement review, and the record of what the campaign delivered stays intact.

Attribution in car retail is hard. A shopper sees an ad, searches your name, and calls. Treat the numbers as directional and compare like with like over time.

What we need from your store

• Your address, where you sell and deliver, and any area you never want leads from.
• Your offers, your inventory website or feed, and your logo.
• Your lists, your existing do not call list, and your sending domain.
• Who owns replies, and which manager signs off each send.

What our team does

Our team reviews your Market Area and offers with you, builds and runs the lead campaigns from your selections, connects your inventory, sets up email domain authentication on request, and walks your managers through Leads Manager, Bulk Texting, Bulk Email and Reports on a training call. Training is part of every plan: the video library, Live Training and Schedule Training from the top bar. The automotive marketing automation page covers the follow up that runs after each campaign.

The campaign tools are part of the LeadLocate subscription. The managed webXintel Ads Network is included with every plan, and the Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and Buyers and Sellers Hybrid plans bring exclusive local leads, sold by Marketing Effort Level. CRM Only runs the full platform for a store that brings its own sources.

Three parts vary. Each plan includes a login to start, and more users are an add-on. Usage credits cover bulk texting, bulk email, phone and email validation and voicemail deliveries, so the size of your own sends is what you pay for there. Skip A Month pauses lead delivery without losing your data or your Market Area settings. Plans, add-ons and credits are on the pricing page, month to month, with no long term contract.

Who builds and runs the ad campaigns?

Our team does. Your store makes the selections in Leads Manager, the Market Area, campaign type, prescreening questions and offers, and our team builds and runs the campaigns from them on the managed webXintel Ads Network, or under your own ad accounts on request.

How do I set my Market Area?

On the Market Area step in Leads Manager. Center the map on your address, set the radius, then adjust the Market Area ZIP by ZIP. Zip stats and Scan My Market show what is inside the Market Area before you submit.

Can I preview ads before a campaign goes live?

Yes. See Samples shows sample ads built from your selections, and the Review step lays out the Market Area, offers and volume so a manager signs off before you submit.

Can I change a campaign after it is live?

Yes. Edit the selections in Leads Manager and save. Every change to a live campaign reaches our team with the full selection list, and our team applies it.

Which channels can we run our own campaigns on?

Text with Bulk Texting and Texting Chatbots, email with Bulk Email from your own domain, voicemail drops to a list, and Design Studio creative for social, print, text and email, with Lead Pages as the landing page.

How are opt outs handled across campaigns?

A STOP reply removes the number from every text campaign list the store has and adds it to the DNC Blacklist, and anything scheduled to a Do Not Call customer reads Will not send.

How do we know what a campaign produced?

Every lead carries its source, so a campaign's leads, appointments and sold statuses are one filter away in the Leads view, and Reports show the activity behind them. Tracking numbers count calls, and send history, email opens and clicks and short link clicks show how each send performed.

Bring your Market Area, your offer and one list. Our team will walk the selections with you, clean the list and show you how the leads and replies are tracked. Month to month.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.