12 Best Automotive Lead Response Tools and Best Practices3 Best Automotive Lead Response Tools and Best Practices

As soon as automotive internet leads reach you, you need to respond as quickly as possible. If your responses aren’t going out within half an hour, you’re probably letting leads slip through your fingers.

Because a typical day at the dealership can be incredibly busy, artificial intelligence (AI) powered tools like Podium’s AI BDC can help turn leads from emails, texts, phone calls, or third-party sites into meaningful conversations that drive sales.

What is the response time for automotive leads?

As mentioned above, how quickly you respond to customer inquiries has a direct impact on your sales. Consider the following:

• Leading businesses say their average lead response time is 47 hours
• Responding to leads within an hour makes your business seven times more likely to have meaningful conversations with customers.
• Responding to leads before other vendors wins 30-50% of them.
• Calling leads after 30 minutes is 21 times less effective.
• Timing your emails right can increase conversions by almost 50%.

The bottom line: You need to respond to leads quickly and helpfully. If you do not, it’s likely leads will already be looking at other dealerships, making closing that much harder. Below, we’ll look into dealership best practices for automotive lead response and the best tools for the job.

3 Key Components of Effective Automotive Lead Response

To capture customers from generated leads more effectively—and increase the chances of them becoming paying customers—you need a strong lead response process. This process must involve automation as it’s not always possible for you to respond to leads as soon as they come in. Below are the top three components for an auto dealer lead answering:

Timeliness

The most important part of your lead response process is timeliness. Statistics have shown that responding to leads within the first minute can increase lead conversions by 391%. That number is high because 78% of leads will purchase from businesses that respond to them first.

Personalization

Leads don’t want to feel like they’re just another number in your prospect list—they want to feel important. With 76% of customers more comfortable with companies collecting data for personalization, it’s critical to pay attention and research the information provided by leads. Doing so can help you personalize your experience and increase the likelihood of closing deals.

Persistence

The more persistence you put into showing your leads that your products are perfect for them, the higher your chance of success. Strategically keep in touch with your leads. Don’t be among the dozens of salespeople who give up too soon on potential leads, as you never know when a situation might change and a deal will close.

3 Strategies for Successful Automotive Lead Response

As leads come in, you need to have a strategic lead response process in place. The right strategy can help you attract more customers, increase sales, boost customer satisfaction, and improve the overall customer experience. Below are three strategies for creating a successful lead response:

Automated response systems

A rapid response time is crucial for improving the chances of successfully engaging your leads. AI-powered tools (like Podium’s AI BDC) can provide customers with near-immediate response time, are available 24/7, and can automatically schedule test drives. All this helps speed up response time and boosts your chances of success.

Personalized email and phone call templates

Personalization is the key to building successful connections with leads — personalized email and phone call templates can help you build more effective responses. For example, using phone call scripts enables you to work personal information from your leads while hitting main points. Email templates can do the same.

CRM integration for streamlined follow-up

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is perfect for managing and streamlining your lead follow-up process. Integrating a CRM into your lead process centralizes customer and marketing data, automates task management, efficiently tracks leads, and enhances collaboration.

12 Best Automotive Lead Response Tools

There’s numerous automated lead response tools available, all of which provide you with different tools and methods to manage and follow up with auto leads. To help you make an informed decision about the one that’s best for you, we’ve put together a list of the top 12 lead response tools.

Podium

Podium’s AI-driven Business Development Center (BDC) automates your lead communication process. With BDC, you can quickly generate conversation replies, review responses, and create promotional messages in just a few clicks. Additional features of our AI-powered tool include lead qualification, personalized messaging, and seamless integration with CRM systems. The cost for Podium varies, but plans start at $399 per month for the Core plan and $599 for the Pro Plan. Custom pricing is also available.

VinSolutions

VinSolutions is a CRM platform designed for auto dealerships. It includes tools for lead management, customer engagement, sales tracking, and more. One of the key features of the tool is its ability to centralize customer data, making it easier for salespeople to access and use customer information. VinSolution provides custom pricing with pricing starting around $100 per month.

Elead

The Elead platform is specifically designed to enhance customer interaction and streamline the sales process. It also includes CRM functionalities and tools for automated lead follow-ups, detailed reporting, integration with third-party tools, and more. Pricing is based on dealership size and requirements, but it typically starts at around $500 per month.

DealerSocket

DealerSocket helps automotive sales people manage leads, sales, and service operations. The platform is known for its intuitive interface and data analytics capabilities that enable dealers to optimize their sales process and improve customer relationships. Pricing for DealerSocket varies but starts at around $750 per month.

Visme

Known for its versatility, Visme helps sales reps create engaging visual content for marketing and communication purposes through visually stunning email templates, infographics, and social media content. The platform offers a tiered pricing structure, starting with a free plan for basic use and premium plans costing $15 per user per month.

HubSpot

A leading CRM platform, HubSpot helps dealerships manage customer relationships and optimize marketing efforts. Some of its key features include automated lead nurturing, customer segmentation, robust reporting, and more. HubSpot offers a free CRM version as well as premium plans starting at $50 per month for additional features.

Sprout Social

The Sprout Social platform helps you more effectively manage your social media presence so you can better engage with your auto sales leads. It includes automated post-scheduling, monitoring, reporting, and team collaboration tools. Sprout Social starts at $249 per user per month for their standard plan.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that includes numerous tools for creating, sending, analyzing, and monitoring email campaigns. The platform includes email automation, customizable templates, audience segmentation, analytics, and more. You can use the free plan or purchase premium plans starting at $11 per month.

Livestorm

To better engage with your audience in real-time, there’s Livestorm. The platform includes automated email reminders, analytic tools, and seamless integration with your CRM system. These functions help you more effectively engage with your audience. Pricing for Livestorm starts at $88 per month.

Typeform

An online form and survey tool, Typeform allows businesses to create interactive, engaging forms for lead generation and customer feedback. With Typeform, you’ll have access to customizable templates, conditional logic, seamless integration with third-party tools, and more. Typeform starts at $25 per month for the Basic plan with additional, more advanced plans available at a higher cost.

Improve Your Lead Response Strategy with Podium’s AI BDC

Opportunities for automation are abound; and at Podium, we’re here to guide you through the best tools to help drive your automotive business forward.

Focus your time on the dealership leads that matter most by communicating with leads in real time. Podium’s AI BDC warms up your leads for you via our AI-powered tools by automatically scheduling test drives with leads in a human-like tone the entire time. And with automated responses and seamless integration into your existing tools, you can stay connected to your customers at all times.