We’re bringing you some spicy results today. We’ve got the results from a 3 vendor bake-off.

Let’s first start by saying thank you Mason McFalls at Kraft Nissan and his firm Driver Seat. They compiled the stats you’re gonna see here. Thank you!

Here’s what we’re looking at. Driver Seat ran different email campaigns across 7 dealerships using TradePending, 2 dealerships using a big brand name competitor #1, and 2 additional dealerships using another big brand name competitor #2. We’re withholding names of dealers and competitors to protect the innocent.

The content of email campaigns remained the same, the only difference was the software. Said another way, the user experience was different when someone clicked through to get a value on their car, because it was 3 different software providers.

Here are the results

• The 2 dealerships using big brand name competitor #1 had a reach of roughly 24,000 people. They averaged a 0.12% conversion rate and averaged 28 leads per store
• The 2 dealerships using big brand name competitor #2 reached 57K people, and had an average conversion rate of 0.27% and averaged 33 leads per store. Getting better.
• The 7 dealerships using TradePending had a combined reach of 125K. The average conversion across all stores was 0.69%, 7 times competitor 1 and more than double competitor 2. 
• The average leads per store was 123, compared to 28 and 33. That’s 4 times the leads, the conversations, the opportunities to acquire and sell cars.

What does this tell us? 

• A big brand name doesn’t mean squat when it comes to delivering results
• The mobile experience is extremely important. This is the big miss from those competitors, and you see that reflected in the numbers
• Three, don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself and see. 

Thanks again to Mason for sharing this data with us.