Jim Rucker - Social networks have been used as marketing tools since they started getting really hot a few years ago. Businesses have been using MySpace, Facebook and more recently, Twitter to get their message out to an online audience that is willing to listen. The problem that most businesses, including car dealerships, have with marketing through social networks is ...

Michael Rees - So, Jessica was put in the unenviable position of having to find a replacement vehicle. The insurance company wrote her a check for just under $6,000 for her truck. Jessica started her mission to buy a used vehicle for $6,000. She started as most buyers do nowadays, by surfing the Internet ...

Tom Hudson - The bailout mentality seems to be everywhere. Here’s an example. Customers borrow money from a bank to finance their car purchases. They default on their loans, and the bank undertakes court actions to recover the vehicles. The consumers discover that the loan officer they dealt with had pled guilty to defrauding the bank. The consumers decided that was reason enough to let them keep their cars ...

Dave Keller -Chrysler and GM have yet to prove how eliminating dealers is going to save them to a profit. They should let the economics of business weed out the dealers who are not profitable. Sooner or later, the non-profitable and under-capitalized dealers won’t be able to ...

Iowa-based Dealer Marketing Services, the creators of ProMax Online, announced today it will provide a revolutionary system that will enable dealers to pre-qualify consumers for automotive financing by simply entering the consumer’s name and address into the Instant Screen® system. Research shows that the portion of Internet leads that do not qualify for financing can be as high as 75%.

Dealerslink® and JMN Logistics have teamed up once again, this time with Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group (DTAG), to offer a 4th of July inventory promotion. DTAG has offered significant savings on its inventory purchased through Dealerslink’s Web site (www.dealerslink.com) and JMN is providing an additional 10 percent to 20 percent discount on any DTAG vehicle shipped through its Dealerslink Shipping Portal.

Cross-Sell, the leading provider of market analysis reports for automotive dealers nationwide and a division of Dominion Dealer Solutions, today announced a partnership with sister companies Dealer Specialties and XIGroup to provide its Snap-Shot report to their customers.

DealerTrack, Inc., a subsidiary of DealerTrack Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRAK), a leading provider of on-demand software and data solutions for the U.S. automotive retail industry, today announced that the number of active financing sources ...

I was sitting in my office one morning when my service manager charged in and cried out that there was a bomb under one of our customer’s cars. I ran out to the service department, and sure enough, there was a fairly large black box with a blinking red light under the car.