Announcement from ReturnCX
Performance-based model. Dealers pay only for closed deals, never leads.
At a small private event, ReturnCX officially announced the launch of its suite of data-enabled products to the US retail automotive industry. The company’s flagship product is The Friends & Family Rewards Program® – the world’s first programmatic, data-enabled, performance-based, advocacy and word-of-mouth platform. To date, it has helped dealers in Canada sell over 100,000 vehicles averaging 16% of their monthly sales. Dealers will benefit from a performance-based pricing model since they only pay for closed deals while driving new incremental sales every month. The platform officially launches in the United States today.
“We’re excited to bring ReturnCX and the second generation of the Friends & Family Rewards Program to the United States. It has already helped our dealers in Canada sell more than $3 billion in new and used vehicles in the last 10 years,” said company president Jim O’Brien.
ReturnCX is the result of a joint venture created while the auto industry was scuttled by the global pandemic in early 2020. STAT Analytics, the developer of automotive consumer insights platform, Closemore, and Friends & Family Rewards Inc. have merged their respective technologies and know-how to disrupt word-of-mouth, referral, retention and consumer advocacy tech. “Our goal is to scale and amplify the voice of the customer to drive high margin, low cost, incremental sales for dealers,” says ReturnCX cofounder, Jim Kalogerakos.
The SaaS platform leverages dealers’ first-party data, predictive modeling, and behavioral science to predict not only who will buy, but who will make a referral that also buys. “We like to say, you sell once and profit twice,” explained EVP Kevin O’Brien, a former Silicon Valley finance executive. “At the same time, the platform helps dealers deliver a better customer experience that translates into positive, post-purchase conversations and more opportunities for referrals that convert quickly and generate better CSI scores.”
According to the August 2021 Auto Intel Report by Automotive Ventures, the average franchise dealer spends $29,000 per month on software to run and market their stores. Dealers are increasingly scrutinizing these expenses and looking closer at the ROI they generate. “We’ve been listening,” says O’Brien. “Dealers don’t want another monthly expense. They want results. We only get paid when they sell. When they win, we win. That’s our incentive to help our 2 partners close more deals and faster, and that’s how confident we are in the data science and predictive modeling.”
The performance-based pricing model means dealers never have to pay for leads, only for closed deals. Success is not based on measuring clicks, pageviews, chats or form submissions. There are no platform fees, set-up fees or hidden costs. And this isn’t your grandfather’s bird dog program. It’s far more sophisticated, scalable, automated and both sales teams and buyers have embraced it. To date, the company has directed over $15 million in rewards to over 100,000 happy buyers that keep making referrals.
“The platform is completely transparent with built-in tracking, management, and an attribution model that verifies every sale. That’s important to dealers. We want to be an investment, not an expense,” explained Kalogerakos. Starting with a dealer’s first-party data, the platform can accelerate and scale not just referral sales, but unlock other revenue-generating opportunities, optimize ROAS and improve overall profitability. “There are three new data-enabled products on our roadmap to be released beginning next year.”
“We’ve been doing this a long time,” says O’Brien. “We’ve mined over 10 years of sales and referral data – over one hundred thousand transactions. We know how to get sales the other guys are missing. Our dealers are converting just over 80% of the buyers we deliver for 6x to 9x hard ROI.” For dealers selling 1,500 units a year, the platform helps sales personnel of all experience levels automate and close 200 to 250 more deals annually. Dealers can forecast their numbers and see what sales they could be missing using an ROI calculator on the company website.
To learn more visit www.returncx.com.
