Today, most OEM manufacturers know the importance of retaining customers and offer some form of a loyalty program like Ford Pass or General Motors MY GM Rewards. They play a key role in enhancing customer retention while heightening OEM brand awareness. With the help of a localized dealership loyalty program, dealers can target their local marketplace consumer while still taking advantage of the national OEM initiative. A dealer’s local brand is as equally or more important as the national brand while being easier to promote and ultimately deliver a higher local relevance.

Let’s look at how a local dealership loyalty program can benefit you by simply choosing to offer one:

Localized Branding: One of the primary reasons to be a part of a dealership loyalty program is because it helps you strengthen your local brand significantly among the most important people, your immediate home community. While OEM brands like Nissan, Ford, and GM have invested heavily in the domain of automotive loyalty programs they do nothing for you on a local level. A locally branded dealership loyalty program targets those customers who drive by your dealership everyday or hear you on the local radio or TV station. It provides an additional reason to do business with you while differentiating you from your local competitors.

Captive Service: A huge advantage that you get with the help of a localized dealership loyalty program is that it helps in the development of a captive service environment. Creating captive service is paramount to growing your customer retention long term. By providing your customer with a dealership loyalty program benefit or a dealer owned PPM plan that customer is then obligated to return only to your store to redeem that benefit or service because it is only redeemable at your dealership. Today, this practice is the one of the most profitable strategies in the auto-retailing industry.

Boost Customer Engagement: Lastly, many dealers benefit from the increase in relevant customer interactions and engagement. A Dealership Loyalty Program is not advertising but it does provide a wonderful tool to communicate just about anything to your local customer though a conduit that is opted into by that consumer. Loyalty based communications get read more, they provide a more meaningful calls to action and they provide a level of communication that is not considered intrusive or as a form of advertising. And most importantly it connects you to your customer on a level that most dealership have not experienced in the past.