Odessa, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/28/2017 -- The future looks bright for dealerships with customized auto loyalty platforms targeted at retaining, rewarding and driving incremental business. As the overall automotive industry continues to fluctuate, dealerships have started to plan to better manage the eventual downturn.

"Nobody wants to experience what we did in the downturn. Our existing and new dealership clients want to build an unbreakable bond with clients today so that relationships can be harvested down the road," said Chandler Greene, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at AutoAwards. "Our clients understand that if they live by the door and focus solely on conquest sales, if the traffic shuts off like in the down turn, they potentially die by the door."

AutoAwards, by NuCar Consulting, was developed 24 years ago as their own automotive dealerships (NuCar Connection- Delaware) were looking for a better way to reduce traditional marketing, drive market share and better maintain their own customer base.

"We were fortunate enough to have an executive GM that saw the industry changing and taught us that the most valuable asset we had was our loyal customers. Unfortunately, at the time, we were not investing in our best customers, but trying to find new ones. Fortunately, it was one of the best life lessons I learned," said Greene.

At a time when a handful of factories have also launched points-based loyalty platforms, the question remains: Whose customer is it anyway? Large multi-franchise dealerships still want and need to cross-pollenate their customers and invite them to cross-shop brands, while factories have developed metric-based standards, directed at automotive brand loyalty, regardless of the dealership location. There is potentially a large financial reward or punishment with either path.

"In my mind, we have a job to do. Our dealership needs to keep customers spending money at our stores. The experience has to be so good that they become a vehicle of growth by bringing us new customers into our world," said Rob Spanka, CFO of the Fred Beans Automotive Group and a 14-year client of AutoAwards.

There is no doubt that automotive rewards programs changed the industry and help dealerships reach retention goals and benchmarks established internally, or by the factories. The numbers speak for themselves when 90.1% of customers participate in at least one loyalty program and 69.2% change their habits to earn rewards. The concept has proven to work time and again in most industries around the globe.

About AutoAwards
Since our founding in 1991, AutoAwards by NuCar Consulting has been widely recognized as the industry leader in automotive and marine loyalty marketing, earning longstanding relationships with many of the industry's most successful dealer groups and OEMs.

Contact:
Chandler Greene
Vice President of Sales and Marketing – AutoAwards by NuCar Consulting
Phont: 302-696-6000
chandlerg@nucarconsulting.com
http://www.autoawards.com