Yeah yeah yeah, we’ve heard it too. Vendor X says they sold 30 cars for you last month, vendor Y claims another 40, and by the time you’re done listening to them all, you sold 200 more cars than you actually sold.

We vendors sure like to take credit for everything. And in today’s age of not knowing who to trust, it makes sense to stop listening.

My Cobalt website rep used to push map views as a count toward the number of leads they sent me. My 3rd party lead providers assumed they were the first and only lead I received from that customer. Thankfully AutoUSA honored lead refunds when StoneAge didn’t. And I just realized how bad I’m dating myself in this paragraph. Next, we can talk about some BZ Web Results mixed with a little HigherGear CRM.

-Alex Snyder from his Checkered Flag Auto Group days… many eons ago

Attribution has been tied to customer data for most of my career. CRMs and DMS systems put the customer at the center of the universe. The customer is the sun while things like cars, deals, and services are the planets that move around it. The problem with customer data is it isn’t constant. People change phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses, get married, lose jobs, and buy cars from other dealerships.

The one irrefutable data point the car business has is the VIN. The Vehicle Identification Number.

At FRIKINtech, we watch each unique VIN roll through the service repair orders and into the sold DMS feed. This is where attribution is solid as a rock.

Did we send an offer to trade on that VIN we just saw in service last month? Did that VIN appear as a trade in the sold records this month? Yes – FRIKIN’ A – count it! That’s simple attribution on a unique VIN, but we did not stop there.

What about activity attribution? Or which source did this customer engage with an equity offer first? Again, pretty simple: we track the device the customer used through browser session storage, their device’s local storage, a series of cookies, and link tracking to make sure we’re attributing the right click to the right VIN. Even if that person uses bleachbit and a hammer, or just deletes their cookies, the chances are high we can rebuild the tracking.

YOUnique Attribution makes sure all the things YOU (a dealer) care about are truly unique and believable.

We apply this attribution to:

• Activity within our app
• Sold deals with a trade from the service drive
• When that trade sells
• Acquired vehicles from the service drive that sell

Stay tuned – we’re going to start talking about actual numbers behind these attributable areas soon.