Online Pricing Solution That’s a Win for Everyone

I’ve heard a lot about MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) online pricing restrictions recently from our RV Dealers imposed by Forest River, Keystone, Open Range and a few other manufacturers.  I wanted to remind you that we have a solution that works for everyone and that solution is our Get Sale Price tool.

With our Get Sale Price tool, the dealer selects the manufacturer(s) they want to use this on and it will only display on those units marked as NEW.  The dealer then enters their sale prices through our Member Management Console, which does not show online.  Your visitors see the “Get Sale Price” link in the price field for those units, they click on it, enter their email address and instantly receive the sale price you’ve entered on the MMC.  You will receive a copy of those emails so that you can follow up with the visitor if you want and also get an idea of which units are the most popular.  

Visitors love this tool because they can get the sale price instantly for those units – instant gratification.  I know when I’m shopping either online or in an actual store, if I don’t see pricing I’m out of there – moving on to another store that does have pricing.  I also look for sale items, especially in today’s economy.  Looking for sale items is just a natural instinct I think for most Americans today.

Dealers love it because they are not fielding a ton of phone calls or emails from tire kickers, they get copies of the Get Sale Price emails sent to potential customers so they can follow up easily and they are able to make sales to potential customers that more than likely would have moved on to another dealership when they saw the MAP or no pricing at all, which is what some dealers have opted to do.

I can tell you that displaying “Call For Pricing” in the price field is a big mistake - vsitors absolutely hate this.  I know this because we get emails from ticked off visitors on RVUSA.com who think we are the people not displaying the prices.

We have a number of dealers using the Get Sale Price tool on their websites.  Here’s a few to check out:

• www.genuinerv.com – click on New RVs
• www.houseofcamping.com – click on New RV Inventory
• www.southernrv.com – click on New Inventory

We don’t have to host your website in order for you to use this tool but why not host with us – it doesn’t cost any extra to do so.

If you would like more information on how to add this to your website, send me an email or give me a call (866-643-4625 x 120).

Cindy Spencer 

Get a $1,250 Fuel Card from Freightliner Custom Chassis

Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation (FCCC) is now giving a $1,250 fuel card with any new purchase of a qualifying motorhome built on a Freightliner chassis from dealers in the United States and Canada.  This exclusive, temporary offer is designed to help motorhome and RV enthusiasts pursue a road trip of a lifetime, even in a sluggish economy.

Here’s the details:

Take your next road trip on Freightliner.  Between now and Dec. 31, 2009, motor home enthusiasts can kick off their road trip of a lifetime by receiving a $1,250 fuel card with the purchase of any qualifying motor home built on a Freightliner chassis from dealers in the United States and Canada. For more details about this offer, and to learn which RV manufacturers offer vehicles built on Freightliner chassis, visit www.freightlinerchassis.com/fuel

Happy Camping!!
Cindy Spencer 

Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc. Reborn as Fleetwood RV, Inc.

Some of you may know that in July 2009, American Industrial Partners Capital Fund IV LP (AIP) acquired certain motorized RV business assets from Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc.  The following day, in partnership with AIP, they launched Fleetwood RV, Inc., which is jointly run by CEO Chuck Wilkinson and another Senior Manager.

Fleetwood RV, Inc. is located in Decatur, Indiana and continues to produce their motor home brands including:

Diesel Motor Homes

• Revolution LE
• Excursion
• Providence
• Discovery
• Expedition
• Bounder Diesel

Gas Motor Homes

• Pace Arrow
• Southwind
• Bounder
• Terra LX
• Fiesta LX
• Terra
• Fiesta
• Bounder Classic

Class C Motor Homes

• Icon
• Pulse
• Jamboree
• Tioga
• Jamboree Sport
• Tioga Ranger

American Coach Motor Homes

• American Allegiance
• American Tradition
• American Eagle
• American Heritage

We have over 1,200 new and pre-owned Fleetwood RVs listed on RVUSA.com.  CLICK HERE to review them.

You can check out Fleetwood RVs website here:  www.fleetwoodrv.com

Cindy Spencer 

RVUSA.com Now Accepting an Inventory Feed from eDealerDesign

Is your website hosted by eDealerDesign.com or are you using their Inventory Management tool to maintain your online RV listings?  If so, we have great news!!

RVUSA.com now accepts an Inventory feed from eDealerDesign. 
It’s setup to send us an update each night, so any changes you make to your inventory will display on RVUSA.com and the applicable 60 mfg / model specific websites we host within 24 hours.

If you have another inventory service supporting your website and would like to see if we can import your inventory from them, let me know.

Cindy Spencer

SmarterStats: Which Reports to Keep an Eye On

 

With 95 standard reports and a wide variety of custom reports that you have the capability of creating in SmarterStats, it’s hard to tell which are the most important to keep an eye on.  Most people really only need to keep track of 3 or 4 reports including:

1. Monthly Visitors
2. Visit Length
3. Referring Sites
4. Top Pages

Your first step is to login to SmarterStats (if you need the URL, let me know).
If this is your first time logging in, you will be asked to setup a couple of preferences for your dashboard.
On the dashboard, you will find a Views and Visits chart, Bandwidth Usage Graph, Top Pages list, Top Referrers list, Search Engines chart and Top Search Phrases list.  These items will display typically an overview of your last 7 days unless you selected otherwise in the preferences.

Now let’s navigate to the Monthly Visitors report.

On the left side of the page, click on the (+) next to Visitors, click on Monthly Visitors in the menu that appears below it.  It will most likely show you the past 7 days again here, so in order to change that click on the “Show Date Ranges” link at the top right below the calendar.  Click on the calendar icon to the right of the start field, select the day, do the same for the end date and then click the Get Report button.  If you need to go back to another month, there are icons at the top for that.  You will see colums for Visits, Unique Visitors, New Visitors and Return Visitors.

• Visits:  represents the total number of times people have visited your website.
• Unique Visitors:  represents any number of visits from the same computer.
• New Visitors:  represents a visit by a computer that has not yet been to the website in the time period of the report.
• Return Visitors:  counted when a computer that has already been to the website before returns.  In order to see this data, you must select a date range of at least 2 months.

Now let’s check out the Visit Length report.

Over on the left side in the Visitors menu your going to click on Monthly Visit Length to view this report.  Your data show will be for your latest selected date range, so that may or may not need to be adjusted.  You will see two columns on the report; Visits and Visit Length.  I like to pull at least the last 90 – 180 days so I can see the trend on this report.

• Visit Length:  the number of seconds that a visit lasts on average for the date range.

Moving on to the Referring Sites report.

Click on the (+) next to Referrals, click on Referring Sites in the menu that appears below it.  Once again you will need to check the date range at the top and adjust as necessary.  You will see columns for Rank, Host and Visits.  This particular report includes search engines and individual websites.  If you want to see the referals from just the search engines you would click on the (+) next to Search Engines on the left and click the Engine Breakdown link.

• Host:  the website from which visitors to your website came from.  A value of “no referrer” represents a visitor typing your website address directly into their browser, using a bookmark or following a link from an email message.

The final report you will want to check out is the Top Pages report.

Click on the (+) next to Files, click on Pages in the menu that appears below it.  As with the others you will need to check the date range and adjust if needed.  You will see columns for Page, Page Views, Visits and Bandwidth.  For most of you the first item will simply have “/”, which is simply your websites homepage.

• Page:  a website generally contains a collection of different pages that are accessible and viewable via a web browser.  SmarterStats considers the following extensions to be pages:  .ASP, .ASPX, .CFC, .CFM, .CFMX, .CFML, .CGI, .HTM, .HTML, .IDA, .IDC, .JHTM, .JHTML, .JSP, .JWS, .MHT, .MHTML, .MV, .PHP, .PHP3, .PHTM, .PHTML, .PL, .SHTM, .SHTML, .STM, .WML, .XDL, .XHTML and .XML.
• Page Views:  a successful request for a file on your website that is considered to be a page.  Views generated as a result of an error are kept separate.
• Bandwidth:  the total number of kilobytes that were sent to people visiting your website.

For all of these reports, if you want to see more data, change the chart type used, apply filters, etc., you can use the drop-down menus on the right side below the calendar.  Remember to click the Get Report button if you change any of these items to generate new data based on your criteria here.

You should receive an email on the 1st of each month with a rundown of your website statistics from the previous month.  If you are not getting that email, please let me know ASAP so I can get that resolved for you.

Cindy Spencer 

RVDA Chairman of the Board for 2009-2010: Debbie Brunoforte

Debbie Brunoforte of Little Dealer, Little Prices in Mesa, AZ, is the Chairman of the Board of RVDA – The National RV Dealers Association for 2009 – 2010.  Brunoforte became RVDA’s top volunteer leader on October 8, at the association’s Annual Meeting, held in conjunction with the RV Dealers International Convention/Expo in Las Vegas, NV.  Brunoforte previously served on the association’s Executive Committee as First Vice Chairman.   She was chairman of the Replacement Parts Availability Task Force for the industry’s Committee on Excellence in 2007 and 2008.

“I think it’s time to put aside the doom and gloom and look to a brighter future,” Brunoforte told the RVDA membership. “Restrictive financing and other limiting factors will be challenges for some time, and yet, there are reasons to be optimistic,” she said.   Brunoforte cited improving economic indicators including the stock market and housing as reasons for an uptick for the RV industry.

Other members of the RVDA Board of Directors for 2009-2010 are:  First Vice Chairman – Tim O’Brien, Circle K RV’s, Inc., Lapeer, MI;  Second Vice Chairman – Andy Heck, Alpin Haus, Amsterdam, NY;  Treasurer – Mick Ferkey, Greeneway, Inc., Wisconsin Rapids, WI;  Secretary – Jeff Hirsch, Campers Inn of Kingston, Kingston, NH;  and Directors Bob Been, Affinity RV Service Sales & Rentals, Prescott, AZ;  Tadd Jenkins, Bish’s RV Super Center, Idaho Falls, ID;  Steve Plemmons, Bill Plemmons RV World, Rural Hall, NC; and  Bill White, United RV Center, Fort Worth, TX.

Also serving on the RVDA Board of Directors are:  Past Chairman – Larry Troutt, Topper’s Camping Center, Waller, TX;  RVDA Education Foundation Chairman – Rick Horsey, Parkview RV Center, Smyrna, DE;  RV Assistance Corp. (RVAC) Chairman – Tom Stinnett of Tom Stinnett RV Freedom Center, Clarksville, IN;  and RV Rental Association (RVRA) Chairman – Bert Alanko, MBA Insurance, Scottsdale, AZ.  RVDA President Mike Molino also serves as a non-voting member.

RVDA, the National RV Dealers Association, is the national association representing RV retailers.  The association’s members include RV dealers, RV rental operators, and RV AfterMarket sales and service locations.  To learn more about the RVDA, visit their website:  www.rvda.org.

Attn: Dealer Partners – MMC Updates

My programmer made some changes today that I wanted you to be aware of on the MMC including:

1. List Inventory page – it now defaults to 50 units, which will make it load much faster.  You will have the option to switch that to 25, 50, 100 or ALL.
2. If you have more than 50 units, you will see a “jump to page” drop-down at the top in the yellow section.
3. The filter / sort options you choose will be remembered as long as you are logged in.  If you logout and log back in, they will be reset.
4. We further optimized the list inventory page so that it runs faster.

Let me know how that works for you:  cindy@rvusa.com

Cindy Spencer

To Craigslist or not to Craigslist

As RV Dealers start to see their sales winding down for the season, they look for more “free” places to list their inventory.  One of those websites is Craigslist.com, which is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the US, with 50 million visitors per month.  The typical questions I get are:

Should they list their inventory on Craigslist?
   Are other dealers listing their inventory on Craigslist?
      How do they go about listing their inventory on Craigslist?
         What kind of results should they expect from listing their inventory on Craigslist?
            Can RVUSA.com send their inventory to Craigslist?

All good questions that I wanted answers to as well.  I personally have been on Craigslist twice.  One time with my daughter looking for a car to buy and another time I posted a bird for sale that belonged to my neice.  The cars we found on there were all fixer-uppers and none that I really felt safe with her driving.  With the bird for sale ad, we had one lady interested but she really couldn’t afford it and I think she was looking for us to just give it to her – mind you this is a $1,200-$1,500 bird. 

Since my experience with Craigslist is so limited, I emailed a few of my friends in the RV Industry to get their opinion on this topic.

“It’s too variable and a lot of work.  Certain west coast cities, there are “flaggers” that are always after dealers and the listings disappear.”
                                                                                                                          Steve Love, La Mesa RV
                                                                                                                          www.lamesarv.com

“I know some dealers who do post to Craigslist.com – the results are mixed.”
                                                                                                                          Connie Mekkelsen, Mekkelsen RV
                                                                                                                          www.vtrv.com

“About 1/3 of my online sales are from Craigslist.com.”
                                                                                                                          Anonymous RV Dealer

Q:  What is a Flagger?
A:  Other Craigslist users may flag postings they believe to be in violation of craigslist guidelines.  Each listing has links at the top to flag a post for:  miscategorized, prohibited and spam/overpost.  Flagged posts are automatically removed, in fact, they remove millions of ads each month through their community flagging process.

Q:  How do I advertise my services on Craigslist?
A:  They accept commercial posts under “services offered”.  They are free and remain online for 30 days.  You login, select a city to post your ad under, choose a category, authenticate your account and get verification code and enter that code to place the ad.  You will need to repost your ad every 30 days if you want to continue to be listed.

Q:  How many visitors does Craigslist.com get each month?
A:  According to Compete.com, the Craigslist.com website gets 6 – 8 million unique visitors per month.

Q:  How many ads are posted on Craigslist.com?
A:  About 10 million new ads are posted on Craigslist.com per month.

Q:  Can I post my inventory listings to Craigslist.com automatically?
A:  There are a couple websites that have automated feeds to Craigslist.com, but use of their services does not guarantee that your ads will not be flagged and removed.  Pricing was not readily available for these services.

Q:  Is RVUSA.com going to post inventory to Craigslist.com?
A:  We are talking about it.  I’d like to hear from more RV Dealers to gauge how many are using that website to list RVs and what kind of results are you getting from it - post your comments here or send me an email:  cindy@rvusa.com.

If Craigslist.com truely does help you, the RV Dealers sell more units, then I’m all for it.  If the majority of dealers who use that website end up getting their units flagged and then removed, it just seems like it would be a waste of time no matter how big the website is or how many visitors are on it each month.

Cindy

Dan Aykroyd Traveling in an RV

Dan Aykroyd, a famous actor and comedian, now a distiller, is touring the country in a customized RV promoting his new high-end vodka.  He’s making his way to restaurants, bars and liquor stores across America promoting his vodka.  There are no additives, it’s quadrupled distilled then triple crystal filtered through a cone of Herkimer Diamonds.  It’s marketed in glass bottles in the shape of a skull and goes for $49.99 per bottle.

Thought this was interesting and wanted to share.

Cindy

How to create a page for your Dealership on Facebook

Are you on Facebook.com?  If not, why?

Did you know that in May 2009, Facebook surpassed MySpace and became the most popular social networking website in the US?

comScore did a study and found that Facebook grew 97% from May 2008 to May 2009 and Twitter grew 2,681% during that same timeframe. 

I’m already submitting 5 RV Ads per hour to the RVUSA page on Twitter.com.  The RVUSA followers on Twitter can click on the URL with each ad submission and they are taken right to the detail page for that ad on RVUSA.com.  Over the past 7 days, that’s generated more than 1,000 clicks for our dealers inventory.

Hotels continue to invest in social media websites because when actively managed, they can generate a significant increase in overall revenue for their properties.  I say why let Hotels have all the fun?

You can easily create a page for your dealership on Facebook once you have an account setup.  Then you can post your news, events, open houses, welcome new employees, announce when you get new RVs on the lot, post RV for sale listings (which can be done easily through RVUSA.com) and much, much more.

Benefits:

• The pages are public.  Even though most of Facebook content is behind a login, most of the Fan pages are not, which allows the search engines to index them.
• You can include links on your page, which gives you some nice Facebook.com link credit.
• Easily send “updates to fans”.  One of the greatest features is you have the ability to send “updates” to fans whenever you want.  So you can build a database of potential and/or current customers and send then messages about new product arrivals, website updates, etc.
• You control the page, messages sent, content and information.
• Exponential growth.  When someone joins a Fan page it’s published in their News Feed.  The friends of that person will see that and become fans as well and then their friends will see it and so on.
• It’s free and easy – takes a few minutes to create with information, URL and logo.  You can make your own page by going here:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Just follow the steps and if you have any questions, let me know.

Cindy Spencer 

Click the box above to become a FAN of RVUSA.com on Facebook.