The ROI Resource

Stéphane Grabina began noticing an influx of “tire kickers” in his North Bethesda, Md., shop. These customers had a lot of questions, but never actually brought their cars to BMW Excluservice for maintenance or repair; luckily, Grabina was able to quickly pinpoint which marketing venue was acting as an open invitation to “tire kickers” and reallocate the funds to more prosperous marketing ventures. 

Tracking marketing data, however,  hasn’t always been so precise and convenient for Grabina.

Before meeting Todd Westerlund, CEO of KUKUI, at an annual meeting of BMW shop owners, Grabina was tracking the data at his shop the old-fashioned way⁠: manually. 

“It was very hard, time-consuming and it wasn't very accurate because it wasn't consistent,” Grabina says. “You basically have to rely on your service advisors to gather information from clients, but the shop would get busy and they would forget to ask.”

Grabina liked what he saw at the annual meeting, and, in late 2015, switched from tracking data manually to using KUKUI, and hasn’t looked back since.  

“The system is so intuitive that there’s not a whole lot of training needed. The portal is so easy to understand and just makes sense,” he says.

Playing with Numbers

In order to identify how well a marketing campaign is working, Grabina works with KUKUI to assign separate tracking numbers to each campaign. He is then able to track the number of calls that come in from that specific marketing effort.

An ROI is calculated based on the data from his shop management system by cross-referencing the phone numbers of the individuals calling. Over the four years that Grabina has used KUKUI, he has had two different shop management systems, both of which KUKUI has had no problem pulling data.

“It will show you that the customer called, and then that the customer came in and the dollar amount that they spent,” he explains. “It then goes into a report and you can literally see the ROI.”

Recently, Garbina found himself having trouble tracking how well a marketing campaign through another company was doing. He asked KUKUI for a tracking phone number to provide said company in order to see which phone calls were coming in from them. Grabina was able to see that, unfortunately, the specific form of marketing was not working. But, through tracking the numbers with KUKUI, he was able to cut the campaign out of his budget and reallocate to something with a larger ROI.

Prior to switching to KUKUI, the precise data needed to make such a specific marketing analysis would have been impossible, and over the years has helped Grabina make important investment decisions. 

A Daily Routine 

Now that Grabina is no longer reliant on his service advisors to gather the needed information from customers, he checks his shop’s data daily. He also logs into KUKUI through his cell phone, so he can see data on the go.  

“A lot of people have different ways [with how they interact] with KUKUI, but the main thing I use it for is the tab on the dashboard called ‘Leads,’” Grabina says.

Once the “Leads” tab is clicked, Grabina can see everything he needs to know for tracking his marketing efforts. This allows Grabina to identify which marketing avenues are worth the investment, and which are not. 

“When you are looking at it (marketing) from a dollars spent standpoint, you need to know that you are not throwing money out the window,” Grabina says.

He gives the example of a shop spending $200 per month on one avenue of digital marketing and then $500 on another form of marketing. In this scenario, say the $200 investment doesn’t work while the $500 investment brings in customers ad nauseum; by identifying this data through KUKUI, the shop is able to stop the failing form of marketing and invest that amount in the other, more successful avenue. Now, $700 is spent on a campaign growing in effectiveness.  

Grabina has been able to do this reallocation multiple times at his shop, including the “tire kickers” campaign through tracking his data on KUKUI.   

“I’m super happy with the results I’m getting,” he says. “With KUKUI, you definitely get your money’s worth.”