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AI & Automation

automotive data mining software: 7 steps for 2026

Oct 15, 2026

Key Takeaways

automotive data mining software is the system that reads a dealership's deals, payoffs, and repair orders, or a wider owner file, and returns people to call, mail, or meet on the drive. TL;DR: choose the tool that matches the file you will actually work this month, and treat any franchise suite without a public price as quote-based until the proposal is in writing.

  • Own-customer mining and outside-file conquest are different purchases. AutoAlert, RevenueRadar, the CDK built-in customer data platform, and Fullpath Equity start from people you already know. automotiveMastermind also scores households that are not in your database. VinSolutions Predictive Insights starts from shopper behavior on Cox marketplaces. DealerCenter's public plans are campaign lists inside a CRM.

  • Six of these seven products do not publish a monthly price. The CRM Plus plan on DealerCenter is the exception, and it does not publish equity math.

  • Franchised dealers: 16,991 stores according to NADA (2026), and those stores sold 7.9 million light-duty vehicles in the first half of 2026.

  • Dealers using AI: 82% according to Used Car News (2026), in the Cox Automotive Q2 survey of 483 dealers, while 69% expected sales growth and 22% of AI users said they had seen it.

  • PureCars has acquired AutoAlert. Mobility Global's separation announcement carries automotiveMastermind with CARFAX, Polk Automotive Solutions, and Market Scan. Cox Automotive's media kit says the Fullpath purchase is complete. Solera sells RevenueRadar inside CRM by Solera, the product dealers still call DealerSocket. CDK describes its customer data platform as built into its own dealership suite.

Seven checks before you sign

Run these seven checks in order. Skip one and the demo will feel stronger than the install.

  1. Name the file. Write down whether you need people who already bought or serviced with you, people who never have, or both. A tool built for one file will not quietly become the other.

  2. Name the feed. Ask which dealer-management fields arrive each night: deal date, payment, term, payoff, and repair-order mileage. If the vendor cannot name the fields, the equity number is a guess.

  3. Name the reviewer. Someone on your payroll has to accept or reject the list before a customer hears an offer. A score with no owner is a report.

  4. Match the CRM you already pay for. RevenueRadar is built inside DealerSocket. CDK's view is built inside its own suite. VinSolutions and Fullpath now sit in the same Cox family for stores that use both. Changing miners can mean changing the CRM.

  5. Ask for the exit file. You want the scored list, the match key, and the suppression list in a file you can open if you cancel. A locked score is a locked customer history.

  6. Price the labor. The software quote is the small line if a manager spends an hour a day on bad rows. Put that hour in the same comparison as the monthly fee.

  7. Pilot one list. Work a single alert type for a month and tie every appointment to a deal you can see in the DMS. Keep the tool only if that tie is visible to you, not only to the vendor's dashboard.

A separate walk-through of how equity alerts get worked, from the flag to the appointment, is in the equity mining automation comparison. Read that after you know which file you are buying.

Who this is for

This guide is for the owner or the operations lead at a small dealership who is close to choosing. You may have one rooftop, a short bench, and a DMS full of sold customers and repair orders that nobody has sorted since the last busy Saturday. You want to know which product mines that file, which product mines strangers, what is published on price, and what you have to feed the tool before it can return a list.

It is also for the person who will sit with the vendor and ask where the payoff comes from. If that question is not welcome, you are not early. You are the buyer.

Red flags: the vendor will not name the DMS fields in the feed; the contract keeps the scored file inside the vendor's login after you cancel; nobody on your staff is assigned the daily list before you sign.

You are in a different buying group if you only want a website chat widget, a third-party listing boost, or a desking screen. Those tools can sit next to a miner. They are not the miner.

Words you will meet in the contract:

  • Equity means the gap between what the vehicle is worth and what is still owed. Fullpath's equity page says it subtracts the current loan balance from a Kelley Blue Book value.

  • Payoff is the amount still owed. RevenueRadar's page says the CRM view can show payoff and equity history on past customers.

  • A repair order is the service record. It is often the freshest mileage you have.

  • A CDP, or customer data platform, is the layer that tries to merge the website visit, the CRM lead, and the DMS customer into one person. Fullpath and CDK both sell that layer. VinSolutions is where Cox is placing Fullpath's layer for mutual clients.

  • Conquest means a household that is not already your customer. automotiveMastermind's platform page treats conquest as its own job, next to retention and the service drive.

  • In-market is a vendor's claim that someone is close to shopping. Treat it as a sort order, then check it against appointments you can count.

  • Quote-based means no public price was on a page we could open on October 15, 2026. It does not mean the tool is free, and it does not mean a number you heard at a 20 Group meeting.

How we evaluated these tools

We scored the buying decision, not a lab test. Nobody on this page drove these products on a live rooftop, and nothing below is a measured result from a customer of ours. The weights add to 100%. They favor a small store that has to live with one stack, one reviewer, and a contract it can explain.

CriterionWeightMinimum you should see
File match, own customers or conquest20%1 named file
Equity, payment, or term math20%1 named payoff or value source
Service-lane timing15%1 service feed
Fits the DMS or CRM you already run15%1 live system on the quote
A person reviews before anyone is contacted15%1 approval step
A public price, or a written quote15%1 dollar figure you can file

File match is the heaviest item tied with the math, because a conquest score cannot repair a missing payoff, and a perfect payoff on your own customers cannot find a household that has never visited. Service timing matters because the repair order is often the only fresh mileage in the building. Stack fit is there so you do not buy a second CRM by accident. The review step is there because an automatic offer with a wrong payoff is a customer problem, not a software win. Public price is weighted because a small store should see the fee before it clears a week for demos. A tool with no public price can still win. It cannot win in silence.

Pass a tool only if it clears the file you named in check 1 and the feed you named in check 2. A high weight on price does not make DealerCenter an equity miner. A high weight on math does not make a quote-only suite a better fit than the CRM you already run well.

The half-year record, in numbers

The pool these tools mine is large, and it is uneven. For the first half of 2026, Franchised dealers: 16,991 stores according to NADA (2026), and those stores sold 7.9 million light-duty vehicles, booked total sales above $640 billion, wrote more than 136 million repair orders, and recorded service and parts sales of nearly $83 billion, while the same page's 2025 full year shows 16,990 dealers, 16.2 million vehicles, sales above $1.3 trillion, more than 276 million repair orders, and service and parts sales above $164 billion.

MeasureFirst half 2026Full year 2025
Franchised dealers16,99116,990
Light vehicles sold7.9 million16.2 million
Repair ordersmore than 136 millionmore than 276 million
Service and parts salesnearly $83 billionmore than $164 billion
Total dealership salesmore than $640 billionmore than $1.3 trillion

Those are franchise totals. Independent stores are a separate market. Independent retail sales: 9.8 million vehicles according to Auto Remarketing (2026), citing NIADA's report on 2025. A one-rooftop independent should not budget as if it were the average franchise point. The franchise repair-order pile is still the right picture of why mining exists: the service file is bigger than the sales file, and most of it never becomes a sales conversation unless someone sorts it.

Software will not do that sort by itself. Dealers using AI: 82% according to Used Car News (2026), in a May 2026 Cox survey of 483 franchise and independent dealers, while 69% of dealers expected AI to drive sales growth and 22% of AI users said they had seen sales or revenue growth. Used Car News also notes that Cox asked the expectation question of all dealers and the result question of AI users, so 69% and 22% are not a conversion rate. Use them as a warning: a new screen can be present in the building and still leave the list unworked.

Seven tools side by side

The matrix records what each vendor's own pages describe. A blank in spirit is written as "not on the pages read" rather than filled in from memory. Our read of fit sits under the table, in prose, so the grid stays a record of public claims.

ToolWhose filePayment, equity, or term mathService timingPublic monthly price
AutoAlertExisting clients on the product pageUpgrade and Flex alerts aim at a similar paymentPending-service, service, warranty, and drive notificationQuote-based
automotiveMastermindOwn customers and conquest householdsBehavior score from 0 to 100; payoff formula not on the pages readService-drive selling is a named jobQuote-based
RevenueRadarPast customers in DealerSocketPage describes payoff and equity history11 categories include service-based targetsQuote-based
Fullpath EquityDMS, CRM, and website shoppersLoan balance versus a Kelley Blue Book valueDaily scan of the whole fileQuote-based
VinSolutionsCRM record plus Cox marketplace behaviorPayoff calculator not on the page readNot the center of Predictive InsightsQuote-based
CDK built-in CDPSales, service, and parts inside CDKLease loyalty, beyond-term, and end-of-term indicatorsMonths between repair orders, and service-only customersQuote-based
DealerCenterCRM campaign listsNot on the public plan listNot on the public plan list$99 and $199

RevenueRadar is the tool that publishes a count of sorts: it combs the database for conversations in 11 sales and service categories and attaches a buying score, according to DealerSocket (2026). That 11 is a product claim about categories, not a promise of 11 extra deals.

Fullpath is the tool that publishes a mail claim. Equity email open-rate lift: 14% according to Fullpath (2026), and the same page states a 2x shopper-engagement increase and a 10x savings claim for keeping old customers. Those three figures are Fullpath's published claims. They are not an independent audit, and they will not transfer to your rooftop because a vendor printed them.

A proposed US Tech Automations workflow can sit beside whichever row you pick. It is a configurable handoff, not a statement that a store is running it now. The trigger is a new repair order in the DMS export. The action joins that repair order to the miner's alert on customer and vehicle, drops any row with a blank payoff, and writes a review queue. The output is a short list a service manager approves or returns before anyone in the BDC calls. You need a documented export or API from the DMS and from the miner. The human review point is before any text or email goes out.

What the public price page shows

Pricing checked October 15, 2026.

We opened each vendor's product pages and looked for a public price. DealerCenter publishes one. The other six do not, on any page we could open, so their price is quote-based. Do not drop a number from a forum into this comparison. If a rep gives you a figure, ask for it on a proposal with the rooftop count, the term, and what happens at renewal.

The CRM Plus plan on DealerCenter costs $99 a month and includes 2,000 outbound or inbound text messages, the CRM Pro plan on DealerCenter costs $199 a month and includes 4,000 text messages, and the DMS plan on DealerCenter costs $99 a month, and the pricing page says the products include unlimited users, according to DealerCenter (2026).

VendorPlanMonthly pricePublished cap
DealerCenterCRM Plus$992,000 texts
DealerCenterCRM Pro$1994,000 texts
DealerCenterDMS$99not published as a text cap
AutoAlertnot publishedQuote-basednot published
automotiveMastermindnot publishedQuote-basednot published
RevenueRadarnot publishedQuote-basednot published
Fullpathnot publishedQuote-basednot published
VinSolutionsnot publishedQuote-basednot published
CDKnot publishedQuote-basednot published

Read the DealerCenter row as a CRM price, not as an equity-mining price. The CRM Pro plan adds automated workflows and campaign marketing with event automation. The pricing page does not list a payoff feed, a book-value equity calculation, or an in-market score. If your search was really "who can change cars this month," the $199 plan answers a different question: who can run email and text campaigns from the CRM with a price printed in public.

For the quote-based six, ask the rep to split the fee into base subscription, mail or email postage, setup, DMS interface, and any per-appointment charge. A single monthly number that hides postage will not match the invoice. Ask which line you can cancel without canceling the CRM. On RevenueRadar and on CDK's built-in platform, the mining view is part of a larger suite, so the honest price may be "included if you already pay for the suite" or "a module on top." Both answers are useful. A shrug is not.

What each tool is for

AutoAlert, owned by PureCars

The record. AutoAlert's mining page is built around named alerts on existing clients: Upgrade and Flex for a similar payment, Mileage for a lease near its miles, Contract for a deal near the end of term, Pending-Service for an upcoming appointment, Warranty for coverage about to end, Service for someone who just visited, In-Market for clients the page ties to purchasing patterns and demographics, and Engaged for people already touching your site, inventory, or email. The same page describes a daily recall feed, a no-longer-owns cleanse against DMV and other records, service-lane notification, and an open API to bring data in or send insights out. AutoAlert was founded in 2002, PureCars acquired it on April 13, 2026, and the announcement states SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 compliance, according to AutoAlert (2026). The two brands still describe themselves as separate platforms. Price: quote-based.

Our read. Best fit is a store that will work a daily task list on its own customers and wants the alert names in plain language a salesperson can say out loud. The recall feed is a reason to pair the list with a recall status check before a vehicle is listed, so a mined upgrade does not land on a car you should be fixing first.

Limits. The page we opened describes clients, not a national conquest file of strangers. Payment-style alerts still depend on a clean payoff. A wrong payoff makes a "same payment" offer false. There is no public price, so two stores can be talking about different packages under one brand name.

Implementation. You need the DMS history, a person who owns the alert queue, and a rule for who may speak to a service customer who did not ask for a salesperson. The open API is the exit ramp: use it, or a scheduled file, so the scored rows are not trapped in one login. Review point: a manager samples the Upgrade list against the payoff screen before the first week of calls.

Evidence. Alert definitions are on the AutoAlert mining page. Ownership and the security certifications are on the PureCars acquisition announcement.

automotiveMastermind, under Mobility Global

The record. The platform page says a Behavior Prediction Score ranks prospects from 0 to 100 on propensity to buy, and that Behavior Prediction Drivers and an assistant named Fritz supply talk tracks, according to automotiveMastermind (2026). The same overview splits the work into loyalty, conquest from competitors, and the service drive, and it says campaigns can run in print and digital from those profiles. The separation announcement lists automotiveMastermind together with CARFAX, Polk Automotive Solutions, and Market Scan under Mobility Global, which has completed its separation from S&P Global. Training is part of the sale: dealer relations managers run on-site or virtual sessions. Price: quote-based. We did not find a public rate card.

Our read. Best fit is a store that wants a ranked list of who to talk to, including households that are not already in the CRM, and that will let a field trainer into the sales meeting. The score is a sort. It is not a payoff.

Limits. The pages we opened do not publish the formula behind the 0 to 100 score, and they do not publish a payment or equity calculation you can recompute from your own DMS. If your buyer question is "what is the payoff versus the book," this is the wrong first screen. Conquest mail also spends money on people who have never met you, so the creative and the offer rules matter as much as the rank.

Implementation. Plan on a CRM match for the customers you already have, a suppression list for people who asked you to stop, and a weekly meeting where the score is tied to shows and sold deals you can name. The support page describes dealer relations managers and a learning hub called Mastermind Academy. Use that only if someone on your staff is accountable between visits. Review point: a manager listens to the first calls that follow Fritz's talk track and throws out any line the store would not say.

Evidence. The score scale is on the platform overview. The owner brands are on the separation announcement. Support structure is on the consultative support page.

RevenueRadar, inside CRM by Solera

The record. DealerSocket's page describes RevenueRadar as the equity mining tool inside DealerSocket CRM. It says the tool finds conversations in 11 sales and service categories, shows a customer profile and a buying score, and can show what the customer is paying, the payoff, the equity history, and the last service visit. A direct-mail service on the same family of pages uses mail and email, then live agents who book appointments. Solera's later Sales Radar post, for stores already on RevenueRadar, describes automated mail and email journeys around a smarter payment, a lower rate, an equity upgrade, and the end of a loan term. Price: quote-based. The pages we opened do not list a dollar fee.

Our read. Best fit is a store that is already on DealerSocket, or is willing to be, and wants the mining rows inside the CRM the sales desk already opens. The 11 categories give a manager something to assign. The mail-and-agent add-on is a second decision, because a person outside your building will be talking to your customers.

Limits. This is not a standalone miner you drop onto a different CRM, based on the product page we read. If you leave DealerSocket, ask what happens to the history. Live agents are only a fit if you are comfortable with their script and their hours. A buying score still needs your payoff file underneath it.

Implementation. Confirm in the quote that equity rows appear on the customer record your BDC already uses, not in a second login. Decide whether mail is included or billed per piece. Set a rule that an agent-booked appointment lands on a named salesperson before the customer arrives. Review point: listen to a sample of agent calls in the first two weeks and pull any script that quotes a payment you have not checked.

Evidence. The 11 categories and the payoff view are on the RevenueRadar page. The later journey types are on Solera's Sales Radar post.

Fullpath Equity, now part of Cox Automotive

The record. Fullpath's equity page says a daily scan computes equity from DMS and CRM fields plus Kelley Blue Book: purchase price, down payment, term, payment, interest, and current value, and for a loan it subtracts the balance from the book value. If service mileage is missing, the page says value falls back to averages. Audiences refresh, then ads and email can fire, and a click is supposed to land on a page with the same vehicle and value. The CDP page behind it says the platform ingests 11 million data points a day, offers more than 200 integration opportunities, averages more than 9,200 merged shopper profiles, and cleans an average of 12% duplicate data, according to Fullpath (2026). Cox Automotive's media kit says the purchase of Fullpath is complete, the linked release was posted June 1, 2026, Fullpath has about 2,500 dealer clients and was founded in 2016, and Cox lists 20,000+ dealer relationships and 1,500+ field professionals, according to Cox Automotive (2026). Price: quote-based.

Our read. Best fit is a store that wants equity used as an audience for email and ads, not only as a call list, and that already lives in the Cox stack or is willing to. The daily scan and the KBB method are specific enough to interrogate. Ask which book condition they assume when mileage is old.

Limits. The 14%, 2x, and 10x figures are Fullpath's own claims. The duplicate-cleaning average is also theirs. A store with a messy DMS can still outrun a 12% cleanup story. Equity mail that uses an estimated mileage will be wrong often enough that a person should see the high-dollar offers. Fullpath's price is not public.

Implementation. Connect the DMS, the CRM, and the site, then decide which channel is allowed to send without a person: usually none, for the first month. Keep a suppression file for sold customers who are underwater if you do not want that conversation in an ad. Review point: each week, open ten sent offers and recompute the equity from the payoff screen. If the gap is large, stop the send and fix the feed.

Evidence. The equity method is on Fullpath's equity page. The volume figures are on the CDP page. Ownership is on the Cox media kit.

VinSolutions Predictive Insights

The record. VinSolutions is Cox Automotive's CRM. Predictive Insights, described in Cox's December 2024 announcement, uses shopping behavior from Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and Dealer.com to point salespeople at shoppers, and the same announcement says staff can edit and approve messages before they are sent. That is a shopper-intent tool inside the CRM. It is not, on the page we read, a payoff calculator for your sold base. Cox has since described Fullpath's customer data platform as something mutual clients can open inside VinSolutions, which is the bridge between this row and the Fullpath row. Price: quote-based. We did not find a public VinSolutions rate card.

Our read. Best fit is a store that already runs VinSolutions and wants marketplace behavior on the lead record the desk already works. If you also pay for Fullpath, the case for a third mining login gets weaker, because Cox is putting the CDP on the same screen. If you do not run VinSolutions, buying it only to get Predictive Insights means buying a CRM.

Limits. Marketplace behavior tells you who is shopping. It does not, by itself, tell you the payoff on a car you sold in 2022. A store whose whole opportunity is the service drive will underuse this and overpay if the CRM replacement is the real project. Message drafts still need the edit step the announcement itself describes.

Implementation. Confirm your DMS still syncs into the CRM after any package change. Turn on approval for outbound messages until the BDC trusts the drafts. If you add Fullpath, ask which fields the embedded summary shows, and which fields stay only in Fullpath. Review point: a manager compares one week's "ready" shoppers with who actually showed, and kills any source that only produces tire-kickers.

Evidence. The Predictive Insights description is on Cox's announcement. The Fullpath ownership context is the media kit cited above.

CDK's built-in customer data platform

The record. CDK's announcement of its built-in customer data platform says the profile is meant to live inside the Dealership Xperience suite, across foundations, modern retail, fixed operations, and intelligence, rather than in a separate login. The capabilities it lists are a predictive lifetime value across sales, service, and parts; sales and service measures that include lease loyalty, customers beyond their term, and end-of-term maturities; service measures that include months between repair orders, warranty pay, and how many customers are service-only; a unified profile of the customer, the household, and the vehicle; an AI summary on the workflow; and tools to manage duplicate records. An enterprise version is described as the place for deeper segmentation and third-party data. Price: quote-based. The announcement does not list a fee.

Our read. Best fit is a store already on CDK that wants term-end and service-only lists without adding a miner login. The service-only count is the useful mining question for fixed ops: who maintains the car with you and has never been asked about the next one.

Limits. A store on a different DMS does not get this by installing a small app, based on how CDK describes the embedding. "Predictive lifetime value" is only as good as the identity match. If two spellings of the same household stay split, the value number splits too. There is no public price, and the enterprise tier is a second conversation.

Implementation. Ask which of those measures are in the built-in profile on day one and which wait for the enterprise tier. Ask how a beyond-term flag is calculated, and whether the payoff is yours or estimated. Put the service-only list on one advisor's follow-up for a month before you let it drive a mail drop. Review point: a controller or service manager checks that "beyond term" matches the original contract date in the DMS for a sample of twenty names.

Evidence. The capability list is on CDK's announcement. The Fortellis connector for CDK Elead opportunities, used in the paper example below, is documented on Microsoft's CDK connector page.

DealerCenter, the published-price CRM

The record. DealerCenter's pricing page is the only public rate card in this set. The CRM Plus plan is $99 a month with 2,000 texts. The CRM Pro plan is $199 a month with 4,000 texts, and it adds click-to-call, call recording, automated workflows, and campaign marketing with event automation. Users are described as unlimited. The page also prices a DMS at $99 a month and many other modules. It does not describe equity alerts, a payoff feed, or a 0 to 100 propensity score. Price: published, as cited in the pricing section.

Our read. Best fit is a small independent that needs a CRM campaign list with a price it can read before the call, and that is not trying to compute equity. If the search that landed you here was really "how do I email my old buyers on a budget," this is the row. If the search was "who is in a positive equity position," this row does not answer it.

Limits. Campaign automation can annoy the same customers a miner would have ranked. Without equity math, the list is "people we know," not "people who can change cars at a similar payment." Text caps at 2,000 or 4,000 messages will matter if you blast. The page prices other modules separately, so a full store is not $99.

Implementation. Start on CRM Plus only if you will send mail yourself. Move to the CRM Pro plan when you want the workflow engine. Keep the list logic in a saved campaign a second person can see. Review point: read the first campaign before it sends, and cap it below the text allowance so overages are not the surprise.

Evidence. Plans and caps are on DealerCenter's pricing page.

A paper month at a franchised store

Use the national franchise average as a paper example, not as your store's forecast. The NADA half-year totals above put 7.9 million light vehicles and more than 136 million repair orders across 16,991 franchised dealers. Dividing 7.9 million by 16,991 gives about 465 vehicles sold per store in the half. Dividing 136 million by 16,991 gives about 8,004 repair orders per store in the half, and because NADA said the repair-order count was more than 136 million, about 8,004 is a floor. Dividing 8,004 by 6 gives about 1,334 repair orders in a month if the half splits into six equal months. That monthly pile is the file a service-to-sales miner reads. Where the CRM is CDK Elead, a manager who accepts one of those trades can have it written back with the operation Opportunities_AddTradeIn, the Fortellis operation CDK publishes for adding a trade to an existing sales opportunity. The call is only honest after a person checks the payoff and the mileage the miner assumed. The 465, the 8,004, and the 1,334 are our division of the NADA totals. They are not a result any vendor measured at a named dealership.

What the math is for: a tool that costs a few hundred dollars a month and a tool that is quote-based are both small next to 1,334 service visits, and both are wasted if ten of those visits were the real conversations and nobody made the calls. Staff the list before you staff another login.

Mistakes that quiet a good file

Stores that stall usually do it in the same few ways.

  • They buy conquest when the unsold opportunity is already in the service drive, or they buy an own-customer miner when the database is too thin to sort. Check 1 exists to stop that.

  • They let the mail leave before anyone recomputes a payoff. A same-payment offer with a stale balance is how a good list becomes a complaint.

  • They treat the vendor dashboard as the result. Tie every appointment to a deal number you can open in the DMS. If the dashboard cannot do that, keep a simple tally yourself for thirty days.

  • They sign a CRM replacement in order to get a mining module. RevenueRadar, CDK's profile, and VinSolutions are suite decisions. Price the suite, not the slide.

  • They export a list and send it with no recall check. A customer who is due a repair should hear about the repair before they hear about a new car. The same "export, then a person looks" habit shows up in other local businesses, including in-house plan software, any time a list can go out before someone checks it.

Zapier, Make, and n8n can keep a run history, retry a failed step, branch when a file is empty, and store an audit trail when a dealer builds that. The dealer then owns the watching, the duplicate protection, the escalation path, who can open the file, and the upkeep when a vendor renames a column. A proposed US Tech Automations design can instead take the nightly extract, match it to the alert file, and hold every row that is missing a payoff or a mileage until a named manager marks it ready. The prerequisite is still a documented export or API from the DMS and the miner. The review point is still a person before a customer is contacted.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations, keep the simpler tool. Stay in the CRM if it already puts an equity task on one person's list and that person works the list every morning. Skip any extra handoff if you will not approve an export or an API, because there is nothing to move. Skip it if the real need is the campaign list on the CRM Pro plan, where the public price is already on the page and the work is email and text inside that CRM.

Questions to settle before a contract

What is automotive data mining software?

It is software that sorts a dealership's own deals and repair orders, or a broader owner file, into people worth a sales or service conversation. The sort is the product. The phone call is still yours.

Which of these tools shows a public price?

DealerCenter does. The CRM Plus plan is $99 a month and the CRM Pro plan is $199 a month on its pricing page. AutoAlert, automotiveMastermind, RevenueRadar, Fullpath, VinSolutions, and CDK are quote-based on the pages we opened.

Do I need a separate miner if I already have a CRM?

Often you need a module inside that CRM, not a second system. RevenueRadar is inside DealerSocket, CDK's profile is inside its suite, and VinSolutions is the CRM that Cox is connecting to Fullpath for mutual clients. Buy a separate miner when the CRM cannot show payoff, term, and a service trigger on one screen.

Can this software find people who never bought from me?

automotiveMastermind's pages describe conquest households, and VinSolutions Predictive Insights uses Cox marketplace shopping behavior. AutoAlert, RevenueRadar, and CDK's built-in profile, as described on their pages, start from people already in your file. Fullpath adds website shoppers to the DMS and CRM record. Ask the rep which of those files is in the quote.

What should I refuse to sign?

Refuse a contract that will not name the DMS fields, will not give you the scored file if you leave, or auto-renews before you have worked one full month of matched deals. Refuse a mail add-on whose postage is not broken out. Refuse an install date that arrives before you have named the person who owns the list.

How long before a list is trustworthy?

Trust the feed before you trust the score. Give the vendor one clean month of deals and repair orders, then check a sample of payoffs by hand. A list that cannot survive that sample is not ready for a campaign, no matter what the dashboard says on day three.

What should I compare this with if equity is the only goal?

Compare the own-customer tools first: AutoAlert's alert list, RevenueRadar's 11 categories, Fullpath's KBB equity method, and CDK's beyond-term and service-only measures. Bring in conquest only after that list is staffed. The equity mining automation comparison is the closer look at how a flagged customer becomes an appointment.

The handoff around the miner

Choose on the file, the feed, and the person. A small franchise store sitting on a national-size service pile, about 1,334 repair orders in the paper month above, has enough of its own customers to sort before it buys a conquest file. A thin independent database may be the opposite, and may be better served by the published $99 or $199 CRM plan until the owner file is worth mining. Get the price in writing, including postage and the DMS interface. Work one alert type for a month and keep the deals you can open.

You can see how US Tech Automations configures this after the miner, the export, and the reviewer are named. That configuration is a handoff around the tool you picked: a repair order or a nightly file comes in, rows with a missing payoff or mileage wait, and a person lets the rest go. It is not a substitute for the miner, and it is not a result you can take to the bank.

About the Author

Garrett Mullins
Garrett Mullins
Workflow Specialist

Helping businesses leverage automation for operational efficiency.