Dealix’s Anna Zornosa is Awarded 2009 Market Leadership Award from TARGUSinfo

AnnaZornosa4_3x4lowWe at Cobalt are extremely excited to announce that our very own Anna Zornosa, executive vice president of Cobalt and general manager of its Dealix division, has been awarded the 2009 Market Leadership Award for her role in leading Dealix to the forefront of automotive lead quality and innovation. Congrats to Anna and Dealix for amazing work!

Anna received the award last week during a ceremony at the 4th Annual Online Lead Quality Summit, the premiere event for senior executives in the interactive marketing industry.

“The Dealix team is committed to providing our customers with access to active car shoppers who are using the Internet to determine what car to buy and where,” said Zornosa. “During 2009, Dealix built new supply relationships and brought on technology innovations that improved our ability to reach this goal.”

The most recent innovation from Dealix, the leading supplier of sales leads to dealers from independent auto sites, came in September 2009 when the company announced the Dealix Quality Pledge, backed by a feature set called Hassle-Free Lead Return. The essence of the Dealix Quality Pledge is that the company promises its customers that every lead it charges for will represent an in-market consumer and a real sales opportunity.

In the event a lead fails to meet one of a defined set of criteria that characterizes a quality lead, the customer can return the lead, hassle-free. The charge is then removed from the customer’s bill, and the lead is replaced with a new one. The program helps Dealix customers to maximize their sales opportunities throughout the month instead of waiting until month’s end to process credits. In addition, the program helps Dealix to quickly correct any lead quality issues that arise.

The Market Leadership Award is a huge accomplishment which demonstrates Anna’s strong business acumen, dedication to innovation, and outstanding leadership, as well as, the hard work and efforts of everyone at Dealix!

The Cobalt Group
www.cobalt.com
www.twitter.com/CobaltMarketing
www.youtube.com/cobaltlive

The Cobalt Group

Cobalt Mobile is Now Optimized for BlackBerry

bb_storm_front_leftCobalt’s mobile solution now includes support for the newest Blackberry models. Cobalt Mobile is a premium feature that is quickly growing in importance. It gives dealers a competitive edge, extending the dealer’s showroom to in-market consumers who are ready to purchase; providing the shopper with access to real-time inventory or service and sales contact information at any time via their mobile device.

Serious shoppers and higher conversion rates. In addition, consumers who use the supported mobile devices (iPhone, G1 or Android, Blackberry) are typically high-tech consumers, with more discretionary spending money. These consumers tend to be more task-focused and less price driven. While mobile website visitors make up less than 2% of all dealer website visitors, they are serious shoppers with high conversion rates. On average, mobile sites see double or triple the conversion rates of regular dealer websites.

Rapidly increasing mobile traffic. Mobile traffic across the Cobalt network has increased by 111% in the last 18 months. In August, mobile traffic made up 1.7% of all web traffic to dealer websites, up from 1.1% in January 2009 and .4% in January 2008.

How does traffic vary by device? The devices supported by Cobalt’s mobile solution represent the majority of mobile visitors across the Cobalt network. In August, iPhone and Blackberry devices handled the vast majority of all mobile traffic on Cobalt’s network. iPhone is the leading mobile device, with 60% of all mobile traffic, while Blackberry captured 29% of the traffic. Overall, iPhone traffic has increased by 134% since January 2009, with 21% of this increase occurring in the last 30 days. Blackberry traffic has also increased by 154% since January 2009, with 16% of the growth happening in the last 30 days.

Who should have mobile? Mobile is a must-have for dealers in high-tech metro areas or large volume dealers. Mobile can help any dealer looking for a competitive edge with tech-savvy consumers.

To learn more about Cobalt’s Mobile solution click here.

 

The Cobalt Group
www.cobalt.com
www.twitter.com/CobaltMarketing
www.youtube.com/cobaltlive

The Cobalt Group

Cultivating Leaders for Cobalt’s Continued Growth

Pyramid1024In the second half of 2008, Cobalt faced an exciting challenge; the need to hire approximately 400 new employees. As recruiting challenges go, this was a big task that raised some interesting questions about how a company can significantly grow its employee base quickly, while maintaining its core values and guiding principles. How do you find 400 people that will support and carry on the values that have been in place for over fourteen years? And, how do you hire and nurture leaders that have the skill set needed to take the company to the next level?

That was the challenge Julia Pizzi, vice president of HR, and her team were tasked with last year. To support the growth and to prepare for the continued growth that lay ahead, Julia and her team worked with the company’s growing executive leaders to create a Culture Model that was uniquely Cobalt. The model was a labor of love that set out to incorporate the key values that have been a part of Cobalt’s culture since it was founded in 1995, as well as the aspirational characteristics and traits needed to take Cobalt to the next level.

The result is a Culture Model that details four overarching key values; creativity, achievement, stewardship and accountability. It also defines the detailed traits that Cobalt will be looking for in new team members and in developing leaders. Some of these are traits are universally sought by companies; others are more unique to Cobalt.

“Many companies have successful leadership models, but we wanted Cobalt’s to be organic and meaningful to our organization,” said Julia Pizzi. “We wanted it to reflect our history, but also where we want to go. With growth like ours, there are skills and values that matter now more than ever and there were others that no longer apply.”

The Culture Model is intended to be a tool for hiring managers and employees of Cobalt to help them understand what is expected of them to succeed and move ahead on their career path. The new model, which was first launched company-wide at an all hands meeting in June, is being incorporated into the appraisal system, the quarterly goals and evaluation process. The department managers are being encouraged to define what the leadership model means to their team members and how it looks when it’s in practice in their work environment.

“When the new Culture Model came out, our team sat down together and created our own mission statement in support of the Model,” said Peggy Byus, Billing Team Manager at Cobalt. “It was one of the best team meetings we’ve ever had. We all discussed what the traits mean to us and our team. The Model not only showed us what is expected of all Cobaltians, but it really outlines what all employees should expect from their managers and supervisors, and that’s exciting.”

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Settling the New Wild West

MSteckler_f1Max Steckler
Vice President, Advertising Products

As a child, I remember being consumed by the adventurous themes of Wild West TV shows. I loved the stories about discovering and developing untamed lands to create a future full of growth and opportunity. Sure each gun fight was fun, but the real excitement was in knowing that the next episode would take the story farther West to greater lands of opportunity. Today I see the automotive industry as getting ready for its next big Wild West episode.

In the past, the auto industry had been on a consistent wagon train to sell large volumes of cars. In fact, up to 2008, annual new car sales were north of 16 million units for many years. Unfortunately, the industry experienced a forest fire while it was trying to expand and settle more land. The industry sales rate was slashed, resulting in significant financial impact on dealers, manufacturers, and the vendors that serve them. Companies closed, bankruptcies were filed, employees were laid off, and dreams were put on hold. Here we are now, more than year after the beginning of the downturn. As I look around, I’m beginning to feel that familiar anticipation and excitement for the next big episode. Like in the aftermath of a real forest fire, I see automotive industry green shoots rising up from the ashes.

Building New Settlements

During the pre-forest fire days, Cobalt invested heavily in innovation, working to create new solutions in local, digital advertising to help dealers and manufacturers spend their marketing dollars more efficiently. We internally developed new products and services and acquired best-of-breed companies to meet the future needs of the market. I was fortunate enough to be a member of the remarkable teams that pioneered four new product lines within Cobalt – paid search, email marketing, display advertising and re-marketing advertising. Each one of these new “settlements” enabled Cobalt to help the industry adopt and leverage Quote 2digital advertising as an extremely effective option for automotive advertising. Cobalt was clearly going in the right direction with its product portfolio. Remember the hero that always saved the day in the Wild West shows? I recall that strong relationships and trust were always at the core of that character’s success. Just like a Wild West hero, Cobalt has also focused on its industry relationships. During our 14 years of history, we have made significant investments in building strong relationships with the majority of the industry’s dealers and manufacturers. With these relationships comes a responsibility to support them in all times. This became increasingly true as the downturn of 2008 unfolded.

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