Activator Dealer Solutions vs Force Marketing

What to check before you choose

Ask each who owns the unified customer file, how it is built from your DMS and CRM and how it can be exported. Find out which channels are included, how consent is stored and how opt-outs are honored, and how results are attributed to sold cars and service visits in your DMS. Ask for pricing with every module and the contract term, and ask a group your size how the first campaign performed.

Activator gives the store software to build segments and journeys. Force Marketing runs campaigns for the store.

Ask Activator how its customer data platform connects to your DMS and CRM, how often data refreshes and who builds the first journeys. Find out what a package costs once you select the features you need, since its site lets a dealer assemble a platform by checking boxes. Ask Force Marketing who owns the audience data its campaigns build, how its direct mail is matched to your customer file and how results are tied back to sales and service orders.

Used vehicle acquisition is a good test, since both address it. Give each the same slice of customers with equity in their car. Compare how many appointments and purchases result over sixty days, and what each cost per vehicle acquired.

Ask about staffing too. A platform needs someone at the store to use it.

An agency needs someone to approve its work. Decide which you can supply.

Request a reference from each at a store of your brand, and call that store.

Compliance and consent are part of the choice. Both firms contact customers by mail, email or text, so confirm how each handles opt-outs, suppression lists and state rules. Request the written consent process before any campaign goes out under your store name.

Ask each firm for its best and worst campaign in the last year, and what changed afterward. A vendor that can describe a failure in specific terms is easier to work with than one that only shows wins.

Request the sample reports and read them as a manager would. Look for sold units, appointment counts and cost, not impressions or opens.

Compare them with what your own DMS reports for the same period.

Inside the shared categories, Activator Dealer Solutions fields 4 named lines against it (Activator Customer Data Platform, Data Management Layer, Multichannel Marketing, CRM Audience Marketing); Force Marketing fields 4 named lines against it (Audience IQ, Helix, Digital Advertising, Direct Mail).