DriveCentric & automotiveMastermind Announce Integration: Increase Engagement, Retention, & Sales

Brian Pasch0:00Hi, this is Brian Pasch, and we're in the studio with Matt Leone. He's the new CEO of DriveCentric, and Aaron Baldwin, the new CEO of automotiveMastermind for a big industry announcement. We want to give context to what's changing in the automotive industry and no better way to do that but to bring the two leaders in. So Matt, without further ado, first of all, welcome to the podcast. Congratulations on the new role. Tell us about this announcement, merging the technology of both of your companies.

Matt Leone0:47Yeah, it's a big announcement. So today we're here to announce a strategic partnership between DriveCentric and automotiveMastermind, a company I know really well. This announcement, I think, is going to help us do three core things. between this to help our dealer partner community. You know, when I came to DriveCentric as CEO, I had three fundamental principles that I really wanted to focus in on. In my first 90 days, I wanted to hone in on three things. One, I wanted to make sure we had an open API and open up our partner ecosystem. Data ingestion is a real key focus of mine. Sure. The second one was to make sure that we're enhancing our core product, our engagement CRM platform, which is powered by AI, and we all know AI is only as good as the data that's feeding it.

Matt Leone1:28And three, we wanted to be able to expand and innovate new product offerings. This partnership between Mastermind and DriveCentric is going to really hit on all three of those because, you know, the fuel and data and the insights of Mastermind feeding now directly into DriveCentric is really powerful. And really what we're getting out of Mastermind's partnership today is they've been building, you know, a decade worth of machine learning of prediction models, and they're getting first-party and third-party data that makes a perfect sense to be fed into DriveCentric in clean, enriched, usable way that fuel our AI and our technology and drive the operations of a dealership.

Brian Pasch2:06So, you know, dealers know automotiveMastermind for their data quality, but you know, it's always been this issue. How do I get data in the CRM? We're still restricted in many ways by this 20-plus-year-old ADF XML squeezing data into weird records. Now 25 years without a single change. So, Aaron, this is big news for dealers on DriveCentric, this native integration. Tell us about, you know, what's the benefit for the dealer who is interested in powering better retail outcomes and also a DriveCentric customer?

Aaron Baldwin2:48Yeah, happy to share more, Brian. You know, I think it's a couple of different ways to look at this. We've been trying to get the data out of Mastermind and into these operational tools and into these workflows for our dealer partners for some time now. And DriveCentric has had just incredible explosive growth over the past few years. And it's one of the few that we haven't actually built an integration with. And what we're able to do with DriveCentric now is a new type of integration that even goes beyond what we've been doing with some of the other CRM providers and really get all of that data intelligence, but also all of that clean data that we have gone through the painstaking process of to make sure we are talking to the right person who still owns this car and know about the car.

Aaron Baldwin3:31And not only that, we're going to be taking all of our predictive analytics. So our Behavior Prediction Score or BPS, we're going to be making that directly available inside of the DriveCentric CRM so that as a salesperson or a BDC manager is going through and working outside of DriveCentric, they'll be able to see all of the predictions that we've done. What are they most likely to trade into? How does this deal structure for them? Where are they at in their warranty placement? And, you know, really help empower that conversation, but also feed the AI tools that are inside of DriveCentric. So those automated workflows, those automated workflows will now be able to take all of our rich content and data and make them very prescriptive directly to that individual consumer.

Aaron Baldwin4:13And we think that's going to be a real game changer in how dealers are interacting with consumers and how they're maximizing sales efforts on the floor.

Brian Pasch4:21You know, dealers who are using automotiveMastermind know they have best in class graphics, content delivery. But now imagine having that BPS score in the CRM, knowing when Masterminds is conducting outreach, seeing that in the CRM, when that phone call comes in or when a consumer is moved up into a higher BPS score, the dealer can proactively go out, place that phone call to me. To me, this is the perfect marriage of tech and data to create a better customer experience. Matt, this is really what this industry needs to do is do more partnership, less walled gardens. Why make this partnership announcement now?

Matt Leone5:09Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, when I think of Mastermind, I spent five years at Mastermind. At the heart of it, everybody kept asking Mastermind, can you be a CRM? And a CRM is a very complicated operational tool to drive the operations. And there's a world that's collapsing of centralized data operations, the DMS, the accounting general ledger, what's supposed to be done in what platform. And there's thousands of different vendors and software's out there doing things to consolidate vendors, you have one operational platform to centralize your data, have it enriched and cleansed, and then do things with that engagement, marketing, etc. In order for that world to be real and be able to kind of de-emphasize the need of the general ledger to do all these other things, and really have it done in a modern operational platform, you need what the heart of what Mastermind is, which is a data company.

Matt Leone6:04And they have amazing data, they have third party data, they have first party data, they understand that data, that data is AI ready. Well, what's the hesitation of a lot of the dealer ecosystem? Well, I want cleansed, enriched, powered data, so I could trust the AI to be more efficient. And I want all the data stored and structured. Well, if I really want DriveCentric to be the central platform for vehicle data, household consumer data, and all of the lead data, then I have to open up the partner ecosystem. And what better company to have a partner ecosystem than, you know, world class, trusted, scalable data that Mastermind has with their relationship with Polk and CARFAX, feed all of that into DriveCentric.

Matt Leone6:47And now a dealership is going to get the best of all the worlds where they're still using Mastermind for what Mastermind is really good at. And then they're using us as an operational tool and the AI layer on top of that. I think it's a really right partnership, but it's not the end of our partnerships. I mean, Mastermind is partnering with a lot of different companies. We want to be partnering with a lot of different companies. And we've spent a lot of time building this API, which, you know, from an investment perspective, I think we started these conversations 90 days ago. And, you know, we're already there in a beta to do this.

Matt Leone7:20The API is developed. The integration is flowing back and forth. And we want this all out there in the ecosystem as soon as possible. And that's, you know, the strength of being able to have that open platform.

Brian Pasch7:30So when do you think for the dealers who are listening in, I'm sure dealers are listening in and saying, hey, I love the idea of getting enhanced data from Mastermind, getting their BPS score, knowing when a consumer is now back in market, complementing your outreach, Aaron, your direct mail, your email with dealership engagement. Matt, when do dealers have the ability to actually kick the tires on this?

Matt Leone7:59Yeah, so what we're going to do is we have an event coming up that we're going to be with you at, MRC. We want to actually show this in a live production environment, which is in November. We have our conference called DC20. It's going to be in California in October. We also want Aaron's going to be coming out there with me. So our plan is to have this fully out in Q4 into the ecosystem where if you want to see your private offers from Mastermind, if you want to see your BPS score, your prediction score in Mastermind, if you want centralized data flowing between those two companies.

Matt Leone8:29And it's, you know, just let them do the fulfillment and the marketing, let us do the AI side of things. But let's make sure that when we look at our joint customers, they're saying I'm getting the best of everything. And I've made my user environment that much simpler, that much easier, because now this will be the tightest integration of any operational tool to Mastermind has that I know of. And it's all going to be ready here in Q4.

Brian Pasch8:54Aaron, many dealers might not know this. I've written about it, but depending on if people are even subscribed to my free newsletter, we approached Mastermind, meaning we, Morgan Auto Group in Florida. They're a DriveCentric customer. We had requested assistance with data hygiene, data updating with the CDP. And in fact, you do self-healing data cleansing for Morgan. This has been a breakthrough for Morgan. So what we're talking about between you and Matt are really things that behind the scenes we've been working on together for dealers who know that they're contacting people who no longer own a car. They're sending out direct mail or emails to people who are bouncing.

Brian Pasch9:45Talk a little bit about this great data partnership to be able to have clean data and cycle through on a regular basis. I think that the reason why CDPs have come into the conversation is the CRM was stand alone, kind of not getting these signals from the outside market of people moving an additional email address. This is a big thing. It's it's saved the Morgan Auto Group millions of dollars. Talk about this data centric approach that automotiveMastermind isn't just an email direct marketing company, but really a data partner for DriveCentric and other companies like Tealium.

Aaron Baldwin10:28Yeah, that's a that's a great question, Brian, and I'm going to go back a little bit in the history of automotiveMastermind back to when IHS Markit at the time acquired us. I want to say about seven years ago now, and we were able to build a much stronger integration with the other parts of the business that were within IHS at the time now part of S&P soon to be a part of our own entity out there. Right. As I'm sure many of you saw in the press releases in the news, but with all of the great data that's inside of Polk and all of the great data that's that's circling all of our businesses, we had to really strengthen our own understanding of the consumer just to be able to run an appropriate prediction.

Aaron Baldwin11:12You know, BPS or Behavior Prediction Score is our greatest asset as automotiveMastermind and what that is really doing and where it's where it gets its strength from is by really having the best possible data. So if we know that somebody moved, if we know that their garage history is changing, we know their demographic profiles changing like a new dependent in the household or maybe a promotion or a change in their overall financial profile. These are all inputs that come into our system to create that best in class prediction. Now, once we have the prediction, then we have to reach out to them in the right place. Right.

Aaron Baldwin11:46So whether it's via direct mail or email, we need to make sure that we're actually contacting the person where they want to be contacted at. So we built in all of that muscle memory internally as well to say, what's the best email address? Are we hitting the right physical address? And at what points do we need to understand that this person is now engaged? We generated that demand. And so that we stop marketing and don't get create confusion with the consumer with companies like DriveCentric and their AI that's also simultaneously reaching out. Right. So all of that data we pull in, we collect, we centralize and we create this, you know, complete 360 degree view of a customer.

Aaron Baldwin12:21Now, we were just doing it for our own purposes for a very long time. And in the case of the Morgan example, when when you guys came to us looking for some help, that's what we said. Look, we need to get this goodness out here. We know what this can do for what it's done for for our our business and our company. But why not spread that goodness across to other places for our dealership clients? And so that's really what you're seeing inside of that. And as we see those bounces occur, as we see a customer move, all of that is being tagged. All of that is being syndicated out. If we see that they they sold their vehicle or traded to them.

Aaron Baldwin12:57We see that as well through multiple different data sources that are all pulled together as part of Polk Automotive Solutions and really just making sure we're hitting the right person at the right time in the right way.

Brian Pasch13:10You know, dealers, I think, will understand this maybe not two years ago, but the simplest way that I describe automotiveMastermind. They were one of the first CDPs without calling themselves a CDP with a specific use case, right? They had specific use cases and it needed clean, real, accurate data. Matt, you knew that because you're at that company running the automotiveMastermind division. So to me, this is the perfect example of DriveCentric showing API leadership with connecting with a special case CDP and marketing automation platform. There's probably a long list of people who want to integrate. I'm sure you've been flooded with requests. What should you tell the other tech companies who are looking at this announcement saying, man, I'd love to have our data or our triggers or a better integration?

Brian Pasch14:09What does that look like for the future?

Matt Leone14:11Yeah. And for me, I've been here going on my first hundred days. It is a strategic focus and we have an API program and we have a partner program. So making sure we get some of the strategic partnership integrations done initially, like the one we're announcing today was really important to test it out, validate it, make sure it's scalable. But if we really want to own all of the lead traffic and really have that central view of leads, we're getting 2.4 million leads a month coming into DriveCentric today, but we weren't getting all of the Mastermind leads. There's lots of leads out there. And if you're a company or in the partner ecosystem and you want your lead data to be fed into our tool, we absolutely want that to happen.

Matt Leone14:53It's just making sure we can get to it and we'll get to it in relatively quick, short order here. But we want that because if we can do that, then the need for a CDP is really blurring the line because we become the central source. Now, in order for us to be successful here, not only getting the mileage data, the car data, the consumer, the household data out of sources like Mastermind into DriveCentric that's enriched and cleansed and AI ready. Then you have to be able to say, OK, I'm ingesting this data with my API. I need that data to be sent out so people can do the fulfillment or the outreach that DriveCentric doesn't specialize in.

Brian Pasch15:30Right.

Matt Leone15:31OTT or things of that nature. So we have the API ready on both ends. But step one was let's make sure we have trusted, great data flowing in that powers our AI. Then step two is going to be let's make sure all that data is out in the ecosystem so the dealers out there can say, I can now consolidate my tech stack. I know I have an operational tool that can do something end to end. And I know the data flowing into that tools partner with a trusted partner like S&P Global with Polk, CARFAX and Mastermind brand names. I don't think you have a better trusted ecosystem of quality data that is now going to be in DriveCentric.

Brian Pasch16:07Well, I think this is great news for dealers who love DriveCentric, but always said, hey, I wish they had APIs. I wish they had APIs. You're hearing today a perfect example of new leadership, new vision and a strategic direction to be more inclusive in the automotive ecosystem. And with this partnership with automotiveMastermind, fixing some of the core data hygiene problems, data activation problems, and also to coordinate real time communication from inside the dealership with outside offers, being self aware of what those maybe private offers were sent out to the consumer in the CRM. This coordination is, well, long overdue. And gentlemen, thank you.

Matt Leone16:51And we didn't mention Market Scan. I just want to plug that too.

Brian Pasch16:53Yeah, come on.

Matt Leone16:54Because not only is the suppression of marketing important so that you're talking to the right person at the right time with their BPS score, because they're predicting in Mastermind who's the right customer to talk to our household at the right time for the right vehicle. But how are they going to transact? That data is so powerful within Mastermind. Are they going to lease, finance, cash? What incentive is needed? It is really being powered by a dual partner that is owned under the tech stack of Mastermind, right? It's integrated into it as part of the S&P family. That's all coming with this too. And we neglected to mention that too.

Matt Leone17:28It's not just the CARFAX and the Polk and the Mastermind data, but that predictive customer journey of right offer, the right incentive, whether it's a private offer or not, that data is really important that that pricing is there too.

Aaron Baldwin17:39Yeah. And I would just add to that, Matt. That's a great point that you bring up. And, you know, from the moment of, you know, sending out that offer to say, we've got somebody we predicted, we're going to put a private incentive against this. You know, it's for Audi or Mazda, Volkswagen. And, and we're going to put that private incentive out there to help pull them into market faster. You know, once that message goes out there, because Market Scan's underpinning the entire ecosystem that's sitting here, you're going to have that offer that was delivered. And so that's going to be deskable inside of DriveCentric and the ability to pull that private incentive forward in that desking workflow without having to break process is going to be built into it.

Aaron Baldwin18:20And so that's going to be a huge benefit for, for dealerships, especially on the desk management side to, to really understand exactly what's being given out there and to have that visibility as you're penciling the deal. Uh, so that you can build out not only the best offer for the customer, but also the most profitable for your store.

Brian Pasch18:37That is amazing. Well, um, you know, this conversation just kind of blew my mind a little bit. Dealers have always said, Hey, I'm relying on outside marketing partners, but I wish my team could see what was sent, what was presented and make it easy for me to transact. This is the first step in what I would say, deep integration with, uh, transactable offers that are powered by the best of breed data providers and automotive. Hey guys, thanks for taking time today. Dealers. Thanks for listening in. And, um, as Matt mentioned, we have the Modern Retailing Conference coming up November 16th, 17th, 18th in Palm Beach.

Brian Pasch19:18The conference sells out every year. If you're looking to elevate your retail process, new sales process, communications, upgrade your tech stack and learn new ways to measure success. This is what the Modern Retailing Conference is all about. And. Don't forget. You can listen to the hundreds of interviews that I've done by just searching your favorite podcast channel with the Brian Pasch podcast. We look forward to seeing you again, uh, at MRC or on another podcast. So have a great day and get ready for new data insights and innovation on this podcast channel. Have a good day.