Road to MRC
Liminal Enters Automotive CDP Market with an Impressive Feature Set
Liminal puts data hygiene, identity resolution and campaign activation in one platform. Two dealer groups explain how they use it across their stores.
- Released
- November 6, 2025
- Length
- 40 min
- Guests


David Solar, Gary LaDue, Jim Kosobucki- In collaboration with
Liminal
In short
Liminal is a new automotive CDP that handles data hygiene, identity resolution and multichannel activation from one login. Leaders from two dealer groups explain why they use it, how fast data starts flowing, how one audience is split across dozens of stores, and what to settle before you choose a CDP.
- Modern Automotive Network first used Liminal only to activate audiences from its CDP. A year later it is moving all 17 stores onto it.
- Probabilistic IDs from Liminal's data graph fill the gap while known customers build up. Gary reports one-to-one emails reaching 80% opens and 60% clicks.
- David says the tag records over 700 signal types on day one, and DMS history through Authenticom can be flowing by the same afternoon.
- Build one audience and Liminal splits it by store, shows each store's size and lets you switch channels on, adding identity resolution for small audiences.
- Gary's advice: know what you want to achieve before you shop, and test data mapping and data logic in detail with the vendor.
Chapters
- 0:00Liminal's debut and what it does
- 4:04Why Modern moved 17 stores to Liminal
- 7:14Learning APIs and integrations at Morgan
- 10:07Adding probabilistic identity resolution
- 15:30How fast a new dealer group goes live
- 19:57One audience, split by store and channel
- 25:22Creative built once for every store
- 30:48Advice for dealers shopping for a CDP
- 33:53Custom apps and open access to data
The conversation
One login for data hygiene, identity resolution and activation
Brian describes Liminal as a turnkey platform for data hygiene, data orchestration and data activation, with an identity resolution layer on top. Dealers can have it fully managed, or agencies and large dealer groups can run it themselves. The technology had been working behind the scenes with dealer groups before David brought it to market.
David's view is that every group's gaps are different. For Morgan, Liminal mainly acts as an automation platform that runs many activations in one place. For other groups it brings hygiene, the CDP, automation and identity resolution together. Either way, he says, the aim is to keep things simple, fast and flexible, with everything managed from one login.
Why Modern Automotive Network moved its 17 stores to Liminal
Brian notes that once a group has ten or more stores, its needs are very different from a single-point store, which is why he brought on a mid-size group and a large one. Gary's group had studied CDPs and built one out, but it wasn't exactly what the group wanted. Modern first used Liminal to take audiences out of that CDP and activate them. A year later, it is moving the whole group onto Liminal.
Gary's short answer for the switch is that Liminal was much easier to use. Modern wants to build its own database and add as much information as it can to make its messages more relevant. Other providers could help with that, he says, but Liminal puts everything in one place and David's team has been very responsive. Brian adds his own rule: have a technical data person in-house, and a domestic support team that works your hours.
Morgan learned enough about APIs to share its own data with vendors
Morgan, with more than 75 stores, uses Liminal through its agency of record. The agency takes audiences out of Morgan's CDP, splits them by store and runs personalized campaigns. Jim is a Reynolds and data reporting expert, but the CDP project brought APIs, iframe integrations and data flows that were new to him.
He credits David with many hours of calls on problems like text and email opt-outs, which took four or five hours on their own. That knowledge gave him the confidence to build something he says he would never have attempted: Morgan now has its own system for sending data to vendors by API.
Probabilistic identity grows the known audience faster
Both groups started with deterministic identity, where a shopper is known only after filling out a form or clicking an email, so the known audience starts low. Gary is working on that in two ways. Bulk email sent from Liminal gets customers to click a link once, which ties their email address to a digital ID. And Liminal's data graph resolves website shoppers probabilistically.
Gary's example: a shopper looks at a Toyota RAV4, joins the RAV4 audience and gets a one-to-one email within 24 hours. Most of those emails go to probabilistic IDs. Gary reports open rates of up to 80% and click-through rates of up to 60%, in four markets at the time. Jim adds that because Liminal ingests Morgan's CDP data, it can test its graph against customers Morgan already knows.
From tag install to live DMS data in about a day
Brian asks how long it takes to ingest a dealer's data, clean it and start activating audiences. David says Liminal's automap tag identifies over 700 types of signals for every visitor as soon as it is installed, which is as easy as adding a Google Tag Manager container. Tags on third-party plug-ins and iframes depend on how quickly those vendors respond.
For DMS data, Liminal connects through trusted partners such as Authenticom. Once the dealer approves access, the system ingests the full history and runs hygiene automatically, including NCOA, CASS, email hygiene and alternate email append. David says a request made in the morning typically has data flowing by late afternoon, with daily updates from the CRM and call tracking.
One audience and one campaign, split by store
Brian calls multi-store audiences a Rubik's Cube, since some are too small for Facebook or Google. Morgan builds one audience in its own CDP and sends it to Liminal by API, which splits it by store. Each store's audience size and known IDs sit next to toggles for Facebook, OTT and email, and small audiences can be filled out with third-party identity resolution. Gary uses one-to-one email, text, direct mail and OTT for small audiences, and each month his team turns model audiences on or off store by store.
Creative works the same way. David describes a drag-and-drop builder, templates Liminal plans to preload for campaigns such as equity position and declined service, and a feature called smart scale: one audience, one creative and one campaign for every store, with each store's branding, contact details and URLs filled in. Jim sees it as the way to run group-wide campaigns at Morgan, such as a commercial vehicle sales campaign across all 75 stores.
When you really have a data strategy, you will double or triple or quadruple the number of campaigns you're going to run. And it can't be done manually without pulling your hair out.
Brian Pasch▶ 23:03Know what you want before you shop for a CDP
Gary saw demos from many CDP vendors. His first advice is to know what you are trying to achieve before you start, while expecting your goals to change. He says Liminal brings more features and usability than the others he saw, with built-in hygiene and a data graph that widens what you can do from the start. Before committing, he and David spent days in long conversations on data mapping and data logic, which he says buyers tend to skip.
Brian then asks how open the platform is to a group that wants its own tools, such as a phone pop-up for the BDC or custom Power BI reports. David says Liminal would first check whether something built in already solves it, and is happy to plug in third-party tools that work well. Data can be made available through APIs once the compliance steps are covered.
We got buried down into the weeds over data mapping and data logic. Those are two things that I think get brushed under the carpet a little bit when people are talking about exploring their CDPs.
Gary LaDue▶ 33:21The point of it is to be able to build one audience, one creative, and one campaign that can power every store.
David Solar▶ 26:55Mentioned in this episode
Authenticom
Snowflake- GGoogle Tag Manager
- PPower BI
- AAmazon Redshift
- PGModern Retailing Conference Event
Questions this episode answers
What is Liminal?
An automotive data platform that combines data hygiene, a CDP, identity resolution and marketing automation, managed from one login. Dealers can have it fully managed, or agencies and large dealer groups can run it themselves. Its website is getliminal.com.
How long does it take to get a dealer's data into Liminal?
David says the tracking tag works on day one. With DMS access through a partner such as Authenticom, a request made in the morning typically has data flowing by late afternoon, with hygiene run automatically. Third-party plug-ins depend on how fast those vendors respond.
Can Liminal work alongside a CDP we already have?
Yes. Morgan Automotive Group builds audiences in its own CDP and sends them to Liminal by API. Liminal splits each audience by store and sends it to the channels the team switches on.
What is the difference between deterministic and probabilistic identity resolution?
Deterministic identity knows a shopper only after a form fill or an email click, so the known audience grows slowly. Probabilistic identity uses a data graph, here Liminal's, to resolve shoppers who haven't identified themselves. Gary says most of Modern's one-to-one emails go to probabilistic IDs.
Which channels can Liminal send audiences to?
Facebook and Meta, Google, OTT and online video, email, text and direct mail. Gary uses the one-to-one channels when an audience is too small for platforms with minimum audience sizes.
What should a dealer group settle before choosing a CDP?
Gary's advice: know what you are trying to achieve before you start, and work through data mapping and data logic in detail with the vendor. He says those two things often get brushed under the carpet.
Transcript
Full transcript5,614 words · about 24 min read
Brian Pasch0:00Hi, this is Brian Pasch and welcome to another exciting podcast interview today. We have the three musketeers. No, just three leaders. And we're going to be talking about a brand new company that's coming to market. Their debut is at the Modern Retailing Conference coming up November 16th, 17th, 18th in Palm Beach. I'd like to welcome the CEO of Liminal, David Solar, Jim Kosobucki, the Chief Data Manager for the Morgan Auto Group, the largest dealer group in the state of Florida, Gary LaDue, the Director of Marketing for the Modern Automotive Group. And today we want to talk about their experience with working with David and the team at Liminal and what this company is trying to solve,
Brian Pasch0:58which I believe is an important gap in the current solutions that are on the market. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
David Solar1:06Pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Gary LaDue1:07Thanks, Brian.
Brian Pasch1:07David, let's start with you in your perfectly clean white shirt. David Solar announcing Liminal. David, you've been in technology for a long time. You've been behind the scenes working with dealer groups today. You're announcing publicly that that Liminal has built a turnkey data hygiene, data orchestration, data activation with an identity resolution layer that's turnkey for dealers, meaning fully managed or self-serve for agencies, large dealer groups that want a simpler, faster, and easier way to activate their first party data. David, David, what would you tell the dealers who are listening in? What's the core reason, knowing that there's other competitors on the market, why did you decide to bring your technology, which has been behind the scenes for some time, to market?
David Solar2:13Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think, interestingly enough, when you mentioned gaps, I think for everybody, the gap is unique. At least that's what I'm finding as I speak with dealerships and groups and the gaps are unique. And so as we have worked with different people to help fill those gaps and identify what needs there are, we've realized that there's a combination, I guess, of solutions that maybe can help accomplish a larger percentage in one shot, I guess. And so making things simple, fast, and flexible is what we're aiming to do, where from one login, you can manage it all and we can help with that process.
David Solar3:11So I don't know if we want to get into too much detail as to what that is. I think for guys like Jim, where we're more serving as an automation platform and an ability to manage multiple activations in one place, we help a little bit more, as you mentioned hygiene, the CDP with the automation and the identity resolution all wrapped up in one. And it's different for everybody. Gary's got it.
Brian Pasch3:50Yeah. And I think that's why we wanted to have Gary and Jim on the phone today or on the phone. Look at that, on the webinar. That's such an old phrase.
David Solar4:03Yeah.
Brian Pasch4:04But I want to start with Gary because the gaps are different. And so for dealers who are not familiar with Gary, Modern Auto Group, multiple stores, how many stores are in the group today, Gary?
Gary LaDue4:1717.
Brian Pasch4:18Right.
Gary LaDue4:19We built our Genesis point this past spring.
Brian Pasch4:22Yeah. And if you've been following my writings, I've been telling dealers, look, you know, once you have 10 plus stores, your needs are very different than a single point store. And, you know, of course, Morgan, over 75 stores. And that's why I want to have what I would call like a midsize dealer group and a larger dealer group on today's interview. Because when someone says, I got a great product, my first reaction is, let me talk to the dealers who are using it. So, Gary, let me set the stage. You and I have been working together in the CXO network, right? The group we kind of moderate for larger dealer groups.
Brian Pasch5:00And you've been studying CDPs. You've tested. You made a decision. You went down a path to build out the CDP. But it wasn't exactly what you wanted. And you found David's company initially, right, to help you take audiences out of the CDP and activate them. And now, a year later, you're going to run the entire group off his platform. So, I know it's complicated, but what made you decide to kind of pivot? No one likes to say, oh, man, this wasn't the right fit. What was the reason why you wanted to pivot to the Liminal platform for your 17 stores?
Gary LaDue5:49I mean, in the shortest sense of the word, it was just much easier to use. You know, I mean, we have a pretty big vision with our marketing goals and how we want to use our data platform. You know, it's not like, hey, we just want to harness our first-party data and use it. We have a much bigger aspiration there. We want to build a database. We want to be able to supplement that database with as much information that's going to make it easier for us to be more relevant to how we're talking to the customer. You know, so long-term, we need somebody that helps us do that.
Gary LaDue6:30And it's not like other providers couldn't help do that. They could. But with this platform, we get everything we need all in one. And it's super simple to use. And David's team has been just the utmost responsive to helping us solve problems.
Brian Pasch6:50Wow. You know, that is a big thing. I always tell dealers, not only do you need a technical person inside a dealer group who can handle data, connectors, APIs, but you've got to make sure on the other side that you have a, I believe, a domestic support team that's on the same hours that you're dealing with, business needs with. And I'm glad to hear that. I'm going to flip up to Jim. Jim has been on my podcast before. We've worked side by side, rolling out the Morgan CDP. And Jim, you are using Liminal through your agency partners to help activate faster campaigns, do more complex delivery of data.
Brian Pasch7:40But you also mentioned to me that David and his team have been an amazing resource to help fill gaps. Let's talk about that because you've been in the dealership world for a long time. You're a Reynolds expert. You're a data reporting expert. But this CDP project required you to develop some other skills. And how has Liminal helped you be more successful and Morgan be more successful in their data strategy?
Jim Kosobucki8:15Yeah. So, you know, we going into the project, right, you know, I knew data, you know, I had a pretty good grasp of data. But we started getting into things like APIs and then integrations with iframes and the data flow. And, you know, that was kind of new to me, right? That was so, David, definitely we would have calls or we still do have calls, right, sometimes on helping me talk through solutions, right? One of the ones that comes to mind is the whole opt-out stuff with texting, opt-out and email, opt-out. I mean, we probably have talked for four or five hours just on that subject alone, right?
Jim Kosobucki8:52So having someone that gets data as well as David, I mean, he has his own data graph or ID graph, right? So he really gets how this stuff works and the intricacies of it. So in the beginning, you know, we started talking about APIs and what he opened my eyes to and gave me the knowledge and the courage to tackle, right? Now, Morgan, we have our own system in which we can send out our data via API to vendors. And, you know, I probably would have never gone down that path. It would have never had the knowledge if it wasn't for David.
Brian Pasch9:30And let's talk about it because both of you and Jim today, your agency of record for Morgan is using the Liminal platform to take audiences out of the CDP and then doing really complex division by store, personalized marketing and doing some really cool things that makes it super easy for an agency to work with a CDP, right? So Liminal, in your case, is the best marketing activation partner. And Gary, you started there and now moving over to the whole soup to nuts. But both of those experiences also included the education on identity resolution. Previously, both of you were just doing deterministic and now deterministic and probabilistic using Liminal's data graph.
Brian Pasch10:24Gary, how are you seeing that as a positive? Because sometimes dealer groups, I'm not sure if your data graph is accurate. I'm not sure, you know, if it's going to provide a lift. I'd rather just collect all the data myself. Where are you? Because, right, we've talked about this before, about the best of both worlds is trying to figure out who's on your website in addition to the ones you absolutely know.
Gary LaDue10:52Yeah, I mean, so a couple of thoughts there. I think the easiest way to answer that question is by explaining some of the things we've already activated. So, you know, when you start the whole process, your known shoppers are low. There's just no way around it, right? In a deterministic model, they have to fill out a form or click on an email. So, at the beginning, you're like zero and build. I mean, you have all the data you've pulled in from your DMS, so you can, you know, query those records and build audiences based off of that. And you know those people. That's all beautiful, right?
Gary LaDue11:34But the people who are currently shopping on your website is where it's low resolution. So, we're doing two things. One is, we're running bulk mail deployments out of David's, bulk email deployments out of David's platform, out of Liminal, in order to drive more deterministic ID resolutions. So, in order to identify as many records as quickly as we can. So, we're ramping up our bulk email deployments as fast as we can.
Brian Pasch12:04And that's to get them to click on a link once so that it, that email address can be associated with the digital ID.
Gary LaDue12:12Correct.
Brian Pasch12:13And it goes from a shopper ID to a customer ID at that point.
Gary LaDue12:17Right. So, the second thing is, we wanted to utilize David's data graph. And we wanted, you know, obviously to help out our stores as much as we can. So, the first thing that we activated was one-to-one email communication. And so, Brian comes to the website. You're shopping for a Toyota RAV4. You get put into the Toyota RAV4 audience. That audience pushes over to the activation platform. That platform sends out an email within 24 hours that says, hey, Brian, we've got some great offers on Toyota RAV4.
Brian Pasch12:54Right.
Gary LaDue12:55Most of those email deployments that occur from the one-to-one are probabilistic resolved IDs from his data graph. Because there's just not that many known already in the holistic side. So, that allows us to also then build more IDs that are resolved. And the results from that have been pretty fantastic so far. I mean, we're seeing upwards of 80% open rates on those emails. We're seeing upwards of 60% click-through rates. It varies. We're running in four different markets today. We'll be in the rest of our markets next week. But really great performance. So, you know, if I had to say, what's the barometer for how I know whether or not his data is solid or his ID resolution tool is solid, it's that.
Brian Pasch13:53Right. And, Jim, same thing, right? You started at Morgan with the deterministic, right, form fill or an email click. But we found out that some of the agencies took an awful long time to get emails sent out with a hashed value to, you know, do the stitching in the CDP. But we also saw that the known customer count grows slowly. So, today, with David's identity graph powering known and predictive shopper through their marketing automation, how are you seeing that as giving Morgan a competitive edge?
Jim Kosobucki14:36Yeah, it definitely gives us the capability to grow that much quicker, all the reasons that Gary mentioned, right? It's you have to, you know, there's a lot of different ways to do it. But, you know, doing it organically takes time. So, being able to layer that stuff in. And one of the things I think is cool, too, about, you know, being able or David ingesting all of our CDP data, right? He gets all of the data from the CDP. So, he's able to see and kind of test his identity graph by saying, okay, I know who this customer is. Morgan knows who this customer is.
Jim Kosobucki15:09My data matches his data, right? So, that's the other cool thing about having this data in the CDP. It helps, you know, probably helps David, in a way, be able to improve what, you know, he's doing, too. So, you know, we can test it, right? So, some of the data moves from the probabilistic category into a deterministic once we're getting matches.
Brian Pasch15:29Yep. David, since you're a new company, and I try to hold everyone to unified standards, let me ask you a couple pointed questions. Just, I'm going to answer them as briefly as you can. When a new customer comes on, and, Gary, I think you can identify with this, there is a struggle to get DMS data, CRM data loaded, get the signals from the call tracking. And, listen, Jim and I were kind of breaking the ice early on to get vendors to use API on average now on your platform. If a dealer is using a known DMS and a known CRM and, you know, website and maybe a CallRevu or a CarWars, how long does it take for you to ingest, do the initial data hygiene, and get things ready for a dealer to start collecting data, right, in real time, and activating audience?
Brian Pasch16:37What's that window of time? So, you know, it's different for a different platform. So, what about you?
David Solar16:46Yeah, yeah. So, for us, we, that was one of the advantages we had coming in is understanding those challenges and being able to try to build to solve those. And we have a feature we call our tag, the automap tag, because it literally does automap the site. So, as we install the tag, it's immediately upon installation identifying over 700 different types of signals, recording those, and displaying those for every visitor. That just happens out of the box. That's as easy as adding a GTM Google Tag Manager container on the site, that same day. Then we got to get the customer data in. Well, let me back up, because then to mention, going back to what you said, there are third-party plug-ins on the sites and different types of forms.
David Solar17:42For most of those, we can, a lot of it, as you know, depends on how quickly we are responded to.
Brian Pasch17:51Yes, yes. Well, let's just say that if you request to put a tag inside an iframe and they comply, let's just say the core processing of DMS, CRM data, and getting it updated, deduplicated, and unified. What does that process look like?
David Solar18:11Yeah, so, great question. So, for DMS data, for example, let's say we're pulling that out. We can do that through third parties who we can access through their APIs that are trusted partners.
Brian Pasch18:25Like Authenticom?
David Solar18:25Like Authenticom, for example. So, let's say it's an Authenticom approach. Our system is integrated. We would enter in the Authenticom ID and hit go. And, obviously, we have to go through the process of just send an email and get approval. We get approval. We enter the ID, hit go. And the system immediately begins ingesting the entire history. And as it ingests, it goes through the hygiene and appending process automatically. So, realistically, we can apply the tag on day one and be tracking most everything you're going to want to track. And we can, if we made the request in the morning, for example, through Authenticom, by late afternoon, we typically would have the access to the data.
David Solar19:18And it begins flowing automatically. And all of the processes, as I mentioned, for NCOA, CASS, email hygiene, email alternate append, everything happens in line automatically. So, if everything goes perfect with everyone, we're good.
Brian Pasch19:36Are we getting daily updates from the CRM, call tracking, stuff like that? Is that part of the framework as it exists today?
David Solar19:44Yes, it is.
Brian Pasch19:46Okay.
David Solar19:46Yes.
Brian Pasch19:46And then, once, obviously, some type of audience builder tool pushing out to the different marketing platforms. One of the, I guess, challenges that I see in this is that with Gary's 17 stores, each store might have 10 or 15 different audiences based on the imagination of Gary and the stores. Jim, I know that Morgan has had a minimum kind of requirement of, let's think about, you know, five or six great sales audiences, five or six great service audiences. It becomes a Rubik's Cube, right? Like, a lot of moving pieces. How are you solving the problem of, hey, a CDP is great and we have micro audiences.
Brian Pasch20:41Like, somebody might create 10, 15 audience, but some are too small to send to Facebook or to Google. The only thing you could do potentially is email or text. Does the system, based on size, know what to do to communicate? That's, I think, that, I don't know, Gary, Jim, you know, in other systems, it seemed like you had to create the audience, see how big it is, then decide what to do with it. That's a lot of work for 17 stores, 75 stores. David, how are you tackling that?
David Solar21:13Yeah, so it's different in both of Jim and Gary's case because for Jim, the data is ingesting from the CDP. They're using a different CDP, so the data, so we built our system where Jim and the team can build one audience inside the CDP. Through an API, that one audience comes into our system, and then our system intelligently distributes or segments out that store. By the store, and then we have an interface where you can see the list of the stores. You can see how many IDs fit that audience for the store, how many of them are known. And then just with touching a toggle to click it on, you click a toggle to send it to Facebook, send it to OTT, send it to email, whatever you're going to do.
David Solar22:11And where the audiences are small, you can see that based on the audience size listed next to the dealer name. And we can then toggle on the third-party identity resolution to enhance that audience and make it marketable where you're trying to market on platforms that have minimum audience sizes. So it's pretty simple as it ingests, builds the list, and then it's just turning things on and off as needed.
Brian Pasch22:40Gary, let's talk about your experience with the marketing automation because, you know, Jim doesn't run the marketing. They have an agency of record, obviously, who's pleased with Liminal. How did it change your go-to-market strategy to, you know, turning the CDP and that clean data into revenue opportunities for the store? Because, you know, one of the biggest things that people need to understand, when you really have a data strategy, you will double or triple or quadruple the number of campaigns you're going to run. And it can't be done manually without pulling your hair out.
Gary LaDue23:20Yeah. I mean, one of the running jokes we have in the building is when somebody asks a question around, hey, will the platform do X? The running joke is yes. Yes, we can do that. So, yeah, I think it's worth noting that this particular activation platform will do one-to-one communication with email, text, direct mail, and online video slash OTT.
Brian Pasch23:49So, if the audience is too small for a Facebook or Meta, is that what you're saying, Gary?
Gary LaDue23:55Yes. So, you can deploy a one-to-one communication, which opens up a lot of doors if you think about how finite you might want to make your audiences when you get down to a model level or the time constraints that you put on it. The audience can be pretty small. Plus, we have a handful of stores that are in smaller areas, smaller communities. And, you know, the website traffic we get there isn't going to be the same website traffic we get in the North Charlotte market. So, it gives us a lot of advantages. But because we have the unknown shopper ID and the ID graph that we can mash together, yeah, we have basically connected every audience that we've got.
Gary LaDue24:42We've built to our Google and our Meta accounts. And we're ready to deploy any one of those other one-to-one pieces of communication at any given time. So, beginning of the month, offers change. We talk to the stores. What's your inventory position? What's your area of focus? We come back into the platform. We turn on every one of those model audiences if they're not already on or toggle ones off that don't need to be there. And then we pick our poison on how we want to deploy communication. And every one of those things is right there at our fingertips. It's fast. It's crazy.
Brian Pasch25:22So, David, we didn't talk about one thing. Part of marketing activation is creative. So, in the turnkey model, is the Liminal team creating the display ads, for example, or the dynamic videos and things for the dealers? Tell me a little bit about that.
David Solar25:46Yeah, so, we take a little bit of a different approach to that. There is a whole creative builder UI there for drag-and-drop email creative, for example, or if you want to create your direct mail piece. We are going to preload with different types of audiences and creative templates that would be appropriate to make things you can hit the ground running. You know, equity position or declined service and things of that nature that might be stuff that you want to go after right away. But if you want to go in and create custom creatives, again, it's simple. It's drag-and-drop UI. And then where you need to do it at scale, you have multiple rooftops because the whole system is meant to either power a single point or multiple rooftops.
David Solar26:50We've got, we call it smart scale. But the point of it is to be able to build one audience, one creative, and one campaign that can power every store. So, the system with AI and just some intelligent programming will identify the user or the visitor, which store they came in from, what they're interested in. And it will then build the creative using the appropriate branding, contact information. It'll exchange the URLs.
Brian Pasch27:35So, it's really personalized dynamic content gen with one campaign goal.
David Solar27:41Correct. But, yeah, so you can build once and it'll apply and work for every store.
Brian Pasch27:46Okay. Wow. Man, there's a lot to unpack here.
David Solar27:50Yeah.
Brian Pasch27:51Jim, Morgan, I believe, has one of the most advanced data visions for a dealer group. And you've spent a lot of time there. You mentioned the technical support that you feel Liminal has given you. Obviously, the marketing automation piece is critical, right? Because people have said, well, what's good of having a CDP with unified data if you can't make money with it, you know? What's one thing we haven't talked about that you would say to a large dealer group maybe already has a CDP investment but has been stumbling with activation or feels that they have a CDP investment but they haven't fully realized their data vision?
Brian Pasch28:41What's something we haven't mentioned on why they should consider reaching out with David and his team at Liminal?
Jim Kosobucki28:48Yeah, I think, you know, we're still continuing to unravel some of those pieces, right? But, you know, just recently we had a couple examples come up where, you know, it could be, you know, we're a Morgan corporate. We have 75 stores, right? And we really haven't unrolled a corporate CDP strategy yet, right? But when we do and as we are starting to do it, like one of the ones recently was the commercial vehicle sales, right, system that we're talking about. So that is, you know, was an instantaneous, you know, Liminal solution in my brain, right? I instantly, when it was brought up, said, you know, this is a perfect way to use this platform where we could do all the things, you know, based upon store and brand where we can, you know, load all that data in and create like an ongoing commercial sales just like we would do for, you know, a store.
Brian Pasch29:50Right, right, a master commercial vehicle acquisition campaign across the whole group with a central strategy because you know which customers purchase car through businesses and the DMS, right? You, Morgan has those advanced flags. So you saw it as, hey, I got an idea. If I need to market at scale, Liminal is a great partner for that.
Jim Kosobucki30:13Right, because, you know, we have multiple agencies dealing across all of our 75 stores, right? So to coordinate that effort together, right, can be kind of tricky. But if we have, you know, corporate campaigns that we want to do, you know, whether it's newsletters from Morgan or whatever, you know, his platform is just tailor-made for that, right, where we can, they can be individually branded, right? So have a Morgan branding and the store branding, but it's tailor-made for that. So that was really some of the things that have come to light recently that are kind of exciting me.
Brian Pasch30:47Great. Gary, I'm going to let you have close to the final word here because you've taken time. You were, you and me had talked about this, due diligence. Brian, I want to find the right platform. You got demos from everybody and their uncle who were selling a CDP. There are going to be a lot of marketing managers, dealer principals, CXOs listening to this video. And I want them to close their eyes for a minute. And Gary, I want you to think about this. Having seen everything in the market, what would you say to the people who are shopping or a little frustrated why they should look at Liminal, right?
Brian Pasch31:40Think of yourself during the shopping phase, what would you tell them that you know now, right? Because there's things that Jim and I learned only, you know, only at the end of a painful mistake, you know? What would you tell your peers right now on why they should at least get a demo of Liminal?
Gary LaDue32:07Yeah, I mean, number one, know what you're trying to achieve before you even start down that path. I think, you know, our goals have changed and evolved. It's been an iterative process. You know, but what I think Liminal is bringing to the table is more features and usability with their tech versus pretty much anybody out there. It's a built-in hygiene process. It's easier to use. And because you have access to Liminal's data graph, that expands your possibilities right at the start line. For me, it was a little bit of a no-brainer. And when David and I first started having the conversations, it took us quite a bit of time, you know, to buy into it.
Gary LaDue33:06But it wasn't because we didn't believe in what he was telling us. It was, let's be really, really thorough here. I think he and I had two, three-hour conversations or two, three days straight to just make sure that he could do exactly what we wanted him to do. We got buried down into the weeds over data mapping and data logic. Those are two things that I think get brushed under the carpet a little bit when people are talking about exploring their CDPs. David understands all of that really, really well. And he'll make it work for you. So he got us comfortable pretty quickly. And here we are.
Gary LaDue33:44We're getting ready to crush it.
Brian Pasch33:48Good.
Gary LaDue33:49In a very short period of time.
Brian Pasch33:51Yeah. Right. David, one thing that is coming up, and I just published an article today about some of the gaps, you know, and you are working on the centralized opt-in and opt-out, you know, and that's surely an issue. Another piece is if all the dealer's data is in one place, right, and you're activating, and the dealer says, well, look, I want to pop up on my phone system. So when the BDC comes, you know, I want them to do like a reverse phone number lookup. I want to pop up. I call these custom apps. I don't think enough has been talked about this, but if you really want data on every desk, if you think about it, right, how can everyone in the business benefit from a central?
Brian Pasch34:50What if a dealer wanted to develop their own software that could do a, like, phone pop-up? Is the platform open and friendly to that? I don't know if most people ask these questions and then they say, oh, I want to do, you know, Jim is a Power BI reporting genius. You know, what if somebody says, I want to do my own custom, you know, pivot table reports, or I want to have my phone system pull in the tech platform. What would you tell a tech person, right? Like a CTO says, okay, it works, but we want to do more. How open is it, and what would you tell them about that?
David Solar35:44Yeah, I think, you know, obviously the first thing we're going to do is try to check and see, is there anything already built in that solves whatever that needed solution is? Oftentimes there's ways to make that happen. And I think the discussion is a great discussion to have. I mean, Liminal, the name literally means at the threshold or kind of bridging the gap between then and now or the future. So we love to kind of live in that space where we come up with solutions and fixes to issues and help things get better. So collaborating, having those conversations, definitely making additional connections, even if there's third-party tools that are working great, well, then let's keep working with those that are working great and plug them in.
David Solar36:38So they work great together. So I don't know if that directly answers your question, but it is in the sense when you say open, are you saying open in the sense that we would do custom development for dealers?
Brian Pasch36:54Is there an endpoint, you know, is there an API into your system where it would be easy for someone to pull data out for their own, you know, because there are some dealer groups, right, that have their own performance dashboards, right?
David Solar37:09Sure.
Brian Pasch37:09You know, Jim does some data reporting through Amazon's Redshift data. So is the data in something like a Snowflake or a Redshift or an Azure where, you know, people can get at it?
David Solar37:27Yes. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we got to go through all the data compliance and things necessary to make that a safe approach and process. But certainly we can make available through APIs and everything, the necessary things.
Brian Pasch37:44Right. Yeah. Well, I want to thank both of you. I know you're very busy for taking time. As part of MRC, we definitely like to highlight our newest sponsors. Liminal is one of those. We have a lot of cool AI companies coming to MRC. We're going to have an AI showcase. We're going to be talking about data hygiene. Jim, you're doing a workshop on data reporting. So dealers who are shopping for the best tech stack for their business to meet their objectives. Gary said it best. Know what you want to accomplish. It's never perfect. But have some clear expectations. Come out to MRC. Meet David.
Brian Pasch38:26And talk about what Liminal can do. But more importantly, talk to Jim. Talk to Gary. Talk to other dealers. Learn together. We are really in the first or second inning, I think, of first-party data management activation and transforming the retail tech stack to do more creative things. And, Jim, the calls you get from the principals of Morgan are frequent, Jim. Can you do this? And, Gary, you joke. But, you know, for the most part, Jim is like, yes, we could do that. Which means he's not getting any sleep for the next two days. That's what it means. But I just want to encourage dealers to come out to MRC and, well, learn.
Brian Pasch39:09If you can't get out to MRC, David, you have a website that dealers can go to. What's the URL of that?
David Solar39:17getliminal.com.
Brian Pasch39:20Right. Okay. Very simple. getliminal.com. Thanks, everyone, for your time. Thanks, everyone, for listening in. Make sure you listen to all of the podcast sessions associated with this year's MRC. And I look forward to seeing everyone in Palm Beach, Florida, November 16th, 17th, and 18th at the beautiful Eau Resort. Thanks, everyone, and have a great day.
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