Interview With Jeffrey Tognetti of DealerX Reveals Secret To His Success

There’s no doubt about it: Jeffrey Tognetti knows his stuff. 

Earlier this month, Russell Brown interviewed Jeffrey Tognetti at the 14th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition in Orlando, FL. Throughout the interview, Tognetti highlighted facts and trends about a variety of businesses, from retail to auto dealers. In fact, one of his biggest points was that the auto industry overall may be falling behind its retail business cousins on a digital marketing level.

During the interview, Tognetti makes it clear that he considers his own company, DealerX, is an exception to the norm. DealerX helps car dealers in America by working primarily with RTB, known as real time bidding, and data.

“Basically what we do is we look or people who are in the market for specific cars, and we buy their cookies, we overlap data on top of it,” he says in the video. “As they go from website to website our platform sees them, and we put an ad in front of them for exactly what it is that they’re looking for based on data.”

Tognetti uses these practices to enhance the business of Media Revo and DealerX’s clients, which have brought more than  $2 billion for their client’s businesses as of 2012.

Overall, in his mind, the auto industry has not caught onto the most recent trend among retailers: using data effectively.

 “When you guys see ads, they’re not by chance,” he says, going on to say that major retailers like Target and Wal*Mart use data constantly to reach the right people with the right ads. They use data so well that Target has famously predicted a girl was pregnant before her own family did.

When used effectively, data allows a business to reach out to an extremely specific demographic via online advertising. The problem, Tognetti believes, is that not enough people working in various industries know exactly how to use data to their advantage when reaching out to their specific clients and customers; the auto industry overall in particular has not caught onto this trend.

DealerX stands out from other businesses due to the way that uses its own systems and site platforms to capture information and build a digital profile based entirely on a person’s data. DealerX’s platforms and software even automatically follow-up with customers based on a projected timeline following their purchase – for example, a person who buys a car and who has a profile with DealerX could have a coupon for an oil change appear in their online advertising six months after buying their car.

“You can set up data to target whatever it is that you want, whether it be service or sales. It’s ultraconcise,” Tognetti says in the video.