Written by Brad Dawson
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Welcome to the next installment of the automotive marketing articles. If you have read any of my other entries here you already understand that we are switching gears (pun intended) and talking about different forms of marketing. We’re going to spend some time going over late auto leads, their sourcing and various applications.
Before we dive into the depth of the late auto lead, I want to take a few moments and go over the similarities and differences of auto financing with respect to any other kind of secured credit. First and foremost, the auto industry invented the concept of the subprime borrower. Auto finance companies realized long ago that credit challenged borrows were like a giant money piñata just waiting to be cracked open. The mortgage industry was the last one to subprime party; the automotive world had been there for some time and had already gone through the binge and resulting hangover.
The facets of the automotive finance deal differ
in a few intrinsic ways that kept the industry from imploding. The amount of the note is not nearly as large as a mortgage, the term is much shorter allowing for a much faster turnover rate, the recovery of collateral is much easier when an auto deal goes bad, and finally and perhaps most important, nobody ever forecasts the value of a car to increase over the term of the loan. There is no judicial action that precedes the recovery of collateral, and assets auctioned off to recover the lender’s money after it’s been taken back from the borrower. Once the car is taken back the lower dollar amount on those deals generally makes the liquidation of the asset easier. The loose credit, while not industry crippling still results in large amount of late automotive payments, hence we have our late auto leads.
All late auto leads are the result of a process called a soft credit inquiry. Unlike the mortgage world there is no public recording of automotive loans, so there is no county reporting for automotive data and the only collection source for automotive data is a credit bureau. A soft credit inquiry is basically a wholesale screen of a consumer credit report that does not adversely affect a consumer’s credit score. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the process of a soft credit inquiry, it’s a terrific tool for finding late auto leads and we run them every day. If you have not heard the term before, run a quick search and you can quickly get up to speed. If you are reading this, chances are you already understand this and are looking for someone that can do it. We can and we do.
The filters and outputs of a late auto lead from a soft credit inquiry allow for a flexibility and precision that are simply not available from other data sources. We can screen for the usual stuff; monthly payment amount, pay off amount, term of the loan, and current reporting status (30, 60, 90 days late), and we can also apply these to leasing data as well. All of this information is available on the output of the late auto lead, and again I want to stress the fact that it’s coming off the credit report so it’s accurate.
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I’m going to keep this article a bit shorter than my other pieces. The late auto lead is used for some very specific types of marketing. If you have been looking for this type of data and we’re having a hard time finding it, you probably already understand all of these things. I can tell you your search is over, we have what you need. If you would like to discuss the methods of marketing to this data set (direct mail or a dialer) give me a call. We can go over creative pieces, contact rates, and all the other details. I always end these by saying we have more we can do with this. I don’t want to reveal all of expertise here, I want out paying customers to have the advantage.
Brad Dawson
Senior Consultant
brad@blackbookdata.com
Cell 858 692 3388
Desk 888 818 3282 x236
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