Day Two

Agenda

Education that's valuable for both beginners and experts alike

7:00am

Day 1

Sponsored by Cox Automotive

Start your day with a delicious breakfast. Enjoy tasty bites and connect with others as you kick off the morning.

Downtime

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Ballroom

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Monday

Sponsored By:

8:00am

Day 2

Join us for an insightful panel where Cox Automotive and Dealer industry leaders will explore why revolutionizing your automotive retail strategy, by connecting consumers and dealers through a seamless purchase process, will pave a better way forward on both sides. By leveraging modern omnichannel approaches for your advantage, backed by data and insights, you’ll be able to meet shoppers where they are and accelerate their path to purchase by providing the excellent experience consumers don’t just want… they demand.

Keynote

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Ballroom

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Monday

8:45am

Day 2

Presented by Gubagoo

Big Data has arrived and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) promised to help dealers make sense of it all. So what’s missing? Join Brian Pasch, Gubagoo President and Founder, Brad Title, and FullPath CEO, Aharon Horwitz, as we discuss the current landscape of CDPs and what lies ahead.

Keynote

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Ballroom

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Monday

9:30am

Day 2

Brett Morgan (CEO) and Tom Moore (COO) will join Brian Pasch at MRC to discuss why they invested in an enterprise CDP and how they plan to monetize the technology the eliminate waste and generate more revenue by leveraging their first-party data and real-time marketing.

Panel

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Ballroom

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Monday

10:30am

Day 2

Sponsored by Dealers United

Grab a coffee, relax, and catch up with fellow attendees. It’s the perfect time to recharge and chat before the next session. ☕️

Downtime

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Exhibit Hall

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Monday

Sponsored By:

10:45am

Day 2

Solutions, widgets, lead generation tools — whatever you call them — do not create consumer behavior; it’s the consumer who drives the behavior, and solutions are supposed to be designed to respond to it.
Do you truly understand how consumers act online, what they expect in-store, and how to effectively follow up with them?
In this session, discover the two most crucial online consumer behaviors, what they anticipate when they enter a store, and how to ensure your follow-up with meaningful.

Workshop

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Plaza 1

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Monday

10:45am

Day 2

How to outperform the market on every vehicle with intelligent acquisition, disposition, merchandising, and retailing.

Changing the way you think can be hard business, especially when your experience, your instincts, and your intuition is based on generational knowledge of the car business. But like it or not, our industry and our customers are evolving, modernizing, and have higher expectations than ever. If we don’t change the way we think and the decisions we make, the next generation of the industry may leave behind even the most experienced operators and veteran dealerships.

Danny Zaslavsky took over as General Manager of his family’s independent dealership in 2016 and quickly realized that he couldn’t rely on the same buying, merchandising, and marketing strategies that his father had used to build the business. Acquisition costs, reconditioning, syndication costs, and marketing costs were all outpacing front-end gross and just dropping prices wasn’t enough to significantly impact turn. Danny decided to think differently and committed to finding a way to not just compete in the market – but outperform it by increasing the real and perceived value of every piece of inventory.

Through this journey, Danny sat in every seat and did every job across the dealership. He realigned his people and quickly found and fixed process inefficiencies. When it came to the data and systems that managed the critical functions of buying and selling inventory he realized that having separate systems and databases was an enormous obstacle. This led Danny to completely transform the way he managed inventory, turning to a unified approach and a solution that combined acquisition, merchandising, retailing, and performance into a single system.

Armed with unified data and tools, Danny now has a complete view of the Vehicle Lifecycle where he can prioritize data and insights over intuition – and create strategies that are based on real-time conditions, not luck. This shift was not easy, but the net effective result of transforming his business has delivered more intelligent acquisition decisions, higher value merchandising, and more consistent retailing and exit planning for every vehicle – all generating higher gross and turn.

Workshop

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Plaza 2

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Monday

10:45am

Day 2

Highlighting the power of combining human insight and AI to transform the dealership experience

Workshop

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Salon 1

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Monday

10:45am

Day 2

Putting a name to a “view” can be challenging, especially in our data-driven world. But what if you started to personify your data and considered your customer’s touch points on a deeper level? Join us for an immersive storytelling workshop where dealers will meet “Maggie,” a car buyer, and walk through her car-buying journey. You’ll gain insights into every digital touchpoint Maggie encountered—from her first introduction to a dealership’s brand online after filling an Amazon shopping cart, all the way to purchasing her new vehicle. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to develop a Media Mix for your dealership using a Lifecycle Marketing approach. Plus, you’ll receive a copy of our newly released White Paper detailing Maggie’s journey.

Workshop

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Exchange 1-4

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Monday

11:30am

Day 2

Changeover

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Exhibit Hall

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Monday

11:45am

Day 2

​​Is your CRM a hidden goldmine? Is your current lead management strategy reaching its full potential? Discover how a comprehensive lead audit can transform your dealership’s ability to connect with customers. Move beyond traditional KPIs to uncover strategies that elevate lead management and boost customer engagement. How aligning lead management across departments—from BDC to finance—can elevate your sales game. Join Chareese, Mike, and Vanisha—industry experts with extensive in-dealership experience—who have traveled nationwide empowering dealers with lead audit outcomes. Uncover how top dealerships have boosted conversion rates and sales volume through proven strategies. Explore actionable insights to propel your dealership to new heights!

Mini Workshop

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Plaza 1

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Monday

11:45am

Day 2

Time kills deals and profit. Despite mass adoption of digital retailing and technology by dealers, it still takes nearly three hours to buy a car. The process is filled with friction, bottlenecks, and back-and-forth interactions. The technology revolution isn’t on your website—it’s in the showroom, where time and money are being left on the table. This session will identify ways to leverage technology in the showroom to optimize decision-making, bridge the trust gap, and speed up the process—all while increasing profitability.

Mini Workshop

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Plaza 2

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Monday

11:45am

Day 2

Leverage the power of conversational analytics combined with Google events to maximize your dealership’s results.

Deep dive into innovative strategies, learn how to optimize marketing attribution, and gain insights into enhancing customer engagement. Explore real-world success stories and leave empowered to drive your dealership’s digital marketing efforts to new heights. Don’t miss this opportunity to shape the future of automotive marketing.

Mini Workshop

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Salon 1

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Monday

11:45am

Day 2

In today’s fast-evolving digital marketing landscape, mastering the latest search engine technologies is essential. This workshop will focus on Google’s AI Overviews and generative AI search results—groundbreaking features shaping the future of SEO. Attendees will explore the the mechanics behind AI-driven results, and gain actionable strategies tailored for automotive dealerships. Through real-world case studies, we’ll demonstrate how to leverage these advancements to boost traffic, enhance authority, and achieve SEO success in the AI era.

Mini Workshop

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Exchange 1-4

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Monday

12:15pm

Day 2

Sponsored by Shift Digital

Grab a tasty lunch, relax, and catch up with others. It’s a great chance to refuel and chat before the afternoon activities.

Downtime

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Ballroom

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Monday

Sponsored By:

1:15pm

Day 2

Presented by automotiveMastermind

In an uncertain industry landscape, dealers are faced with an ever-changing array of software solutions. What hasn’t changed is the fundamental purpose of the technology: to create operational efficiencies which deliver excellent customer experiences with improved profitability. automotiveMastermind CEO Matt Leone will draw on his 25 years of experience in software development, operations, and automotive retailing to present a path forward to improve operational efficiency through technology.

Keynote

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Ballroom

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Sunday

2:00pm

Day 2

In the automotive industry, 86% of consumers prefer to complete at least part of their vehicle purchasing process online. Join Steve as he dives into how car dealerships can enhance customer satisfaction by offering virtual engagement options. These tools help create a seamless and interactive buying experience. Just as people research potential romantic partners thoroughly, they also invest significant effort in researching vehicles online, underscoring the importance of engaging virtual interactions. Effective communication in these online settings, including attentive tone and clear visual cues, is crucial. Utilizing advanced technologies like GPT and AI can further refine how dealerships connect with and assist their customers. By treating online leads with the same level of care and personalization as in-person interactions, dealerships can significantly boost both customer satisfaction and sales performance.

Workshop

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Plaza 1

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Monday

2:00pm

Day 2

Hear how progressive sales and marketing leaders are using defection insights to improve their sales and marketing processes, outsmart their competitors, grow share, and increase sales effectiveness.
Sales participants will know how to:
  • Increase close rates by eliminating needless follow-up with leads who have bought elsewhere, increasing salesperson confidence, and adjusting to follow up processes.
  • Improve productivity of sales team by delivering fact-based, real time performance feedback to sales team based on wins AND losses.
  • Decrease defection rates by proactively engaging high quality leads with strong likelihood to defect.
Marketing participants will know how to:
  • Enhance customer experience by ingesting defection data into the group’s CDP and marketing workflows.
  • Boost ROI of marketing spend by adjusting spend and targeting based on defection insights.

Workshop

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Plaza 2

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Monday

2:00pm

Day 2

Presented by Wikimotive

From stakeholders to seasoned marketing directors this session shouldn’t be missed. Many SEO vendors in the automotive space promise big results but stall when it comes to delivering a return on your investment.
In this session, we’ll show you why. We’ll cut through the rampant misinformation to reveal what’s actually working in SEO today, the unexpected advantages and pitfalls of AI, and the unspoken methods for measuring the real impact of your SEO efforts, whether outsourced or in-house. Get ready to take control of your SEO strategy and start driving real results!

Workshop

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Salon 1

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Monday

2:00pm

Day 2

Presented by S&P Global

An interactive workshop focused on leveraging data-driven insights that improve marketing performance. Identify key marketplace dynamics and develop opportunities that drive revenue growth and how to activate on the Polk Auto Direct platform.

Workshop

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Exchange 1-4

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Monday

2:45pm

Day 2

Grab a coffee, relax, and catch up with fellow attendees. It’s the perfect time to recharge and chat before the next session.

Downtime

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Exhibit Hall

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Monday

3:00pm

Day 2

Dealers must optimize all communication channels which consumers choose to leverage for sales and service. Dealership communications has always been a great area for improvement, and now new tools are in the marketplace to elevate the customer experience and better answer their questions.

Panel

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Ballroom

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Monday

4:00pm

Day 2

With so many avenues to acquire inventory: auctions, trade-in, service lane, direct from consumer or a buying center, having the right people, with the right processes and accountability is key.

This panel discussion will explore innovative strategies and technologies to streamline inventory acquisition. Panelists will share insights on leveraging data analytics for smarter decision-making, and integrating advanced tools to enhance efficiency.

Panel

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Ballroom

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Monday

5:00pm

Day 2

There’s no secret sauce to doing SEO that works. Just hard work and tailoring that hard work to a strategy intended to drive sales, not just traffic.

In this presentation, Zach Billings, co-founder of Wikimotive, will explain the simple reasons why you’re paying for SEO and wondering why it’s not driving more sales. He will also explain, in easily understandable terms, the ways that SEO should be used to create durable market share that increases sales in good economies and bad.

Keynote

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Ballroom

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Monday

5:45pm

Day 2

Sponsored by Dealer Funnel

Kick back and enjoy a variety of drinks and snacks, hang with other attendees, and have some fun as we wind down with cocktail hour.

Downtime

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Exhibit Hall

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Monday

Sponsored By:

Automotive Retailing Reimagined

Expert speakers.
executive level education.