In this session, Eric Mercado, Executive Vice President at Force Marketing, will challenge automotive retailers to rethink fixed-ops marketing as the most powerful driver of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Eric will show why the audience-first, offer-second strategy; building precise, VIN-verified audiences before pushing service or sales offers consistently outperforms broad, generic campaigns.

Drawing on years of experience helping top dealer groups unlock the power of first-party data, Eric will demonstrate how a Customer Data Platform (CDP) can unify sales, service, and marketing data to create a single view of each customer. With this unified view, dealers can orchestrate omni-channel communication including email, direct mail, display, social, streaming, and even text; that trigger at the right moment in a customer’s ownership journey.

Attendees will learn:

• How to calculate and increase CLV by leveraging the service lane as the starting point for long-term loyalty and repurchase.
• Why segmenting by ownership triggers (warranty expiration, recall, service due) creates more efficient spend and better ROI.
• Practical steps to activate audience-first campaigns with data-driven offers across channels, rather than offer-blasting everyone.
• Real-world examples of dealers using CDP-powered personalization to retain customers, win back defectors, and drive profitable second and third transactions.

This session is perfect for dealer principals, general managers, fixed-ops directors, and marketing leaders who want to move beyond one-time service coupons and build a predictable, high-ROI pipeline of repeat sales and service revenue.