The smrt-est shop on the planet winnerCongratulations to the Tuffy Auto Service Centers facility in Clinton Township, Michigan.  This Tuffy Auto Service Center location, owned by Mark Cooper, is a five bay shop located roughly seventy miles northeast of Detroit.  The shop has been there for twenty-two years, and Mark cooper has been at the helm for twelve.  2010 Begins their first year of smrt marketing.

Mark Cooper

After a bit of phone tag, we got a hold of the busy Cooper and gave him the good news.  "It's great that I won this," he said.  "I'm very, very interested to see how it works."  And see it he will. But first things first.

With the preliminaries, congratulations and permissions, etc., out of the way, we've begun the process of setting up Tuffy Auto Service Center's account.  Veteran CustomerLink Account Manager Ronni Brown will be coordinating the set up and managing their account.  To start, Ronni has requested invoice information from the shop.  Once we have it, we can then run that data against the 150-plus consumer data sources we have licensed and begin assembling their smrt report.  While we receive and process the data, Ronni will work with Cooper and store manager Tom Braun to determine which types of service reminders and other marketing they want to deploy using the $300 per month marketing budget they have won.Acct. Mgr. Ronni Brown

By saying "which types," we refer primarily to the core program, which consists of oil change reminders, factory maintenance reminders, thank you cards, and what we call "haven't seen you cards" - cards sent to customers who haven't been back to a shop for a selected period of time.  In addition, there are lots of other pieces Cooper and Braun might want to use, but the 'who, what, when and where" is best determined once we have a clear picture of the customer base.  But we will have that soon; so stay tuned.