For nearly four years, Nissan dealers have gotten response rates better than 4% to mailings promoting parts and service to their more than 20 million customers.

Six to eight times a year, Nissan and Infiniti dealers send customers self-mailers and other packages urging them to visit dealers for inspections, tune-ups and other basic maintenance work, says Doug Thompson, president of The Marketing Store, Nissan’s Toronto-based agency.

Since its inception, more than 1,000 Nissan dealers (roughly 70% of its total in the United States and Canada) and 95% of Infiniti dealers have joined this program. Both Nissan and its dealers share the mailing costs, Thompson says.

A format the company relies on is the 8-1/2-inch by 16-1/2-inch self-mailer. In one case for Nissan cars, the mailer had the words

Autobytel, one of the pioneering sites that hooked up prospective new car buyers and dealers in the mid-1990s, plans to launch a one-stop Web shop. MyRide.com will serve auto seekers as well as anyone with automotive needs, including national and local advertisers looking to reach the motoring market.

“Autobytel came up with the preferred model for getting research and buying information to consumers in a well-organized manner and then connecting to dealers,” says president/CEO James Riesenbach. He came to the company about a year ago from AOL, where he headed the search and directory businesses and oversaw such things as local search, audio/visual search, classifieds and e-commerce search.

The early automotive sites all operated on the same model, from Autobytel and AutoTrader.com to Edmunds.com and the Kelley Blue Book site. “They were buying funnels — not search-oriented and with no flexibility,” Riesenbach says. “Strip out the branding and consumers found them interchangeable.”

Riesenbach saw a chance to create what he calls a next-generation auto site, one that would incorporate new search technology, multimedia tools that weren’t practical in 2000, and content acquired from both partner providers and metasearch crawling of external sites. “Consumers have gotten smarter through the growth of search and look at a lot more sites before buying,” he says. “I learned at AOL that walled gardens don’t work.”

MyRide.com, slated at press time to roll out in the second quarter, bills itself as the first automotive vertical search site, built from the ground up to engage not just in-market consumers but those across the life cycle of car ownership.

That broadened scope is reflected in the basic search listings. Consumers on other sites are forced to decide up front whether to look for a new or used car. But dealers told Riesenbach that as many as a third of the prospects who started out in search of a new model drove off in a used one. So the main car search query box on MyRide.com lets visitors input their criteria — make, model, location and price — and then tab between new and used offerings.

The main search function uses a proprietary “smart search” to understand that someone who enters “Escalade 12 wheel” is looking for rims and wheel covers for that Cadillac model. And users can specify their search intent by tabbing on “research,” “buy,” “accessorize,” “service” or “community.” The site also features specific searches for parts, local businesses, photos and videos.

Advertising on MyRide.com will be a mix of cost-per-click ads from a yet-unnamed third-party network, sponsorships with manufacturers and regional dealer groups, and display ads.

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