Personalized buyer and seller alerts help dealers focus daily remarketing efforts

DETROIT – SmartAuction, Ally Financial’s online auction web site, today unveiled Dealer eVantage, a new suite of electronic tools designed to help consignors and buyers more effectively and efficiently buy and sell vehicles on SmartAuction. 

At the heart of SmartAuction’s Dealer eVantage is the use of proprietary analytics to create personalized alerts for each user.

“We believe SmartAuction may be the only online wholesale auction platform offering the personalized information Dealer eVantage provides,” said Mark Newman, SmartAuction managing director. “Dealer eVantage provides both our buying and selling dealers valuable information which can immediately improve their remarketing operations.”

The buyer alert provides a starting point for navigating through more than 12,000 daily vehicle postings on SmartAuction. Buyers receive an email each morning detailing specific new inventory added to the site the night before with the best possible match to the dealer’s inventory requirements and profile. These buying alerts make use of a specialized algorithm using several factors including bidding and purchase histories and retail and wholesale market demographics to provide a tailored run list of new offerings.

The seller alert provides information on the likelihood of a vehicle receiving multiple bids based upon a comparison of the seller’s initial pricing against SmartAuction’s own proprietary pricing model. SmartAuction’s model takes into account more than 500,000 wholesale transactions annually from both physical and online auctions as well as current third-party market value data.

“Dealer eVantage allows us to leverage the benefits of an online auction to provide tailored, and current information on both vehicle offerings and vehicle pricing to our dealers,” said Newman. “We are gaining momentum in the dealer to dealer trade and we believe these tools will help dealers buy and sell more effectively on SmartAuction.  Going forward we plan to enhance and expand the Dealer eVantage tool kit to continue to address dealer remarketing needs.”

About SmartAuction
Launched in 2000, more than 3.4 million vehicles have been sold through SmartAuction since its inception. In 2009, approximately 440,000 units were sold in the United States on SmartAuction representing 45 different vehicle makes. With more than 10,000 registered SmartAuction users, more than 4,000 franchise and non-franchise dealers log in daily to SmartAuction. For more information about SmartAuction visit www.smartauction.biz.

About Ally Financial
Ally Financial Inc. (formerly GMAC Inc.) is one of the world's largest automotive financial services companies. The company offers a full suite of automotive financing products and services in key markets around the world. Ally's other business units include mortgage operations and commercial finance, and the company's subsidiary, Ally Bank, offers online retail banking products. With more than $173 billion in assets as of Sept. 30, 2010, Ally operates as a bank holding company. For more information, visit the Ally media site at http://media.ally.com.

11/08/10