How to Run a Sales Matchback Report for Car Dealerships
A sales matchback report for car dealerships answers the question every GM asks at month end: which marketing actually sold cars? It compares the people a campaign reached against the people who bought, and it catches sales your CRM source field missed.
What a matchback is
A matchback takes two lists and looks for the same people on both. List one is everyone a campaign touched: leads, conversations, appointments. List two is everyone who bought a vehicle from you in the period that followed. Where the lists overlap, the campaign gets credit for an influenced sale.
It is called a matchback because you work backwards from the sale to the marketing, instead of trusting whatever source was typed into the CRM at the desk.
Why the CRM source field is not enough
Source fields are filled in by busy people. A customer who messaged your Facebook ad on Tuesday and walked in Saturday is often logged as a walk-in. A spouse buys under a different name. A lead comes in on a cell phone and the deal is written with a work email. None of that is dishonest. It is simply how showroom traffic gets recorded, and it means campaign results are usually undercounted.
What you need to pull
- The campaign list: first name, last name, phone, email, and the date of first contact for every lead or appointment from the campaign.
- The sold list: buyer and co-buyer names, phones, emails, street address, sale date, new or used, and front and back gross from your DMS.
- The cost: total spend for the campaign, including fees.
Export both lists to spreadsheets. Clean the phone numbers to ten digits and lower-case the emails so they compare properly.
Run the match in five steps
- Set the window. Decide how long after first contact a sale still counts. Many stores use the campaign dates plus a set number of days afterward. Pick a window and keep it the same every time.
- Match on phone. This catches the most records. Check buyer and co-buyer numbers.
- Match on email. Run the leftover records against buyer and co-buyer emails.
- Match on last name plus address or household. This finds family members who bought under another name. Review these by hand so two unrelated people with the same surname are not counted.
- Remove sales dated before first contact. A customer who bought first and messaged later was not influenced by the campaign.
Turn the matches into numbers
With the matched list in hand, calculate:
- Matched units sold, split by new and used.
- Total gross on those units, front and back.
- Cost per sold unit: campaign cost divided by matched units.
- ROI: matched gross minus campaign cost, divided by campaign cost.
Compare the matched unit count against what the CRM source field showed for the same campaign. The difference is the business you would have credited to something else.
Read it honestly
A matchback shows influence, not sole credit. Some matched buyers also saw your search ad, got an email, or drove past the store. That is normal. The fair way to use the report is to run it the same way for every major campaign and compare them against each other. A channel that keeps producing matched sales at a reasonable cost per unit deserves its budget. One that never shows up in the sold log needs a hard look.
Customer data should be handled according to your privacy policy and applicable law. Review how you share and store these lists with counsel.
Frequently asked questions
How often should we run a matchback?
After every sales event and once a month for ongoing campaigns. A consistent schedule lets you compare periods fairly.
What match window should we use?
Choose one that fits how long your customers take to buy and apply it every time. Changing the window between reports makes them impossible to compare.
Can a vendor run it for us?
Yes, and a good partner will. Ask to see the matched records, not only the totals, so your team can verify the result against the DMS.
See what an event would look like for your store
Willowood Ventures runs Facebook Sales Events for 600+ dealer partners and manages $4 million per month in social advertising. Dealers see approximately 800% average ROI, and 90% of them rebook. Book a demo and we will walk through your market, your inventory and your set appointment target.
