Commercial Truck Trader, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty trucks and trailers, announced the addition of an SMS text messaging feature enabling buyers to initiate text conversations about vehicles of interest directly from the relevant listing. The new option increases sales opportunities for dealers who advertise inventory on this marketplace by providing an important new channel for communicating with customers.

“81% of adults use text messaging, 98% of texts are read within four to six minutes of delivery, and 97% are opened compared to just 22% of e-mails. That makes texting a powerful sales tool that most marketplaces in our space don’t offer,” said Amanda Ayala, Vice President, Commercial Brands, for Trader Interactive. “It’s a way for dealers to expand their reach without expanding their sales team, capture customers who might not bother to contact them any other way, and keep an open line of communication that can help close sales.”

When a potential buyer texts a dealer from a button on a Commercial Truck Trader listing, that message now displays in real time within the Dealer Center, the dealer-facing backend application. The service automatically responds to the consumer’s inquiry with the appropriate vehicle link to maintain customer interest until the dealer is able to answer, and returns all dealer responses in seconds to keep communication flowing.

Buyers can also click on any listing to instantly connect with dealers by phone, email or chat as well as access dealership location maps, creating multiple points of contact to help move users through the sales funnel.

The Dealer Center tracks each connection while also providing an extensive suite of reporting tools to help dealerships optimize their sales strategy. Those tools range from detailed search metrics on the dealer’s inventory to comparative market data such as rankings of the top-performing vehicles in local and national markets, the number of listings currently available for each model, and other filters for more complex, competitive market analyses.

The new text messaging feature is available to dealers as an optional listing add-on at no additional cost. It is part of a series of enhancements for both dealers and consumers that will be introduced across the Trader Interactive portfolio over the next year.