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Meet SAMe: PSXDigital's Smart Automated Marketing Engine (July 2020)
In July 2020, PSXDigital introduced SAMe to clean dealer databases and run drip and remarketing campaigns. What it promised, and how PSX Ascend AMP compares.
Quick answer
SAMe, the Smart Automated Marketing Engine, was a PSXDigital tool introduced in July 2020 to clean a powersports dealer's customer database first, then run drip and targeted remarketing campaigns from it. This post records what PSX announced, the clean-data checklist behind the idea, and how today's PSX Ascend AMP page compares.
On July 8, 2020, PSXDigital introduced SAMe to powersports dealers. The name stood for Smart Automated Marketing Engine. The post's title also called it the Automated Smart Marketing Engine, and both names refer to the same tool.
The idea behind it was simple and still holds: clean the customer database first, then market to it. This post records what PSX announced in 2020, turns the clean-up idea into a checklist a dealer can use, and shows how the current PSX Ascend marketing automation page compares.
What PSX announced in July 2020
The 2020 post introduced SAMe in two stages.
Stage 1: clean the database
SAMe included "numerous features" to help a dealer clean its customer database, so the store could start fresh with in-house lead generation from customers it already had. The post's argument was that you cannot know which leads are worth chasing until the house cleaning is done.
Stage 2: market to the clean list
Once the data was clean, SAMe was to help build drip campaigns and targeted remarketing campaigns on criteria the dealer chose. The post listed:
- Customer behavior
- Website activity
- Transaction history
- Service history
- Searches
It also said SAMe could provide predictive analytics and other insights for building or improving campaigns. When integrated with a dealer's existing automated marketing platform, it would offer hundreds of email templates and monitor well over 1,000 touchpoints in the customer buying journey. The post called it a managed service.
The announcement linked SAMe to database equity mining: using technology to find signals in existing customer records that someone may be ready to buy. Our guide to database equity mining for powersports dealers covers that idea in full.
The 2020 post also said it can cost as much as 25 times more to win a new customer than to keep an existing one. It named no source, so the figure is left out here.
Why it started with clean data
Most marketing automation launch pages lead with campaigns, templates and dashboards. SAMe's announcement led with the database, and that order is the part most worth keeping.
A drip campaign is only as good as the list it runs on. Duplicate records mean the same rider gets the same email twice. Old addresses mean mail goes nowhere. A missing opt-out means a customer who asked to stop hears from you again. Wrong vehicle or purchase dates mean a "time for your first service" message reaches someone who sold the machine a year ago.
PSX Ascend's position today is the same: quality data comes first. More quality data in the CRM gives automation and AI more to work with, and AI on a broken process only speeds up the broken process.
Clean-data checklist before you turn on automation
Use this before any drip or remarketing campaign starts, whichever system you use. This is general information, not legal advice.
- Count what you have. Export the customer list and note how many records have an email, a mobile number, a mailing address and at least one vehicle.
- Merge duplicates. Match on email, phone and name plus address, and merge rather than delete so history is kept. Our guide to finding and merging duplicate customer records walks through it.
- Update mailing addresses. The USPS NCOALink product is a dataset of about 160 million permanent change-of-address records. It is run through licensed providers, who receive either 18 or 48 months of change-of-address data.
- Honor every opt-out. The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says you must honor an email opt-out request within 10 business days, and an opt-out mechanism must keep working for at least 30 days after you send. It also notes the law makes no exception for business-to-business email.
- Remove hard bounces and mark records with no valid contact path, so reports reflect people you can actually reach.
- Fix the fields your segments depend on: vehicle owned, purchase date, last service date and lead source. A segment built on an empty field is an empty segment.
- Start with one journey. Pick one audience and one goal, then measure replies and visits before adding more. Our guide to building a drip campaign from your database shows how.
- Decide the handoff. Agree in advance who takes a customer who replies, and how fast, so automation ends in a conversation with a person.
What has changed since 2020
SAMe is not named on the live site. PSX Ascend's marketing automation today is AMP, the Automated Marketing Platform, described on the PSX Ascend AMP page. It works inside the connected PSX Ascend platform with ALMA, the Automated Lead Management Assistant. Here is how the 2020 announcement compares with what that page says now:
| SAMe in the July 2020 post | What the live AMP page says |
|---|---|
| Database cleaning features | Not mentioned on the page, so not claimed here |
| Drip and remarketing campaigns on behavior, website activity, transaction and service history, and searches | Personalized journeys shaped by customer stage, behavior and inventory interest |
| Predictive analytics and insights | Predictive audience intelligence that brings signal, context and a recommended path together, with people deciding how to respond |
| Hundreds of email templates | 200+ proven email templates |
| Well over 1,000 touchpoints monitored | 1,000+ customer touchpoints monitored |
| A managed service | A managed service with campaign setup, monitored touchpoints and complex customer-experience workflows supported by PSX's dealership marketing team |
| Channels not specified | Email, text, phone, website activity and sales follow-up |
| No handoff described | Sales handoff with the customer signal, source, vehicle interest and recommended action |
ALMA follows engagement and moves the right opportunity toward the sales team. It does not use AI to call customers; it prompts live connections between the customer and sales associates. The aim PSX describes is to empower sales teams, not replace them.
PSX's 2019 inventory announcement, ReplicatorX image duplication, is recorded in the same way.
You can also see the same marketing automation platform on our sister site, PSXDigital's marketing automation platform page.
Sources
- Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business
- USPS PostalPro, NCOALink