Company: Unite Digital, LLC
Nomination Submitted by: Weigandt Communications, LLC
Company Description: Unite Digital is a digital marketing company that develops products that help brands connect with their distribution partners to deliver unparalleled digital experiences. Unite Digital’s focus includes building certified digital programs, digital marketing, traffic generation, lead optimization, online-offline retail integration and customer retention and loyalty strategies.
Nomination Category: Company/Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Fastest Growing Company of the Year
 Nomination Title: Unite Digital, LLC
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2022 of the nominated organization, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the appropriate spaces below:
Founded in January 2016 by Stacey Coopes, Unite Digital creates innovative products and services that enhance the car-buying experience for consumers, automotive companies, and dealerships.
Unite's mission is to streamline the car-buying journey—both online and offline—by improving how customers shop, purchase, and finalize their automotive transactions. The company focuses on providing advanced tools and leveraging data to optimize every step of the process for both automakers and dealers.
Unite's offerings include certified digital programs, digital marketing, traffic generation, lead optimization, online-offline retail integration, and strategies for customer retention and loyalty. Their solutions range from improving communication with prospective buyers—ensuring they aren’t overwhelmed by multiple contacts—to simplifying and securing the paperwork process, thereby reducing the time it takes to complete a purchase at a dealership.
Unite has also pioneered industry-first products such as the Customer 360 Browser Extension, which provides dealers with comprehensive customer knowledge and history from both automaker and dealership sources. Other innovations include UniteCONNECT, which processes and delivers leads from emerging channels like text, chat, and digital retailing, and the Digital Deal Jacket software, enabling the signing of all required documents for a new car sale on a mobile device.
- Briefly describe the nominated organization: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 198 words used.
In 2016, Stacey Coopes, an auto industry veteran and expert in digital sales, identified a gap in the automotive retail ecosystem: Auto manufacturers and their dealers had fully adopted digital car sales strategies, but their record-high expenditures were not delivering greater efficiencies. As a result, consumers were experiencing a fractured sales landscape as automakers and dealers operated in silos targeting them in the same digital channels.
As a result, Stacey created Unite Digital to provide a way for automakers and dealers to collaborate to deliver a vastly improved and differentiated customer experience that would accelerate sales.
In her vision, Unite's mission would be to connect every aspect of the customer’s digital experience by aligning marketing strategies across tiers and through continuous technological innovation.
Since then, Unite Digital has partnered with its OEM clients and dealers to demonstrate how the collaboration and reach of an integrated digital network can significantly outperform anyone trying to tackle the market alone.
Today, Unite Digital has grown to 17 OEM clients and over 5,000 dealership partners. It is an entirely self-funded company [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION] with 90 employees and 100 percent retention of its customer base.
- Outline the organization's achievements since July 1 2022 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 246 words used.
On average, consumers spend between 3.5-5 hours in the dealership purchasing a new car. Many have commented that they would prefer the dentist over a visit to a dealership. Unite has solved the biggest driver of this frustration – the time it takes in dealership to complete the paperwork.
The Digital Deal Jacket - which was patented this year - transforms over 50 documents across 100 systems into a unified application serving new and pre-owned vehicles. It can be used with all dealer systems, minimizes errors, enables secure document storage and expedites the contracting process by at least 30 percent. For some dealers, customers can complete the process in under five minutes! While auto manufacturers and dealers often do not agree on how to sell cars online, the Digital Deal Jacket provides a win/win solution where both stakeholders benefit.
Unite Digital has also been an early adopter of artificial intelligence across multiple aspects of its operations. Unite leverages AI to validate leads and redact Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in compliance with Federal Trade Commission rules, ensuring that sensitive data is not shared in lead comments or elsewhere. Unite’s One Voice Solution uses AI to identify the purchase cycle stage of consumers visiting Tier 1-3 vehicle sales websites, allowing the company to personalize messaging across tiers.
Every solution Unite creates is designed to help its customers stay ahead and accelerate the speed of learning to produce better solutions at a much faster pace than its competition.
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
The automotive industry is traditionally risk-averse and dominated by large legacy players, who can stifle innovation, particularly when it comes to enhancing the vehicle purchasing experience for customers.
A typical automotive dealership must integrate 10-20 disconnected legacy systems that make it difficult to extract and exchange the data needed by a dealer to simplify the process to sell a car.
Unite took a very novel approach to developing a system that would not require any change or dependency on these systems to extract data. This resulted in a patented solution that can be applied to many industries that face complexity in their IT systems. With no dependency to replace any existing functionality in the dealership, Unite could minimize the impact and change to the dealership process, accelerating adoption.
From its inception, however, Unite Digital has embraced taking on tough challenges and developing innovative solutions to address them. They have adopted a fail forward fast methodology that has led to better solutions, faster development cycles, reduced costs, and enhanced sales experience for their consumers. In an industry of billion-dollar traditional players, Unite has been able to carve out a unique niche of innovation that is driving its rapid growth.
In just eight years, Stacey Coopes and her growing team of digital experts have made remarkable progress in their mission to integrate and streamline the digital aspects of automotive sales transactions. By uniting the key stakeholders in the industry, Unite has created win-win applications for automakers, dealers, and customers alike.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 15 words used.
See this link for a video on Digital Deal Jacket Software. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sd94-FkAqkYQhRoWDEngJbVmHyeABjDe/view
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