Fresh Talent Brings Over 35 Years of Experience Working in Auto Retail, F&I

RICHMOND, Va. – August 10, 2011 – Interactive Financial Marketing Group (IFMG), a division of Dominion Enterprises, today announced that it has added two automotive industry veterans to its company leadership in a move that augments its ability to support its dealer partners.

Nicole Diamond joins IFMG as Dealer Relationship Manager, taking over special financing for Interactive Financial Acceptance (IFA).  Diamond has spent 16-plus years in consumer and automotive finance where she supported car dealers through both prime and subprime lending. As a result, she is well-versed in F&I process and will be focused on offering dealers situational lending in the 26 states that IFA covers.

Chris Smith comes to IFMG as its National Sales Manager for the Carloan.com Dealer Network. He brings nearly 20 years of experience in sales management, with the majority of it in running a regional automotive sales operation. Smith’s primary area of focus will be working with Carloan.com dealers to maximize the success of their marketing programs.

“These additions to our team add to our strong heritage of serving the dealer community,” said Tom Feary, General Manager of IFMG. “Nicole and Chris have been in the trenches as dealers or with dealers for most of their careers.  We expect a high contribution towards the superior service that our industry demands.”

About Interactive Financial Marketing Group:

Interactive Financial Marketing Group (IFMG) is a pioneer in lead generation, validation and management services for the automotive industry.  By focusing on innovative approaches to lead generation since its inception in 1989, IFMG has developed a family of brands that includes hundreds of the most recognized Internet addresses and vanity phone numbers such as Carloan.com, Autoloan.com, 1-800-CAR-LOAN® and 1-800-AUTO-LOAN®.

Interactive Financial Marketing Group is a division of Dominion Enterprises. For more company information, contact IFMG at 800-222-8374 or visit www.interactivefmg.com. For more information about IFMG products and services, visit www.carloanco.com.

About Interactive Financial Acceptance:

Through its network of dealers and lenders in 26 states, Interactive Financial Acceptance (IFA) has the resources necessary to facilitate situational lending for customers who might otherwise be unable to find an automotive loan. Based in Richmond, Virginia, IFA is a division of Dominion Enterprises. For more information on lending guidelines and rates by state, visit www.ifalending.com or call (866) 229-5744.

About Dominion Enterprises

Dominion Enterprises is a leading marketing services company serving the automotive, enthusiast and commercial vehicle, real estate, apartment rental, travel and employment industries. The company’s businesses provide a comprehensive suite of technology-based marketing solutions including Internet advertising, lead generation, CRM, website design and hosting, and data management services. The company has more than 60 market-leading websites reaching more than 20.9 million unique visitors monthly, and more than 280 magazines with a weekly circulation of 2.4 million. Headquartered in Norfolk, Va., the company has 3,300 employees in more than 186 offices nationwide. For more information, visit www.dominionenterprises.com.

###

In the months since, we’ve been doing some extensive work on our B2B websites, and we’re seeing a lift in both of those categories. For those of you who have been doing this kind of website optimization for a while, you know that the work is never done.

I liken it to painting the Golden Gate Bridge — ongoing touch-ups are required to keep the whole thing from slowly eroding and collapsing into the Bay.

Several variables factor in to continuing SEO maintenance, such as keeping up with changes in your users’ behavior using your site analytics (you do have those, right?), but the biggest factor has to be changes in the way that the search engines index and rank your sites. You have to stay up to speed on shifts in their algorithms and how they affect the way people might find your site.

Search Engine Watch recently published a blog piece on conducting an SEO site audit (hat tip to Michael Alston) that includes some great recommendations for tools and tactics for pushing a website to the top of the search results.

I know which ones we use, what are your favorites?

And if you’re working with an SEO consultant who tells you only need to do a site audit once, I got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

Amy Taggart is the Marketing Manager at IFMG. She is focused on building out the Carloan.com network of dealers.

When designing a website, the ease-of-use is a great feature, but providing useful content is just as important. To provide useful content, Carloan.com uses IP detection algorithm to detect consumer’s location to match them up with the nearest car loan advisors so they can get the best deal. We use AJAX, WCF, and other cutting edge technologies like Google map API to display car loan advisors dynamically.  We are constantly updating and testing our sites so that consumers have a better experience navigating our sites.

One thing that we pay careful attention to is the security of our consumer’s information. We use 128 bits encryption technology and also encrypt their information to ensure that their information is safe and secure when they are applying.

So, what’s next for us?  We are always working hard to improve our sites and we will be upgrading our Carloans.com and Autoloan.com sites in the future to provide more features and services to our consumers. We have many new ideas for our sites and anticipate implementing them soon.

Stay in touch! We recently published a car loan news section where users can subscribe to our news feed through RSS as well as read content we post on Facebook and Twitter.

William Lee is part of our development team here at IFMG.

Here’s a question… what do Arsenio Hall and Interactive Financial Marketing Group have in common?

The answer… 1989.

Arsenio Hall hosted his first late night talk show in January of 1989.  IFMG, aka 1-800-Car-Loan began taking applications for a local dealership that same year.  Of course we’re still here and uh, well Arsenio Hall is somewhere.

This week we are celebrating our 4th Auto Dealer Monthly Dealer’s Choice Award in the Special Finance Leads category.  That means that readers of the magazine, mostly auto dealers from across the United States think we’re the cats pajamas.  We’re honored to have received the votes and recognition.  Thank you to all who voted. Congrats to all those who placed in the category.

A big “thank you” goes out to our employees, many of whom through the economic downturn have passed on 40-hour-a-week opportunities to stay and work tirelessly to serve our customers.  We’re inspired to work around them every day.  Thanks to our vendors and affiliate partners who work with us to optimize marketing channels that attract the best local consumers to our network.  Of course, thank you to the many consumers who have placed their trust in us to protect and secure their privacy while connecting them to a sincere source of financing.

After these past 18 months, we don’t take many things for granted.  It’s nice to receive the recognition.  We look forward to serving more in the near future.  Now let’s Sell More Cars!

-Tom

Check out our new site.  Come back and see us soon.