7 things to check out

Nearly 600 companies are clamoring for NADA show-goers' attention, offering innovations in tools, products and services in the store and in the digital realm.

Here are a few of them.

Personalized video text messages are great attention-getters, say many auto salespeople. But the messages can be time consuming to create, upload and distribute. Flick Fusion has devised a video app that lets sales personnel click on a record button at their computers, shoot videos and send them to sales leads in only a couple of steps. The app also lets salespeople link to other videos about the dealership, specific models or the sales staffers themselves.

Colors on Parade has provided mobile vehicle paint touch-up services for 30 years. At the show, in addition to marketing its mobile-paint franchise, the company will discuss the CarLove program for on-site paint work. Colors on Parade will send a mobile team to dealerships for free assessments of used vehicles in need of reconditioning work, with the promise of a two-day turnaround on most paint work.

With consumers spending 30 to 40 minutes a day on Facebook, the odds of them noticing a mail piece or reading an email are diminished. Social Roots, a marketing tool from Affinitiv, reaches into consumers' personal Facebook pages. The system combines the vehicle identification number data on file at a dealership with Facebook's marketing services to alert consumers about service specials when scheduled maintenance is due or to display purchase offers when a customer is at the end of a lease.

National Credit Center is harnessing big data to supercharge the art of pulling a customer credit report. The company's Dealer Intelligence tool combines credit scores and histories with such details as consumers' past three vehicle acquisitions, other brands they considered, their monthly payments, whether they prefer leases or purchases, their loan rates and loan terms, and what lenders they prefer. "All the information is out there, but it's fractured," says National Credit Center CEO Robert Granados. "By bringing it into one report, a dealership can avoid wasting the customer's time pitching things he has no history of buying."

Reviver Auto is demonstrating its RPlate, a digital display license plate that it has introduced in California and Arizona. The backlit plate can be programmed to show the required number and, when the vehicle is parked, selected messages. Reviver Auto has promoted the concept to auto dealers to display vehicle pricing and product information as vehicles sit in the showroom.

Dealer Inspire is telling conventioneers about its synchronized inventory management system and Ana Bot automated site greeter. It also will host a karaoke party at Dino's Lounge, with a winner receiving $1,000. The company is inviting guests to a party at Top Golf, atop the MGM Grand Hotel on Friday night, with 22 rooftop driving range lounges, a DJ, food and drinks.

Helping dealership service technicians work faster is the bottom line for Mahle Forum, the communications tool from Mahle Service Solutions. The Web-based program lets technicians search for a vehicle problem within a defined brand or a dealership group for solutions that others have found. The quick data-search tool is intended to prevent technicians from puzzling over an unfamiliar challenge, and the risk of making the wrong repair.