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Car Dealership Guy
Subaru dealers are setting a new standard for online lead responses
March 2025
When it comes to responding to online car shoppers—car dealers are making meaningful strides—but no brand is performing better than Subaru.
Driving the news: For the first time, Subaru dealerships ranked No. 1 in the 2025 Pied Piper Internet Lead Effectiveness (ILE) Study, which measures how quickly and effectively dealers respond to online inquiries. The brand's score of 77 out of 100 is the highest ever recorded, helping Subaru surpass last year’s leader, Infiniti while setting a new benchmark for the industry.
Subaru dealers reached out to website leads using multiple channels (including email, text, and phone) 71% of the time. This is much higher than the industry average of 49%.
They also failed to personally respond to online leads only 8% of the time, compared to an industry-wide "failure rate" of 19%.
Acura, Hyundai, Subaru, Lincoln, and Fiat saw the biggest jumps—each one improving its score by at least 9%.
What they're saying: "A consistent multi-prong response to every customer is critical. You never know in advance which communication method will be most effective at reaching a specific customer," stated Pied Piper’s Cameron O’Hagan.
That’s because not every customer checks their email, answers a phone call, or responds to a text. Yet, the dealers who reach out in several different ways dramatically improve their chances of making contact.
And the payoff can be huge.
O’Hagan added, "The effort to improve is worth it. Historically, dealers who improve their ILE performance from scoring under 40 to scoring over 80 on average sell 50% more units from the same quantity of internet leads."
Why It Matters: Car buyers expect near-instant responses, and those who don’t get them will move on. On top of that—-customers who don’t hear back within the first 15 to 30 minutes are far less likely to engage with that dealership. And one in five online inquiries still receives no personal response at all.
Bottom line: Fast, consistent follow-up could be the difference between closing a deal and losing one.
