Staffed sale events for car dealers
Other companies mail it and leave. We stay for the weekend.
Top Gunn builds your invitation list from your own customer records, mails it first-class, runs the door on event day, and puts a closer on your floor next to your team. You bring the inventory. We bring the buyers and help you close them.
582 events run · 15 years · Fully insured · Co-op compliant
Event run sheet
Sample store · 5,000 invitationsDate locked in
At least one week of lead time
List pulled & purified
Your F&I and service records, matched to your inventory
Store prep begins
Staff briefed on how an event day runs
Invitations in homes
Custom envelope, first-class postage, short offer window
Doors open. We're on the floor.
Kickoff 1 hour before · greeter qualifies every guest · closer works deals
Attendee list & sales analysis
By ZIP, year and make. The list gets cleaner for the next one.
Real event · [Brand] store · [City, TX] · [Month 2026]
One weekend. [X] cars sold from [X] invitations.
Every guest was written up at the door and every sale was tracked back to the invitation list, broken out by ZIP code.
Vehicles sold
Guests through the door
Front + back gross
Response rate
The Numbers · 2026
Why a mailed invitation and a staffed weekend still win.
Buyers still finish the deal in the showroom, mail still gets noticed, and lots are carrying more inventory than dealers want. Here's the data, with a source on every number.
Brand recall after a direct mail piece, versus 44% after a digital ad
Canada Post, A Bias for Action ↗Of 2025 car buyers completed every step at the dealership. Only 7% bought fully online.
Cox Automotive Car Buyer Journey, 2025 ↗Last updated September 2026. Industry figures are national benchmarks, not a promise of results at your store.
Why dealers book a weekend
Every store is already paying for one of these three problems.
An event isn't a marketing expense when it solves a cost you're carrying right now. Here's what a weekend of qualified traffic goes after.
Floor plan never stops charging.
New-vehicle holding cost ran about $7.90 per unit per day in early 2025. Every unit past 60 or 90 days keeps adding to it. An event weekend puts people in front of exactly those units.
A few units short of the bonus.
On many factory programs, clearing the next tier pays on every unit in the period. Closing that gap this month can cover the event before you count gross on the cars.
The month you already see coming.
We put the event into your known soft period, where extra traffic is worth the most, instead of whatever weekend a vendor has open.
Incentive programs vary by manufacturer and period. We work from your numbers, not a brochure.
The List
A mailing list you can't clean is a mailing list that rots.
Plenty of mail vendors send bulk rate to save on postage. When bulk mail can't be delivered, the post office disposes of it unless the sender paid extra for a return service. Without that, the sender never finds out, and those dead addresses get mailed and paid for again every campaign.
01
Mailed first-class
About 80% of every drop
02
Undeliverables return
First-class comes back to us
03
Barcode scanned
Every returned piece logged
04
Bad address stripped
Removed before the next mailing
05
Next list is sharper
Same budget, fewer wasted pieces
Repeats every event
Wasted pieces per 10,000 at a bulk-rate vendor
NOTE-TO-SELF: Fill in from your own return-mail data once you have it.
More in-market people invited than typical approaches
At a 1% response, that's 5 to 20 more opportunities from the same mail volume. [confirm source]
A typical mail vendor
- ✕ Bulk-rate postage. Bad addresses usually never come back.
- ✕ Rented list that doesn't know your store
- ✕ Same template for every dealer
- ✕ Done the day the envelope hits the mailbox
- ✕ Nobody at your door on event day
Top Gunn
- ✓ About 80% first-class, so returns get scanned and removed
- ✓ Built from your own finance and service records
- ✓ Piece matched to what's actually on your lot
- ✓ Greeter qualifies every guest at the door
- ✓ A closer works the floor with your team all weekend
How your list gets built
Five steps before anything prints.
STEP 01
Pull your own records
Finance and service records from your DMS. Your real customers, not a list bought off a shelf.
STEP 02
Purify into Core Data
Bad addresses, duplicates and dead records come out. What's left is a profiled set we call Core Data.
STEP 03
Profile on five dimensions
Conquest-brand preference, likelihood to respond, competitive position, your current inventory, and this month's market conditions and incentives.
STEP 04
Weight by ZIP code
Mail goes where buyers are, not spread evenly. On one Toyota event, a single ZIP carried about 17% of a 10,120-piece mailing.
STEP 05
Match to your lot
Loaded with trucks? The piece features trucks. We don't feature cars when the lot is full of trucks.
WHO BUILDS IT
Someone who's sat in your chair
Our list department is run by a manager with 20+ years in automotive list work who has owned and operated dealerships. [Name]
How It Works
Six pieces. The last one makes the next event better.
Each stage feeds the next. The results from one event become the starting list for the next, so the second weekend should beat the first.
Before the mail
PILLAR 1
The List
Who gets invited. Built from your records, purified, and profiled for who is in or near a buying cycle right now.
PILLAR 2
Market Research
Why those people, with this message, this month. Brand preference, buying readiness, credit, your competitors, and your inventory.
PILLAR 3
The Invitation
Custom four-color piece and envelope built to get opened. Co-op compliant. A short, real offer window so people act.
At your store
PILLAR 4
The Preparation
Your store is prepped 7 days out. Staff briefed on how an event day runs. Kickoff meeting 1 hour before doors open.
PILLAR 5
The Greeting
Every guest greeted and qualified at the door. Your salesperson gets their trade, mileage, lender and payoff on paper before saying hello.
PILLAR 6
The Results
Attendee list and sales analysis by ZIP, year and make. Then the list gets purified again for the next event.
We bring the buyers. Your floor decides how many of them drive home in a new car.
Putting qualified buyers in your building is what we do best. What happens next depends on your team's energy that weekend. We say that up front because it's true. It's also why we start prepping your store a full week out, so your people are ready when the phones start ringing.
The Event Timeline
One weekend. Every step timed to the doors opening.
The mail lands with a short window to act, so response arrives in a burst instead of a trickle. That's exactly what a staffed weekend needs.
| Stage | Booked | Before the mail | 1 week out | Mail lands | Event weekend ★ | 1 week after | 6–8 weeks later |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| List & researchYour records, your lot | Intake forms | Pull & purify | Match inventory | Re-purify | |||
| InvitationFirst-class, custom | Design | Print & mail | In homes | Offer window | |||
| Store prepYour team | Prep begins | Staff brief | Kickoff 1 hr before doors | ||||
| The doorGreeter + guest sheet | Qualify every guest | ||||||
| The floorTop Gunn closer | Working deals | ||||||
| ResultsTracked sales | Attendee list + analysis | Next event |
1 WEEK OUT · STORE PREP
Nobody's caught flat
Staff know what's coming, how an event day differs from a normal Saturday, and how guests will be handed to them.
EVENT WEEKEND · THE DOOR
Ten minutes of fishing, gone
The greeter captures trade, mileage, lender and payoff. Your salesperson opens on the customer's real problem.
1 WEEK AFTER · RESULTS
Proof, not a claim
Who was mailed, who came in, who bought. Broken out by ZIP code, year and make, so you know exactly what worked.
The Greeting
Your salesperson knows the trade before they say hello.
Every guest is greeted, qualified and written up at the door. The sheet is printed and handed to your salesperson before they walk over.
A normal walk-in takes about ten minutes of rapport, fishing and guessing before real selling starts. With the sheet, the conversation starts at "Let's see what we can do about getting you out of that payment."
Came for the prize, but still drove in on a future trade. Treated well, which protects your CSI.
Real interest, no urgency yet. Qualified and worked.
Ready now. Routed straight to your best closer.
SAMPLE · illustrative values, not a real customer
Every guest drove in on something. They're all buyers eventually.
Real event · [Store name or "A Texas Hyundai store"]
Every piece we put in the mailbox and on the floor.
The invitation is built to win the two seconds a customer spends deciding whether to open it. Here's what one event looked like from envelope to sale.
Custom envelope · built to get opened
Invitation front · offer and event dates
Invitation back · map and offer window
Registration gift · everyone leaves with something
The door · every guest qualified
Results · analysis by ZIP, year and make
The Results
Your list gets better every time we use it.
After every event, the list goes through five more steps. It's why the second event should beat the first, and the third should beat the second.
"Our biggest problem is getting you to try us the first time, and then stopping you from wanting us too soon the second time."
Mail the same list too fast and you burn it. We space events 6 to 8 weeks apart so every one hits as hard as the last.
01
Attendees rest 3 to 6 months
People who just came in aren't invited back right away.
02
Returned mail comes off
Every first-class return is scanned and removed.
03
Sold buyers come off
Nobody gets mailed for a car they just bought.
04
Weak ZIP codes get studied
Non-producing areas are reviewed and can be dropped.
05
Strong ZIP codes get more names
Budget moves to where buyers actually came from.
Why Top Gunn
15 years on the floor. Now in Texas.
Top Gunn has run events for franchise stores for 15 years. We started in Florida and are now expanding into the central United States, starting with Dallas–Fort Worth.
Events run
And counting
In business
Fully insured
Dealerships served
Invitations mailed
How most events go
A mail house sends the piece and that's the end of its job. The store's team is left to handle a busy weekend nobody prepped them for.
What we learned
The list and the invitation get people in the door. Prep, the greeting and a closer on the floor are what turn them into sold units.
What we do
One team runs the whole weekend, from your data to the last deal of the day. Accountable for the result, not just the mail.
Getting started
You bring the inventory. We handle the rest.
1
Plan call
15 minutes on your volume, your tier, your aged units and your slow months.
2
Intake & approval
Marketing profile, inventory breakdown and co-op details. You approve the piece before it prints.
3
Event weekend
Prep week, kickoff, greeter at the door, closer on the floor.
4
Results & next date
Attendee list, sales analysis, and the next event on the calendar 6–8 weeks out.
FAQ