Drive Boat Use, Drive Retention
To keep your dealership healthy, you need to sell more. More boats, parts, accessories, finance, insurance, service … the list goes on. Acquiring new customers is easier said than done, especially in today’s market, so the smart play is to focus on generating repeat business with current customers.
However, keeping boaters on the water, enjoying the value of ownership is an ongoing challenge. The world seems to be operating at full throttle, as families are pulled in many directions, from youth sports to camping and vacation abroad. So, how do you keep them engaged in the boating lifestyle?
We’re here with ideas, advice, tools and resources you can apply immediately in your dealership. Tap into this MRAA Spotlight to improve your connection with your customers to drive boat use so you can drive retention and help them enjoy the water for years to come.
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How to Encourage the Cautious Shoppers
In today’s cautious market, you’re seeing hesitant buyers. Motility Software Solutions, an MRAA Platinum Partner, offers realistic strategies to build trust and guide these shoppers toward confident decisions. Providing supportive solutions to help them overcome obstacles will help you foster lasting relationships and drive sales. These insights empower both the dealers to navigate uncertainty and the customer to make a decision and take action!
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The Untapped Potential of F&I
In today’s ever-shifting market, imagine if you could structure your F&I programs to unlock more revenue while improving customer loyalty. Today, F&I isn’t just about profit — it’s about protecting your customers’ boating lifestyle. From extended service plans to GAP coverage, these offerings help boaters stay engaged, reduce risk and return to your dealership with confidence. It’s time to meet your customer expectations. F&I can help build trust, elevate service and preserve your relationships long after the sale. Explore how F&I can become your dealership’s secret to long-term growth and retention.
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Maximizing Boat Use & Customer Retention
Building a post-sale engagement strategy at your dealership has many benefits. It helps your customers use their boats, deepens their connection to your dealership and keeps them boating longer. With seasonal ideas, onboarding tips and retention tactics, it’s a practical guide to increasing loyalty, growing service revenue and keeping boaters on active and engaged. Plus, it shows how the right Dealer Management System (DMS) can simplify it all. If you want your customers to keep coming back — for service, upgrades and their next boat — this blog offers the plan to make it happen.
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Protect Customers’ Boats
As your customers’ trusted advisor you can help them know how to protect their investment. This MRAA Partner contribution explores how offering a gelcoated surface protectant adds real value — not just revenue. It helps customers preserve their boat’s beauty, ease upkeep and retain resale value. By guiding them to make smarter decisions today, you boost long-term satisfaction, loyalty and return visits tomorrow. Read how this simple upsell becomes a powerful customer experience tool.
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How to Drive Boat Use and Keep Boaters for Life
You have the power to turn your customers into lifelong boaters. By asking the right questions, offering education and working seamlessly across departments, you can identify what’s holding customers back from using their boats and help them overcome those barriers. Simply shifting your awareness and empathy will show customers you care about their experience, not only the sale. By build lasting trust, you help strengthen boating as a lifestyle.
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How to Help Boating Customers Clear Hurdles
Minnesota’s new mandatory boater safety law went into effect July 1. To help educate and empower the boating community it serves, Certified Dealership Rapid Marine stepped up by proactively guiding boaters through the change, helping them understand how to comply and how doing so will help them, especially younger boaters, continue enjoying the water. This approach built trust, improved safety and reinforced its role as a go-to resource for customers and other Minnesota boaters. By serving as guide — not just the seller — Rapid Marine sets an example for how dealerships can help boaters and also support the future of boating.
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How to Make Your Boating Events Better
• Focus on specifics to build a more meaningful experience for your customers
Hosting dealership events is challenging. How can make your boating event unforgettable? Get specific. Erwin Marine Sales’ “Running of the Toons” proves that adding the right amount of detail — for instance custom swag, a poker run for prizes and charity support — can turn a simple event into a meaningful experience. The result? Your goal is to play host, obviously, but by making your events better you build stronger connections, help to increase boat use and build lasting memories for all. That’s how you grow the boating lifestyle.
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12 Proven Retail Tactics from Boat Dealers Like You
Gain insight on what’s working right now for your dealer peers. These dealer-tested strategies — pulled from the May 2025 Pulse Report — share insights for boosting customer retention, driving sales and streamlining operations. The approach you take and the tactics you install today can help your dealership identify opportunities and act with purpose.
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Boost Customer Experience & Boater Retention by Throwing a Helpline
When your customers feel supported, they’re more likely to enjoy their boat, stay connected to the boating lifestyle and return to your dealership for maintenance and guidance.
Barletta Boats’ Summer Season Helpline is a shining example: offering seven-day support from Memorial Day to Labor Day, with trained techs ready to assist. It strengthens engagement, delivers operational help and empowers boaters through education. You can implement similar strategies — like “tech on call” rotations, educational videos or on-water events — to build trust and grow loyalty.
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Engaging Future Boat Buyers & New Customers
Engaging your existing customers after the sale is key to building loyalty and repeat business. These five new Discover Boating safety videos offer simple, credible tools to help new boaters feel safer, more prepared and excited to be on the water.
Topics include prepping for boating season, boating with kids, using float plans, life jackets and sound signals. These educational videos, created in collaboration with Progressive Insurance®, build trust, boost confidence and support long-term boater retention. The more your customers use their boats, the more they’ll stay connected to boating — and to your dealership.
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Dealer Feedback – Boater Retention Efforts
The experiences you can help create for your customers help to build loyalty. But between staff shortages, competing priorities and a lack of follow-up, many dealers find it tough to keep customers on the water.
That’s why MRAA, in collaboration with Baird and Soundings Trade Only, asked dealers two key questions in a recent Pulse Report:
- What’s keeping boaters from using their boats?
- What would help retain them?
The answers revealed common pain points — like weak retention strategies and limited time for engagement — and surfaced clear opportunities to improve communication, strengthen service teams and create lifestyle-centered experiences.
Not an MRAA Member, but want the MRAA Pulse Report data? Reach out to Sherri Cuvala, MRAA Director of Membership, at sherri@mraa.com.
Need additional strategies and event ideas for customer connections? Try these:
