Rental car companies court customers on social media

• Hertz has best use of Twitter and YouTube%2C according to rankings
• Enterprise has best use of Facebook%2C Unmetric says

Frequent business traveler Clarissa Cervantes enjoys viewing auto rental social-media pages, mainly because they save her money.

"What I like about them is that they offer weekly coupons, and you can save 10% to 30%," says Cervantes, a photographer in Marina Del Rey, Calif.

Cervantes says she also likes entering contests. Alamo's Facebook page, for example, was offering a $5,000 grand prize last month in its Games 2 Go Sweepstakes.

Unlike Cervantes, many frequent business travelers are unaware of auto rental social-media pages. USA TODAY asked more than 100 very frequent business travelers who volunteer information for the newspaper's Road Warrior panel, and hardly any were aware of them.

Travelers who want to become more familiar may want to pay attention to the results of a new report by Unmetric, a New York-based company that monitors more than 10,000 brands and analyzes their social-media performances.

Unmetric monitored rental car brands' social-media pages and channels daily in May and June and ranked those of Hertz and Enterprise as No.1.

Hertz has the best use of Twitter and the best YouTube channel, and Enterprise has the best use of Facebook, Unmetric says.

"It's interesting to find that the two largest rental-car companies in the world, Enterprise and Hertz, have found separate niches for building up their social-media presences," Unmetric CEO Lux Narayan says.

Unmetric judged each auto rental social-media page on more than 20 factors, including number of views, posts, likes, followers and comments. The factors were weighed and combined into a single benchmark score.

On a zero to 100 scale, Hertz's use of Twitter received a 37 — far ahead of runner-up Enterprise's 27. Dollar and Avis scored 17, the lowest of eight brands.

"The scores seem low in relation to the zero to 100 scale, but they do not signify that auto rental companies are doing a poor job with social media," Narayan says.

Companies with the largest amount of travel industry sales usually have the highest scores, he says. The average Twitter, Facebook and YouTube scores for more than 100 brands in the travel industry monitored by Unmetric are less than 25.

In June, Hertz had 23,065 followers on Twitter. National Car Rental's NationalPro page for business travelers was second with 13,631, and Alamo had the least, 2,907.

Hertz tweeted about 36 times daily, Unmetric says. Most were replies to others' tweets; some were apologies for service issues.

Enterprise was the second-most-frequent Tweeter, with about half that number. Thrifty tweeted the least — 116 times during the two-month period.

"Enterprise takes customer support seriously," replying to more than 1,000 tweets in an average of less than two hours, Unmetric says.

Hertz spokeswoman Paula Rivera says social media is "a two-way communication platform" that has enabled the companies' three brands — Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty — "to engage and build relationships" with renters.

Social media is "a natural user platform" for customer service and addressing customer concerns, she says.

It is also "a marketing and information channel, where Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty can communicate travel tips, discounts and new products, and celebrate users' journeys," Rivera says.

Unmetric also ranked Hertz No. 1 among rental car brands' YouTube channels. Hertz received a score of 17, one point ahead of Avis.

Unmetric judged only two other brands' YouTube channels — Enterprise and Alamo.The channels were judged on such factors as subscription growth, video views and channel views.

Dollar and Thrifty "don't appear to have an official YouTube channel," and sufficient data wasn't available to fully analyze the YouTube performance of National and Budget, Unmetric says.

"Enterprise towers above the rest" with the highest Facebook score — 28, Unmetric says. Alamo followed at 19, and Dollar's 10 was the lowest.

Enterprise Holding's three brands — Enterprise, National and Alamo — have more than three-quarters of all auto-rental Facebook fans. Budget has the smallest number of fans.

Budget, however, replied to the largest percentage — nearly 73% — of fan posts. Hertz had the lowest percentage of replies — 34%.

Unmetric says the "most engaging post" was one by Alamo on June 24. It asked where viewers would go with a $5,000 vacation and invited them to enter its Games 2 Go sweepstakes.

Last month, Avis awarded a 2014 BMW 328i to the winner of its Facebook photo contest.

"Social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter give us the opportunity to build engagement and loyalty with our customers, while obtaining real-time feedback and insights on our products and services," Avis Budget Group Chief Marketing Officer Jeannine Haas says.