It's that time of year again when we all resolve to lose weight/be kinder/spend less/eat better.  In the spirit of "new year, new you" here are 5 AutoPlay resolutions you can make to get the most out of the AutoPlay suite of products.

1.  I will respond to leads faster than ever before
I'm not going to define for you a suitable time to reply to customer enquiries as every dealer and region is different, with different expectations and different resources (though 2 hours could be used as a good benchmark).  Your first resolution is simply to work out firstly how long you are taking to reply to customer enquiries - check out the Email Reply & Allocation Report.  Once you know how long you are currently taking, knock 20% off and make this your new target.  It doesn't have to become part of your salesperson kpi's, but the addition of a documented goal to respond to all new leads will help all the salespeople understand the expectations on them.

2.  I will re-market to my existing leads...using the tools I already have available to me!
Many of our customers would have heard various members of the AutoPlay team bleating on and on about the fact that on average dealerships only convert 50% of their leads to Test Drives, and 20% to Sales.  We really hammer this point home because if you do the math it shows that 80% of the leads you've generated will not actually result in a sale.  Clearly this represents a huge opportunity for sales people to really work their lead database.  The Dashboard makes it super easy to identify the progress stage each lead is at, and built in tools such as Live Leads, In Market Leads and the Email Response Tool make it easy to target these customers for no additional spend.  Get someone responsible for sending Live Leads out each month and make the most out of every cent you spend.

3.  Personalise your customer comms
As detailed in make-2019-the-year-you-personalise-your-comms.html the internet continues to be an impersonal space, and building rapport with prospective customers is key to enage with them.  AutoPlay's suite of products offers ample opportunities to inject personality into the online space with Virtual Demo Videos and Video Email Response Tool.  Depending on your package these tools will not cost any additional and can be a great way to drive engagement with your dealership.

4.  Start using In Market Leads & Wishlists to connect your deals
The benefit of using digital tools to manage your leads is that everything gets captured.  The weakness of many digital lead capture systems is they don't help salespeople connect deals together.  At AutoPlay we've worked hard to provide tools that help sales people digest all the overwhelming volumes of information they have access to.  The Wishlist is used when your sales team cannot pin a customer down to a particular vehicle in stock.  It will automatically alert the salesperson when a matching vehicle comes into stock, or is appraised on another deal.  In Market Leads serves a similar purpose - when a new vehicle comes into stock or the price of an existing vehicles is dropped the system will look at all of the leads that have been captured (based on customisable criteria), and alert the manager to those customers that might be interested in the price dropped or new listing.  These tools are built into the standard Sales Pipeline so will not cost any additional money - use them!

5.  Understand Reporting
It's hard to make decisions if you don't understand what is happening - so understanding reporting is critical to your success with AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  Reporting can be more than just tracking the past - it can also identify opportunities for the future and now.  If you know you convert 50% of your Test Drives to Sales via the Lead Conversion Report, and you know you've got 40 leads sitting at Test Drive Progress via the Sales Pipeline Report then it's easy to connect the dots and work out a plan to convert 20 of those leads into Test Drives.  AutoPlay has a wealth of reports from raw data extracts in the form of the Lead Audit, to the 15+ reports in reporting.autoplay.co.nz.  If you are a Sales Manager it's critically important that you understand what the reports are showing you.

If you want to talk to someone about any of these functions contact support@autoplay.co.nz and one of our Account Managers will get in touch.

Recently I stumbled across one of the ubiquitous “top digital trends for 2019” articles that you see at this time of the year, every year.  One of the key trends I’ve seen identified repeatedly is the need to personalise your communications with your potential customers.

Video is one way you can easily personalise your communication, with the added benefit of being one of the more effective ways to engage with potential customers.  As you can see from the images above, according to Google 56% of shoppers could be convinced to buy a car from a 360-degree video without having to test drive the vehicle.  In addition, 40% of shoppers who watched a video about cars or trucks visited a dealer as a result.

It is said that some industries are already seeing up to a 30% increase in close rates (Adpearance).  At AutoPlay we’ve run our own surveys about the AutoPlay Video Email Response tool and have had dealers report back increases of 60% when replying to customer enquiry with video, as opposed to tradition text-based emails.  There’s clear evidence that personalising your customer comms will drive higher engagement from potential customers.
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So how can you utilise the AutoPlay suite of products to personalise your customer communication?  

Personalising your customers web experience is difficult, however steps can be taken to inject personality into the online space via AutoPlay Virtual Demo videos.  These videos let dealerships customise their own recording scripts, and record their own unique voiceovers on listing videos – a great way to introduce the dealerships personality into the online space.

If you have an AutoPlay Vehicle Display Page you will be able to embed a Youtube video into the VIDEO LINK field in the AutoPlay Studio.  This allows dealerships to embed any video they have rights to use, within their AutoPlay vehicle stock page.

​The AutoPlay Video Email Response Tool was one of the first digital communication tools that AutoPlay built and is still going strong to this date.  The Email Response Tool allows salespeople to inject their personality into the online space, and has proven to be an effective way of building rapport with prospective customers.  Although we are a tech company, we have an old school mentality when it comes to emails – you are not likely to sell a car directly from an email, but how you reply to email enquiries will directly affect your prospective customers decision to visit the dealership.  The default mode for the email tool is to stitch the audio onto the existing images – making it extremely easy to build straight from the app.

​If you are using the iOS App you can utilise the camera on your iphone/ipad to film a true video walk around of the car – hopping in and out, opening the boot and engine bay and even starting the engine.  Filming a true video definitely takes more skill and confidence than recording a voice-over, but can really help to personalise the experience for potential customers.

In 2019 AutoPlay are phasing out of website work.  Building sites has always been something we have done as a value add for customers using our Data Management or Sales Pipeline services, and is not our core focus.

As such we've made the decision that we will focus on continuing to develop our core products, and will not be taking on any new website work (though we will continue to support our existing websites).  

Working in this space it's inevitable that we will be asked by our customers to build sites.  That's why we are pleased to be able to recommend Adtorque Edge for all your website needs.  Adtorque Edge have a proven track record in Australia and the GM for NZ is Todd Fuller - who will be well known to many in the industry through his time with Driven.

Welcome to 2019!  The December results are in and with public holidays and the general December slowdown it was a quiet month across the board for AutoPlay customers.  Overall the volume of leads captured or loaded by AutoPlay customers was down 11.3%.  There were 9.7% fewer Test Drives and Sales were down 11.2%.  Given AutoPlay has a significant market share of franchise dealers in NZ, this represents a pretty sizeable downturn for the month.

‘Web – Classified’ was the only Lead source that bucked the trend with an increase of 0.9% in the number of leads captured in December 2018, vs November 2018.  This is to be expected as whilst the discipline of manually loading leads can lapse around the holiday period, electronic leads from the likes of Trade Me, AutoTrader and Driven are automatically captured to dealers AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  The ‘Web – Dealer’ source dropped by 9.8% and although still accounting for the third most leads, ‘Brand’ leads dropped by 38.8% as head office marketing drove fewer leads to dealers.

With the overall volume of Test Drives recorded dropping by 9.7% month to month, it’s not surprising that in December Test Drives attributed to most sources took a hit.  Test Drives from ‘Web – Dealer’ decreased by 1.3% and ‘Direct’ Test Drives fell by 3.2%.  As with Leads, the ‘Web – Classified’ source again bucked the trend an increased by 1.6% in December.

​Mirroring the slowdown in Leads and Test Drives, dealers recorded fewer sales across the board in December 2018.  ‘Web – Dealer’ continues to be the number one source of sales despite decreasing by 4.7% from the previous month.  ‘Web – Classified’ decreased by 7.2% and sales attributed to ‘Repeat’ customers also fell by 12.9% in December.

​Make sure to check back in February to see whether the volume of leads bounced back in January 2019.  To find out more about the range of reports available via AutoPlay contact us on sales@autoplay.co.nz or +64 9 361 1505.