One of the options visible in the Sales Pipeline is 'Send to Remarketing'.  This option is visible when you are viewing an individual lead and allows you to remove from the Lead Dashboard. 

We had the best of intentions when introducing this feature, however we have found that the function is not working in the real world within dealerships.  Instead of doing anything with these leads in the future some dealerships are using the Send To Remarketing function to hide leads without marking as Closed Lost.

The problem with this approach is that these leads are never closed, never followed up and eventually become Overdue and Stalled - rendering such reports like the Health Check useless, and many customers are falling through the cracks.

As such in the upcoming 17.3 release for iOS and Desktop we are removing the 'Send to Remarketing' option.  Additionally we will remove the filter on the lead Dashboard to 'Show Remarketing'.

The vast majority of these leads are stalled and as such any that are under the 'Remarketing' flag and are either Overdue or Stalled will be Closed Lost.  Any that are under the 'Remarketing' flag that are scheduled for the Upcoming or Future date range will remain open in your Dashboard.

This will happen automatically when we release our 17.3 version.  You will be reminded a week before this occurs - currently scheduled for approx. the first week of October.  For dealers with complicated set ups or with more than 50 leads flagged as 'Remarketing' we will call to work through the process of tidying these up.  We recommend that you check your Dashboard for any leads that are sitting in 'Remarketing' by clicking on the search icon, and selecting the 'Show Remarketing' option. 

Instead of squirrelling away your hard earned leads in Remarketing it is better to actually remarket to your customers.  The new Live Leads processed we recently introduced provides our customers with a much better approach to be able to identify which customers are worth future follow up.  The new Live Leads process enables you to build a recipient list from your captured leads on the fly, and remarket to them via Live Leads.  When those recipients interact with your email you can automatically schedule follow up which will be added to your Dashboard.  To find out more about Live Leads read our step-by-step How To Guide​ HERE

If you have any questions about the process please contact Support@autoplay.co.nz to discuss.

A few weeks ago, we released an update to our Sales Pipeline Reporting.  Included in this release were a few key improvements to make digesting and understanding your Sales Pipeline usage and performance easier. 

1. Multi Select New, Demo Used Filters
Previously it was only possible to filter by New Vehicles, Demo Vehicles or Used Vehicles one at a time - meaning if you wanted to refine your report by just 'New & Demo' you had to run the report twice.  The latest release allows you to tick or untick multiple options under the 'LISTING TYPES' menu option in reporting.autoplay.co.nz

2.  Multi Select Available at Brand/Group Level
We also introduce the ability for Brands/Groups to utilise the multi select filters.  This means that head offices can now refine the reports they have access to by choosing multiple filters - instead of being forced to either run for all filters or a single filter at a time.  The multi select options allow the brand to multi select Dealerships and Models - giving greater control over the data they extract (Note - filters can only be run one a a time i.e. Filter by a selection of Dealerships OR a selection of Models - not both at the same time).

3.  Export to CSV
Reporting.autoplay.co.nz also now allows users to export files to CSV.  Just under the 'Run Report' option there is now an 'Export Report' option on all of the reports (excluding Floor Log TV Report).  Clicking on this report will email you a CSV file to the email address you are logged in on.  This CSV can then be opened in Excel and will include the raw data that was used to build the report.  The exported report will be built based on whatever data is currently filtered to.

4.  New Wish List Report
A new Wish List Report is now available in reporting.autoplay.co.nz under Select Report.  The Wish List Report provides an overview of the top 5 models your customers are looking for, as well as the average price range of the vehicles they are interested in.  Underneath the graphs the report also features a table including all the Wish Lists created over the reporting period. 

It is now possible to add  'Sale', 'New' and 'Under Offer' banners to your AutoPlay Vehicle Display Pages.  As pictured below, these small banners appear on the Search Page on your AutoPlay Vehicle Display Page.

The banners are also displayed on the RHS of the image when you view the Detail page for an individual vehicle.  These are positioned in the top corner of your image to avoid any clashes with any watermarks/logos that might be getting applied to your listings.

Adding the banner is easy.  Just find the vehicle you want to add the banner to in your AutoPlay Studio account.  Under the 'OPTIONS' header you'll find a range of check boxes available.

• To add the 'NEW' banner click on the 'New' check box (note this signifies a new vehicle and has an effect on your ORC display)
  
• To add the 'SALE' banner click on the 'Specials' check box
• To add the 'UNDER OFFER' banner click on the 'Under Offer' check box

Please note you will first need to have this feature enabled on your AutoPlay account.  To request set up please email support@autoplay.co.nz to request.

After a drop in the total number of captured leads in July, August bounced back with an increase in the number of leads of 12.2%.  Last month we saw increases in Test Drives & Sales of over 5%.  In August Test Drives and Sales continued to rise, but by smaller margins with Test Drives increasing by 3.7% and Sales increasing by 2.3%.

The usual suspects occupied the top 3 lead sources again in August, with ‘Web – Classified’ continuing to increase as the main source of leads post Fieldays.  A lot more leads were received from dealership website with a significant 50% increase from this source – a great sign of dealers focussing on marketing to drive customers back to their websites.  Last month we saw a massive drop in the number of leads referred by Brands.  This was due to the unusually high volume of leads generated by brands around Fieldays returning to normal levels.  In August ‘Brand’ rebounded as a lead source to occupy the third spot and increase by 28.6% from the previous month.

In July ‘Web – Classified’, ‘Brand’ and ‘Direct’ were the top 3 sources of Test Drives – although ‘Brand’ and ‘Direct’ were on a downward trend.  In August, both of the Web Sources increased dramatically and ‘Brand’ slipped to third.

‘Web – Classified’ regained the top spot for source of Sales in August – increasing by 72% as some other sources dropped off.  As with Leads and Test Drives, Sales from the ‘Web-Dealer’ source also increased significantly.  Sales from ‘Repeat’ business continued to occupy one of the top 3 spots in August and increased by 16.5% from July 2017.

Make sure to check back in next month’s issue of Autotalk to see how kiwi dealerships fared in September 2017. 

Matt Darby works for AutoPlay who specialise in pre-sale lead management tools.  To find out more about AutoPlay services email sales@autoplay.co.nz or visit www.autoplay.co.nz