Once you have signed up to list on The Dealership Network they will contact AutoPlay to enable access to your listings.  The Dealership Network (TDN) have hooked up to AutoPlay’s listing API so the moment you load a listing, it will be live on www.thedealershipnetwork.co.nz – with no need to manually select listings for export.

The Dealership Network introduces a completely new concept to help users find their next vehicle. With their Feature Finder they provide an alternative to the standard make, model, year search criteria, allowing their users to search by, feature, function, technology and other criteria to find all the makes and models from around the country that suit what they want from their next vehicle all from one simple search enquiry.
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The Dealership Network is proud to only work with dealership listings, to give their users the trust and confidence when looking at any listing on their website. By integrating with AutoPlay they enable their users to "Book a test drive" or "Request a call back" that feeds straight into your lead API, connecting their users with your dealership and stock. The Feature finder search function incorporates the needs based selling approach onto an online platform. Allowing users to search from a combination of requirements and being able to recommend the specific makes and models that suit their needs. The refinement feature then makes it even easier to narrow these results for the user to find exactly what they are looking for

AutoPlay are at the forefront of delivering innovative digital tools that are designed to enhance our customers day-to-day activities - whether it be through helping our Dealers become more efficient or by assisting them to drive a higher level of sales performance chances are we’ve got a solution that works for your Dealership.

We’ve been working closely with the team at MotorWeb - Trademe’s vehicle data business to develop a more tailored solution to support the vehicle appraisal process. Recognising not all vehicles are subsequently traded Sales Consultants and Managers have asked for a more targeted report to help them carry out appraisals.
 
Both AutoPlay and MotorWeb are committed to promoting best practice within the automotive industry. Our workflows are designed to protect both Dealers and their customers. MotorWeb’s reports help you meet both your legal obligations and financial compliance checks, leaving nothing to chance.
 
The new Appraisal Report will provide your sales team valuable insights at the very start of the process, upfront when you need to engage in great customer conversations.

How’s the Appraisal Report integrated within AutoPlay? ​

If you are currently using the MotorWeb VIR service in NZ via AutoPlay you will notice it change over automatically on 5/12/18.  If you do not currently use this service within AutoPlay you can sign up via support@motorweb.co.nz.  There is no additional charge from AutoPlay to use this function within the Sales Pipeline. 

What’s the next step if we decide to purchase the Vehicle?
 
The MotorWeb Vehicle Information Report (VIR) will always be required to comprehensively check the vehicle before making any payment, as it checks a whole range of financial conditions including legal ownership, registered finance securities and will soon form part of your obligations under The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT). The VIR is only available through the MotorWeb Dashboard or if we’re integrated within your Dealer Management System (DMS).
 
To find out more about this service or sign up, please contact the MotorWeb Dealer Support team on 0800 668 679 or email support@motorweb.co.nz
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​​​To ensure your website changes or email campaigns are completed before the end of the year you need to ensure you submit all your requests by the following deadline;

AutoPlay will officially shut down for the year on Friday 21st December at 3pm.  The office will be reopening at 8am on Monday 7th January, 2019.  Over the official shutdown period you will be able to email support@autoplay.co.nz for any emergencies.  

After a down month in September, October 2018 saw a slight bounce back in Sales throughout dealers using AutoPlay for pre-sales lead management – with Sales increasing by 1.0% from September 2018 to October 2018. 
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However, October was a strong month for Leads and Test Drives which increased by 5.6% and 5.5% respectively – giving hope for a successful November.

Test Drives attributed to dealer websites rebounded from a drop in September to increase by 14.1% from September to October. 
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After becoming the second most popular source of Test Drives in September, ‘Direct’ firmed even further as the second most important source of Test Drives by increasing by 12.7% - proving that in this age of electronic and telephony leads that walk in Test Drives still account for a reasonable portion of the dealers Test Drives.  The third most popular source of Test Drives is still ‘Brand’ with a slight increase of 1.5%.

Make sure to check in next month to find out the top sources of Leads, Test Drives and Sales for dealerships in November 2018.  Lead Source reports are just one of the reports available to dealerships and OEM’s who use AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  To find out more about the range of reports available via AutoPlay contact us on sales@autoplay.co.nz or +64 9 361 1505.
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LIVE LEADS
AutoPlay Sales Pipeline includes the built-in functionality to send video eDM’s to your captured leads.  Sending Live Leads is integrated with the Sales Pipeline Dashboard and allows dealerships to target specific types of leads that they have already captured in the past.
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1.       Capture your leads as per business-as-usual
2.       At the end of the month review your leads and decide on who you want to target
3.       Click on LIVE LEADS then click on the + CREATE NEW LIVE LEADS EMAIL button on Desktop or iOS
4.       Choose whether you want to manually set follow up, or use your default follow up settings (i.e create a calendar follow up automatically if a recipient watches X videos)
5.       Select your Live Leads template and who you want to send the email from
6.       Write a Subject Line and an intro message if required, and click SAVE
7.       Select your Listings.  Only listings with videos are included so if your desired listing does not have a listing go into the Listings screen and build a video via the burger menu>Listing>Rebuild MP4
8.       Click on BUILD RECPIENT LIST to build a list of recipients for your email.  You can select from any combination of leads including targeting only those that enquired on certain make/models, or those that only made it to Test Drive
9.       Once you have built your list click SAVE and you can VIEW RECORDS to see who your email will be sent to.  Your recipient list will be built from the leads you have previously captured.
10.    PREVIEW and SEND your email
11.    Once sent, wait a couple of hours and then you can click on RESULTS to view which recipients have opened the email, and watched videos.  You can click on the VIEWED column to see which individual vehicles they viewed within the email
12.    If you have your follow up set to automatic, AutoPlay will automatically create follow up calendar events against anyone that meets your follow up threshold – i.e. they watched at least 3 videos.
13.    If you prefer to manually control your follow up you can select the leads you want to follow up with and click on the CREATE NEW LEAD button.  This will create a new lead if your lead is closed, or add a calendar event if your lead is still open
14.    Follow up your hot leads via the Dashboard
15.    Next month, rinse and repeat.  It is recommended that you don’t contact the same recipient more than once a month.  Practically it is easier to create smaller, target groups that give your sales team a better chance of actually following up individually with recipients who interact with your email
 
You can read more about Live Leads here https://www.theplaybook.co.nz/playbook/coming-soon-integrated-live-leads​

IN MARKET LEADS
As well as using Live Leads to qualify who to follow up with, you can also use In Market Leads to identify potential customers that might be interested when you lower the price of a vehicle, or a new vehicle comes into stock.

1.       Capture your leads as per business-as-usual – making sure to qualify them to a vehicle
2.       Every week check your IN MARKET LEADS screen.  The In Market Leads screen is set up to show listings that have been recently added, or listings that have had a recent price decrease.  There is a default setting for your dealership, but you can create your own preference using the PREFERENCES button
3.       The In Market Leads screen will automatically return the Leads that have enquiries on similar cars to your new/price dropped listings.  A Lead is identified as being similar based on the In Market Leads settings you have in PREFERENCES
4.       It is recommended that you play with these settings to ensure you get a good balance between returning enough leads to follow up with, and returning too many leads to reasonably do anything with.  A good starting point is match on Make, Model, Year (-1 to + 1) or Price (- $2500 to +$2500).  Alternatively swap out make and model for Body Type if your customers are flexible on models
5.       If you find a matching lead that you feel might be interested in the new/price dropped listing you can click on the record to view the lead, and + to schedule follow up.  In Market Leads creates the perfect opportunity to communicate with leads that might have gone cold, with the introduction of a similar car that may tickle their fancy
 
You can read more about In Market Leads here https://www.theplaybook.co.nz/playbook/introducing-in-market-leads-making-buyer-matching-easy

AutoPlay founder Craig Brown is stepping out of his comfort zone to take on the New York Marathon – all for a good cause.

Brown, whose company provides dealers with digital sales tools, wants to support the family of his friend Mark, who died last year, after a long battle with mental health problems.

Brown’s goal is two-fold – to raise about $25,000 that will help provide Mark’s daughter with an assistance dog, alongside boosting awareness about suicide prevention.

“My mate Mark was an absolute champion,” Brown says.
“He had been suffering from mental health issues, but we all thought he was in a good space.”

Brown says he made the decision to run the marathon at Mark’s funeral, along with fellow friend Isaac Piper.
“I have never been a marathon runner and never seen myself as one.
“But we thought what could we do to support Mark’s family
“We thought ‘stuff it, we’ll run the New York marathon.’
“Running the marathon means we can make it an annual event.”

Training for the event has been tough on Brown’s knees after years of martial arts participation, with 24km the longest distance he’s managed so far.
“But all the pain will be worth it if we can raise enough money to get the assistance dog for Mark’s daughter,” he says.

Brown and Piper are also covering their own entry costs and flights.
“Every cent we raise will go to the family.”

If people are struggling with their mental health, Brown says they shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help.
“Once it gets hold of you, it can be pretty relentless.“
“There’s lots of support networks out there for people. It’s quite a big step to go to a support group.
“Or if you don’t want to go to a support group, talk to your mates.”

WATCH A SHORT VIDEO ABOUT CRAIGS TRAINING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d76D-3yu90&feature=youtu.be
 
TO DONATE TO THE CAUSE VISIT THE GIVE A LITTLE PAGE 
https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/marathon-for-marks-family-and-mental-health

To find out more about EV Sales visit the site at https://evsales.nz/
To register your interest in advertising on EV Sales visit https://evsales.nz/account/register
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​Did you know you can use your iPad or iPhones built in dictation feature to record what you want to say, and the iPad/iPhone will automatically convert your words into text.  For those of us that are slow typists, this feature can be quite useful as it makes compiling emails within the Sales Pipeline even easier than it already is with Standard Responses and our built in video tool.

Dictation won't work on every field within the Sales Pipeline - for example Customer Email and Customer Mobile.  You'll know if you can dictate if when you open the keyboard to type you see a microphone icon - as pictured above.  The function is available in the Notes fields on leads, and on the Messages field when crafting a Email Response.  Simply hit the microphone icon and start talking.  You will notice that your words begin to appear on screen as iOS converts them to text.  From our experiments we've found this feature to be quite accurate across a range of diverse kiwi and aussie accents, however remember to speak slowly and clearly for best results.

If you are not seeing the microphone icon on your keyboard then you will need to activate this function.  To do so;

1.  Open SETTINGS on your iPad or iPhone Home screen.
2. Tap GENERAL.​
3.  Tap KEYBOARD.
4. Tap on the On/Off toggle next to ENABLE DICTATION.  Green means Dictation is on, grey mean it is off.

If you want to find out more about the AutoPlay Email Response Tool contact support@autoplay.co.nz with any questions or to arrange training.

As many of you will be eagerly awaiting, we've been rebuilding our existing Silverlight based Desktop Studio in HTML5.  This will give our customers huge benefits including the ability to run the Desktop on any browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge, Safari etc), as well as on any device (iOS, Android, Windows tablet and devices).  This obviously means that installs are easier, and it becomes a lot more flexible for our users to jump on and manage leads at any time.

We've been working diligently on this project on/off from January, but it's been a while since we last updated all our customers on our progress towards completing this massive project.  Where possible we are pumping as much resources into this project as possible, and we are making good progress.  At present we are working on the most important part of the system - the Dashboard of the Sales Pipeline.

As you can see from the screenshot above we are making good progress on this.  The Dashboard is much faster loading and has had a few subtle improvements, whilst still maintaining all the amazing features our customers are used to.

The HTML5 version of the AutoPlay Studio for Desktop is our number one development priority.  At this stage we are hoping to get an early release BETA version out to selected customers at the end of Q1.  If this changes then we will advise you as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about the HTML5 version of the AutoPlay Studio then please feel free to email matt@autoplay.co.nz with your questions.