EV Sales recently launched in NZ to give dealers and buyers alike a dedicated place for all things Electric Vehicles.

As an AutoPlay customer we've made it easy to advertise on EVSales.nz directly via the AutoPlay Studio.  Once you are signed up your Electric vehicles will automatically be sent to EV Sales via our API - simply load your listings as per normal and your EV listings will appear on the site.
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EV Sales were recently an exhibitor at EV World South and report that they experienced overwhelmingly positive feedback from the public, saying how great the idea was and confirming the need for a central place for buying EVs.

Interest, site traffic, and listings are growing, and its the place you want to be!

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

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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Despite dealership websites overtaking Trade Me as the number one source of Leads, Test Drives and Sales – Trade Me is still NZ’s number one third party listing site and accounts for a reasonable portion of a dealerships online leads. 

The AutoPlay Support Team frequently gets calls from dealerships confused about why their listings have not made it to Trade Me.  Below is a quick checklist of things you need to know to make sure your listings get on to Trade Me first time, every time.

·         The listing must have a Year, Make, Model, Price, Transmission and Body Type
·         The listing Transmission and Body Type need to match Trade Me’s list of pre-defined options.  Trade Me do have a mapping table to map different Transmission or Body Types, but the further from their defined list the higher chance your listing will be frozen
·         The listing Make and Model must match Trade Me’s list of Makes and Models – if your Model doesn’t exist then you need to contact Trade Me to request it is added
·         The listing Body Type selected must match the Make/Model – you cannot load a Hilux as a Hatchback
·         The listing requires 1 of Chassis, VIN or Rego
·         The listing must not reuse a stock number
·         The listing Odometer cannot go backwards
·         The listing cannot contain special HTML characters
·         The listing cannot have any contact info/url’s etc anywhere within the listing – this includes on the images
·         The listing must have at least 1 image
·         If using Trade Me Super Feature the listing must have at least 3 photos

Follow these basic rules and you should find all your listings make it on to Trade Me at the first attempt and don’t get frozen.  If any of these rules are not followed it can cause delays with the listing making it to be live on the site, as Trade Me staff will need to get involved to review the listing.
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AutoPlay offer a full range of Data Management services including populating stock pages on your website and exporting to third party portals.  If you have any questions about AutoPlay’s data management services contact us on +64 (09) 361 1505.

At AutoPlay we've always been all about integration.  Wherever possible we've looked to integrate our AutoPlay Sales Pipeline with other 3rd Party systems such as DMS and CRM  systems, through to vehicle checks via MotorWeb, CarJam and Motorcentral.

Provident Insurance are 100% kiwi owned and driven - just like AutoPlay.  So when the opportunity came up for AutoPlay to integrate with Provident Insurance it proved to be a no brainer.  For mutual customers that use Provident Insurance as their insurance provider, salespeople are able to tap a button to easily push info across to the Provident Insurance system - jump starting the Insurance Application process.  

Once complete, salespeople can jump into the Provident Insurance system without having to retype all the customer or vehicle information already captured in AutoPlay.  From there, it's a simple case of completing any information required by Provident that is not able to be supplied via AutoPlay in order to finish the insurance application.

1.  If you are already a customer and want to take advantage of this feature then the first step is to contact AutoPlay via support@autoplay.co.nz to request set up.  The purpose of this email is to give AutoPlay written permission to send customer and lead data to Provident Insurance. 

2.  Once we have permission, AutoPlay will contact Provident Insurance and request your unique Provident ID Number.

3.  Once supplied by Provident, AutoPlay will set up API access using your unique ID as the key to send data from AutoPlay Sales Pipeline to Provident Insurance.

4.  Once the export record is set up as per (3), the Provident Insurance option will be visible within the FINANCE & INSURANCE button.

5.  Once the button is visible when you wish to start a new Insurance application with Provident Insurance just open the lead with the customer who wishes to apply and click Finance & Insurance>Provident Insurance.

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As we have mentioned in the PlayBook's recent issues the AutoPlay development team are busy rebuilding the Desktop Studio as a fully responsive HTML5 app - meaning users will be able to access the AutoPlay Studio via different browsers like Chrome, Firefox etc as well as via Android or Windows smartphones and tablets. 

We are now almost 10 weeks into our HTML5 rebuild and making decent progress.  To date the focus has been building the infrastructure - things like logins and security, navigation menus and account structures.  Although extremely necessary to the success of the project these are not the glamour screens we want to shout from the rooftops about.

We've recently completed the listings screen - a central pillar to the whole AutoPlay Studio.  The new listing screen will feature...

• Scrollable image gallery similar to current iOS App 
• Collapsible sections that can be collapsed to make scrolling up and down the screen easier
• Simplified menus - was 2 separate menus, now 1!
• Enhanced presentation of listings including graphical display of Fuel Saver

Check out the image gallery below to see our progress.  The project is massive so at this stage we are unable to provide an ETA of when this will be released (sorry!).  However, rest assured we are putting in as much resource as possible without sacrificing day-to-day business and we will keep you updated as we move closer to our goal.

It costs a lot to list your vehicles online.  When a new listing is received into stock by a dealership the first instinct is to get that listing online as soon as possible.  For a lot of dealerships this means getting the old Lumix out and getting those photographs onto Trade Me, Driven, Autotrader and the dealership website quick smart - even if the listing has yet to add any Features and Comments.

This isn't necessarily the wrong idea - the sooner the listing is online the sooner the leads can start rolling in right?  However recently AutoPlay has been growing into the Australian market and have noticed a definite trend that perhaps has some learnings for the kiwi market as well.

In NZ although some channels charge per lead, the majority of 3rd party sites charge a monthly subscription instead.  In Australia the model is quite different with Car Sales.com.au as their main source of online leads.  With Car Sales.com.au the dealerships are charged for each lead they receive.  Possibly because of this they are far more conscious than kiwi dealers of working their current "in market" leads before paying to list online - and with good reason.

Imagine you pay $50 per lead from an online portal.  For each listing you put on line you are generating an average of 5 leads over the listings lifetime (and this is a very conservative figure in the Aus market).  This will cost the dealership an average of $250 per listing that comes directly off their bottom line.

Instead what Australian dealerships have been focussing on is using all of the contacts in their pre-sale database (from captured leads) and retargeting these customers BEFORE they actually list the vehicle online.  If we look at the chart below we can see a lot of money spent on marketing from various sources which then ultimately converts down to about 40% of leads into Test Drives and 20% into Sales.  This leaves 80% which have made themselves known to the dealership as being "In Market".  A new Mazda 6 arrives in stock or is traded in?  Great, just identify all the customers that came in on a Mazda 6 or similar and call them.  If you make a sale you don't have to ever list the vehicle online and you've saved yourself days of waiting and at least $250.  If you don't make a sale then list the car online and all you've lost is a day or two and you still have a potential customer who will appreciate that you thought of them.  Easy right?

Where the breakdown sometimes occurs is that often it is difficult for the salesperson or manager to identify which potential customers might be interested in the new Mazda 6.   Australian dealerships have the same challenges as NZ dealers - in the vast majority of cases the sales team is only loading to the DMS the 20% that actually make it to a sale. 

Although early days in the Aus market for us, with AutoPlay Sales Pipeline we are finding that because of this differing approach we are finding some positive reception to what AutoPlay are doing.  Some of the Sales Pipelines main strengths are that it is incredibly easy to use, mobile friendly and digitises things like TD and Appraisal Forms  - all of which contributes to more customers being captured more accurately - we have seen in kiwi dealerships where as much as 9x more emails and customer info has been captured when using AutoPlay as opposed to using the DMS alone.

There are primarily 2 ways that dealerships can tap into their "in market" leads.  The first is on an individual basis.  The Sales Pipeline allows you to search on the Dashboard for whoever has enquired on certain models.  When you have access to a similar model it's super easy to find those that enquired previously - particularly so when they are often captured automatically for 3rd party sites.  Users can also canvas their "In Market" leads by accessing the Listing Summary screen from the Dashboard.

Before deleting the sold listing simply find it via the Listing Summary and you will be able to see a full list of who enquired on the listing, as well as what stage they got to in the road-to-a-sale and the salesperson looking after them - making recycling these leads into another similar vehicle a doddle!

Depending on the time available a similar (if less personal) result can be achieved by utilising the built in Live Leads function available to all Sales Pipeline users.  We have gone on at length about Live Leads in this PlayBook, but if you are not familiar with it you can read more here.  Live Leads enables dealerships to target based on their previously captured leads any customers that enquired on a particular Make/Model (among other criteria).  They can then send unique video emails to these recipients with a range of vehicle videos on them - designed to test whether the customer is still "in market".  If a recipient watches a video the Sales Pipeline can be set up to trigger an automatic calendar reminder to contact this customer - thus taking out a lot of the hard work required to gauge the temperature of customers who enquired but didn't purchase.

With the Dashboard, Listing Summary and Live Leads AutoPlay makes it very easy to retarget and recycle previous leads onto similar listings.  Although the main sources for electronic leads in NZ do not charge per lead there is still much that can be learnt from this process.  Whilst kiwi dealers should still aim to get their new listings online as soon as possible, they should also follow the discipline of checking their potential "in market" leads simultaneously to give themselves as much opportunity as possible.

The rebuild of our Desktop Studio has now been going 4 weeks and we've made some great progress towards getting the structure and skeleton of the new system built out.  Over the coming months we'll continue to update you all with our progress.  For the moment check out the highlights from the first month of development.

1.  NEW LOGIN SCREEN & PASSWORD CONTROL
The first step for this project was to create the basic structure that will allow our users to login.  We've rebuilt the login page on the new application to work with a wider range of browsers and devices.  That means that when the new application is released users will be able to login using IE11+, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari (Mac &  iOS), Opera browsers instead of just Internet Explorer.  They would also be able to login using Android tablets and smartphones and not just Desktop and iOS.

2.  PASSWORD RESET EMAIL
We've restyled the password reset email to match all AutoPlay branding, as well as cleaned up the email design and content to help users who have multiple accounts know which password they are resetting.

3.  RESET PASSWORD WEB PAGE
Like the password reset email we've rebranded the Reset Password web page to bring it in line with the look and feel of all the other AutoPlay applications.  The new page also features a count of the number of characters entered, as well as a rating on the strength of your new password - all designed to make it more user friendly for users resetting their passwords.

4.  RED APPLICATION HEADER MENU
We've restyled the header menu to work on all devices.  We've also created a new 'Profile' menu located at the top right corner of the screen.  The 'Profile' menu features some commonly used screens such as My Details and the Logout button.  We've made these changes to make these screens more accessible to our customers.

5.  MAIN LHS NAVIGATION MENU
We've also rebuilt our main navigation menu as part of this project.  If using a smartphone or tablet the menu will automatically snap shut to give users the maximum screen space, whilst on Desktop screen sizes the navigation menu will remain open to take advantage of the extra screen real estate available.  Additionally when each section is opened (i.e Emails, Contacts or Sales Pipeline) it will automatically collapse the other sections - saving a lot of scrolling from top to bottom of the screen.