 It’s that time of year again – Christmas is rapidly approaching and with it comes the inevitable rush to get all your website changes and email campaigns completed before the end of year break. Although we try our best to get all work done before the Christmas break, it is an extremely busy time for AutoPlay and work is completed in a strictly first come, first served basis. 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; 5pm NZT on Wednesday 12th December, 2018 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.
ARTICLE TAKEN FROM AUTOTALK MAGAZINE - http://autotalk.co.nz/news/ny-marathon-run-family-thrive  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  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. Last week we launched a refresh of the AutoPlay website. The new site does a better job of showcasing the full range of products and features that AutoPlay can offer. In addition there are now separate versions of the site for New Zealand and Australia that include customised content for each country, that more closely reflects our product offerings in each respective market. Feel free to take a look via the links below. We'd love to hear your feedback. For New Zealand customers - https://www.autoplay.co.nz/ For Australian customers - https://www.autoplay.com.au/    Despite reports of August 2018 being a strong month for Sales nationally, for AutoPlay August was a down month with only a slight increase in Test Drives (up 0.3% from July) and a decrease in Leads (down 3.1%) and Sales (down 1.4%).  Despite Leads decreasing in August overall, Leads attributed to dealership websites increased by 1.2% (‘Web – Dealer’ increased by 1.2%). This was offset by Leads from most other sources decreasing across the board, including ‘Web – Classified’ falling by 5.5% from July to August, and Leads supplied by the dealers ‘Brand’ decreasing by 13.3% for the same period.  Test Drives were stable – likely due to the high volume of leads from previous months. Test Drives that originated from dealership website leads increased by 6.0%, and leads from the ‘Brand’ source increased by 5.1%. Conversely, Test Drives attributed to the ‘Direct’ lead source decreased by 11.8%  After an extremely strong July where the top 3 sources of Sales each increased by double digits, less Sales were recorded in August than July 2018. Sales attributed to the ‘Web – Dealer’ source decreased by 7.8%, ‘Repeat’ decreased 5.4% and ‘Web – Classified’ decreased by 6.6%.  Make sure to check in next month to find out the top sources of Leads, Test Drives and Sales for dealerships in September 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.
The weather may have taken a turn for the worse recently, but Lead, Test Drive and Sales activity remains buoyant. Following a strong May, June 2018 saw the number of Leads generated increase by 6.2%, Test Drives increase by 5.9% and Sales by 1.2%.  For the second consecutive month the number of leads from the ‘Web – Dealer’ source decreased – by 1.2% from May to June. As expected with Fieldays activity we experienced a 30.8% increase in the number of leads generated to dealers by their ‘Brand’. After a significant increase in leads from ‘Web Classified’ sources last month, this source again accounted for the 3rd most leads and increased by 5.7% from May to June 2018.  After the volume of Test Drives from the ‘Web – Dealer’ source decreased in May, the source rebounded to increase by 17.3% from month to month. Test Drives attributed to the ‘Direct’ source again occupied second spot and increased by 7.8% from May to June. Test Drives from ‘Brand’ generated leads did increase – by 4.9% - but perhaps less than expected from the higher volume of Fieldays leads. This potentially means that Fieldays activity has been a bit slow to translate to Test Drives, and potentially means we may see a proportionate increase in Test Drives from the ‘Brand’ source in future months.  In June 2018 there was a change in the status quo for Sales tracking. Whilst ‘Web – Dealer’ retained the top spot and increased by 8.9% from May to June 2018. However, whilst in May ‘Repeat’ and ‘Direct’ accounted for the 2nd and 3rd most Sales by source, these sources were overtaken by ‘Web Classified’ (up 27.4% from May 2018) and ‘Brand’ (up 32.9%) respectively.  Make sure to check in next month to find out the top sources of Leads, Test Drives and Sales for kiwi dealers in July. 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.
AutoPlay divides the customer contact lifecycle into ‘Out of Market’ contact nurturing, and ‘In-Market’ Leads requiring active in-dealership Lead management. This philosophy supports a mixed vendor ecosystem and maximises the integration possibilities. Dealer Management Systems (DMS) have been the backbone of dealerships since the inception of automated systems and processes. Over time the footprint of the DMS has increased to cover basic Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) to allow for the integration of many back-office services and applications. In recent years there has been a demand to include simplistic customer contact management as the pricing of full Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been prohibitive. With the availability now of fully functional SaaS based CRM’s off the shelf at low per user price points, and many other low-cost marketing automation tools being accessible. Dealerships are now reverting to using their DMS for solely ERP services and investing in dedicated Lead management, CRM and marketing automation platforms. What Are The Contact Lifecycle Segments?1. Out Of Market Customers Nurturing of customer and prospect contact information remains the domain of CRM applications. This allows for a coordinated customer contact plan and centralising of all marketing activity to ensure prospects receive clear and not conflicting market messages. The interaction between the CRM customer activity and marketing automation is based on customer interaction or engagement, and optimises marketing spend and effectiveness. Once a customer prospect is driven across a predefined threshold a Lead is created and passed to the in-market domain for Lead management. 2. In-Market Customers For in-market customer lead management, time is the key factor in completing a successful conversion to a sale. The customer contact information including all collected background profiling data needs to be clearly made available along with the enquired-on vehicle or request. Based on the premise that people sell to people, the allocation of a lead to a sales agent needs to be efficient in order to allow for a timely first customer contact. Once in the hands of a Sales Agent it is important that there is a defined and adhered to digital ‘Road to Sale’ (RtS) process. 3. ERP Services On the completion of a successful sale the customer journey must remain seamless as the management continues through the BAU business processes. This includes the completion of the finance and delivery processes and the ongoing service requirements being met. As the customer remains active and engaged with the dealership it is important that this information is in turn fed back to the customer nurturing process that is provided to ‘Out of Market’ customers.  API's & Standards One of the major enabling technologies has been the maturing of real-time interfaces and API’s and a number of middleware vendors providing integration development and support. This has seen a rapid move away from the file transfer interfaces of the past. This has greatly opened up the choice of vendors available to provide highly effective ‘Pont Solutions’ to improve overall customer experience and management. Example AutoPlay Deployment AutoPlay Lead Flow Best Practice
Contact Support@autoplay.co.nz to order your own managed services Test Drive Kiosk
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. |
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"AutoPlay Sales Pipeline is a pre-sale lead management tool"