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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​Over the past 12 months you might have noticed our Dealer Solutions Manager Jackie Hingston in your dealership as we’ve made a concerted effort to get around and visit all our customers.  As part of Jackie’s visit she was conducting a review of each dealerships strengths and weaknesses.  However, the good news is that you don’t need to wait until AutoPlay visits you in order to conduct your own self review.
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LEVEL 1:
If you feel like your dealership is below average at utilising the AutoPlay Sales Pipeline then the areas to focus on that will provide you with the most improvement are;

·         Tell us what you did (i.e load leads and update the Progress)
·         Tell us what you are going to do (i.e use the Calendar)

You can measure the number of leads loaded by each salesperson by using the Lead Summary and Conversion or Daily Activity Reports.  Simply open the report, select your date range and open the salesperson section to have the report display by salesperson.

The Sales Pipeline Report will give you a breakdown of whether your dealership is progressing the leads being loaded.  The goal is to ensure that there is not a disproportionate amount of leads sitting at Awaiting Action, and also allows the dealership to identify areas where the leads are stalling through the road-to-a-sale.

The Morning Meeting Report can be used in order to report back on how well the sales team are using the calendar.  It will give managers an instant view of how many calendar events each salesperson has created for the day, and how many are complete.

LEVEL 2:
Once you’ve mastered Level 1, it’s time to advance to Level 2.  Whilst Level 1 focuses on simply what you’ve done and what you are going to do, Level 2 ups the game.  If you can achieve mastery of Level 2 you will be a competent user of AutoPlay Sales Pipeline;

·         Are you using the Test Drive Forms AND making sure to mark your Test Drives as DONE when the customer finishes the Test Drive?
·         Are you using the Appraisal Form and benefitting from the MotorWeb/MotorCentral/CarJam integration?
·         Are you using the Calendar effectively to minimise the amount of leads falling into Overdue or Stalled?
·         Are you using the Morning Meeting Report to help with your daily one-on-ones with the sales team?
·         Are you using the Sales Pipeline Report to identify the areas in the road to a sale where your leads are stalling?
·         Are you using the Lead Summary and Conversion Report to determine your conversion to Test Drive and Sales?

LEVEL 3:
If you can answer yes to all the questions in Level 1 & Level 2 then congrats – you are more than likely using the Sales Pipeline effectively.  That said, it’s time to take it to the next level;

·         Do you enter salesperson Lead, Test Drive and Sales targets and measure against this month and last month using the Daily Activity Performance Report?
·         Do you enter Lead Source and Lead Campaign costs to measure ROI in the Lead Source and Marketing ROI reports within AutoPlay reporting?
·         Have you compared the number of leads at Awaiting Action to your normal Test Drive and Sales conversion figures to determine how much money is sitting in your captured data?
·         Do you take advantage of Live Leads to target the captured leads you have yet to sell to?  Live Leads allows you to build an audience based on your previously captured leads, and automatically schedule follow up based on their interaction with your email.
·         Have you got into In Market Leads yet?  In Market Leads is a great way to immediately link potential interested buyers when the dealership loads new listings or lowers the price of existing listings.

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.

In 2018 dealerships have well and truly grasped the need to capture all their leads to a lead management system.  At AutoPlay we've seen the volume of leads captured by dealerships via the Sales Pipeline increase consistently every year.  With licence and business card scanning and integration with DMS systems it's incredibly easy to capture leads to the AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  In addition, email or other electronic leads are captured automatically either from the website or via our API's - meaning the vast majority of leads are getting captured to your dashboard.

​One area that AutoPlay have never been able to confidently report on is the number of 'Phone' leads received by dealerships.  Capturing these details is entirely reliant on the salesperson being disciplined in their lead capture processes - something that is far easier said than done.  Looking at 5 of the major multi brand distributors AutoPlay works with, we can see that on average less than 7% of all leads are recorded using the Lead Type = Phone each month.

​Anecdotally we've heard in Aussie that the number of phone calls can outstrip the number of walk-in/email/other leads by 20-to-1.  According to ADP Digital in the U.S, call volumes outpace email leads by a more moderate 4-to-1 ratio, and approx. 19% of car buyers make first contact with dealerships via the phone (J.D Power U.S New Autoshopper Study, 2015).  Autotrader/Kelley Blue Book put this figure at 25% of all leads vs 14% emails.

The discrepancy between these figures is significant - which is most likely due to one dealers definition of what constitutes a 'Phone' lead.  This only serves to highlight the difficulty in accurately attributing phone leads, but the underlying fact is that the number of phone leads your dealership receives is almost definitely more than what your sales team is recording in the Sales Pipeline.

​AutoPlay partner with a company called Adtorque Edge - who offer call campaign tracking to AutoPlay customers.  Recently Adtorque began working with a mutual customer based in Auckland.  This dealer receives approx.  1200 leads each month and typically records about 7% of these as 'Phone' leads.   Through working with Adtorque Edge they have begun tracking Google and facebook campaigns across all channels - including attributing the number of phone calls to the dealership to specific marketing campaigns and channels.  What they discovered was that of the approx. 1200 leads, over 27% of the leads were actually phone calls - a fairly large discrepancy from the 7% that are manually being recorded within AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.  

Stats available from Adtorque Edge for the Australian market highlight this same concept.  Through improving the attribution of phone leads Adtorque were able to highlight the incomplete tracking that dealers were experiencing from their online marketing.  The table below highlights that for this customer they believed that Keyword #1 used in Google Adwords was the least effective - with just 17 website conversions recorded and costing AUS$75.47 per acquisition.  This ranked Keyword 1 as the worst ROI of all 6 keywords used at the dealership - comparing poorly with the average cost per acquisition for all marketing campaigns of AUS$59.42.  However this was based purely on website conversion and did not take into account any phone calls generated from those campaigns.  By setting up specific phone numbers for these campaigns Adtorque Edge was able to more accurately attribute how effective the campaign was, finding the Keyword #1 also generated 88 phone calls during the same period - taking the cost per acquisition down to $12.22 and meaning that it now ranked as the most effective keyword based on ROI.

Unfortunately at the present time AutoPlay are unable to automatically capture phone calls as leads within Sales Pipeline.  However despite these technical limitations we still believe there is enormous value for kiwi dealerships in gaining more transparency over their online marketing spend.  If you are interested in finding out more about call attribution from Adtorque Edge please contact sales@autoplay.co.nz and we'll organise them to contact you.

Similar to Test Drives, ‘Web – Dealer’ was the most common source generating Test Drives in April 2018.  Test Drives generated via the ‘Brand’ increased by 4.6%, however dropped to third - being leapfrogged by Test Drives generated from the ‘Direct’ source (up 5.3% from March 2018)

March 2018 is now in the books and as expected we saw a reasonable  bounce back in the number of Leads, Test Drives and Sales recorded by the approx. 80% of franchise dealers that use AutoPlay Sales Pipeline to manage their leads.

Overall there was a 10.5% increase in the number of leads generated in March vs February.  Some of this can be attributed to February being a shorter month, however such an increase still reflects more leads being created each day in March compared to February.  Despite fewer leads generated in February, there were still 16.1% more Test Drives generated in March – highlighting that a significant portion of leads are test driven within the same month as being created.  In addition, Sales increased by 11.9% overall, making March a successful month for franchise dealers.

One of the biggest drivers for the increased number of leads was a significant increase in the amount of leads being generated from Dealer Websites (up 62.4%).  Over the last 6 months we’ve seen a sustained positive trend with lead, test drive and sales activity that can be directly attributed to dealer websites.  This latest increase indicates that ‘Web – Dealer’ is really firming as the best place to get your leads from.  Offsetting the increase in ‘Web – Dealer’ leads was a decrease 22.1% in ‘Brand’ leads and 4.1% in ‘Web – Classified’ leads. 

In March the ‘Web – Dealer’ source was again the number one source of Test Drives – up 9.5% from February 2018.  After decreasing 11.3% in February, the ‘Brand’ source bounced back with 33.9% more Test Drives recorded against the ‘Brand’ source in March than we saw in February.  The ‘Web – Classified’ source also performed well – jumping into the third position with 16.3% more Test Drives from this source in March than February.

The usual suspects occupied the top three sources of Sales in March with ‘Web – Dealer’, ‘Repeat’ and ‘Web – Classified’ occupying the top 3 spots.  However, after a down February where all 3 experienced a drop from the month prior, Sales increased across the board.  ‘Web – Dealer’ experienced a small increase of 1.6%, whilst ‘Repeat’ (up 12.2%) and ‘Web – Classified’ (up 9.5%) experienced larger increases.

Make sure to read the next issue of Autotalk to see what sources of leads were popular in April amongst kiwi dealerships.