Using AutoPlay Sales Pipeline At Events

Events play an important role for many marketers.  According to Lead Liaison (another overseas company in this space), 58% of marketers have used an event lead management solution or lead capture tool at a live event.  Despite this only 34% of marketers use new referrals, quality of leads and sales closure to measure event ROI (Marketing Charts 2013).
 
In addition, over 80% of marketers cannot quantify the data they collect during events, yet 46% of marketers view generating leads as the main reason to attend events and trade shows.  Most damningly of all, some sources suggest 75% of all leads are never followed up with after an exhibition.
 
When you consider that some exhibitors are using paper forms to capture their potential leads at events these figures start to make sense.  Inevitably it’s a lot of work to type out all the details on the form into a spreadsheet, and then distribute that spreadsheet out to their dealer network – not to mention chase up individual dealers and salespeople to see where they got to following up their leads.
 
In the last few years AutoPlay has been working with a number of brands to improve the efficiency of their lead capture at various events, and more importantly making their follow up considerably easier.  There are several approaches on how AutoPlay can be utilised at events to help capture more leads;
 
1.  “Cold walk ins, light touch approach”
WHAT?
Collect leads via a very simple web form that feeds leads into your Sales Pipeline Dashboard
PROS
+ Can design your own custom form especially for this event – making it as simple as you need it to be
+ Web form is a one-way push to Sales Pipeline and as such can work much better when internet is patchy
+ Don’t need the Sales Pipeline on-site.  Can access the web form on any device that has an internet connection
CONS
-  Doesn’t allow for any customer lookup – meaning there is no opportunity to prequalify event attendees
- Cannot link a database to pre-event marketing activity
 

2.  “Pre-qualified, integrated marketing approach”
WHAT?
In conjunction with marketing activity prior to the event you can pre-qualify leads that are likely to attend the event.  These leads can be sent from a CRM to AutoPlay Sales Pipeline – allowing salespeople to lookup pre-qualified leads during the event.
PROS
+  Ties in with pre-event marketing to ensure ROI tracking is linked from start to finish
+  Pre-qualified customers are further down the decision channel and this streamlines the experience during the event
+  Minimises chances of duplicate customers or duplicate leads
+  Enables salespeople to use built in tools such as database lookups, business card and drivers licence scanning
CONS
-  Looking up a database of thousands of leads can require a reliable internet connection – something that is not always guaranteed at events and trade shows
-  More pre-event work required to pre-qualify leads
-  No ability to provide customers with a simplified lead capture form – leads entered manually at the event must be manually entered to the Sales Pipeline
 
Why capture leads with AutoPlay during events?
The most obvious answer is in order to track ROI of how many potential leads are generated during the event.  However, it goes much further than this.  By capturing leads via AutoPlay dealerships and OEM’s benefit greatly in the weeks and months following;

• Distribution of leads post event to dealerships/salespeople is made easy as all data already exists within AutoPlay
• Follow up of leads is made easier for salespeople as the lead is immediately visible within their own Sales Pipeline Dashboard
• Event leads are mixed right in with their normal day-to-day leads – making ongoing follow up over the coming weeks and months part of their natural day-today routine
• Users don’t need to double handle data – meaning less duplicate leads and customers
• OEMS and managers gain a fuller picture of success from events as they are not just able to see Sales and Test Drives from the event, but also Appraisals or just a measure of activity via Progress or Calendar Events
• Many leads that would likely fall through the cracks are all recorded – further increasing the pool of leads the dealerships have to remarket to

 
If you are interested in using AutoPlay for events talk to matt@autoplay.co.nz about the approach that would be suitable for your dealership/brand.