Performance engagement software company Arcade is now an affinity partner with the American International Automobile Dealers Association, with the association’s leader saying the partnership could help shift the dealer’s culture to address a younger buyer base.
Arcade’s product is designed to strategically motivate, engage and incentivize employees through gamification.
AIADA members through the partnership will receive exclusive pricing, discounts on services, content and thought-leadership tools based around boosting employee motivation, interaction, and retention.
Arcade said the partnership will offer a tool for automotive dealerships to help increase revenue in sales and service. The tool could also help streamline communication, increase engagement and employee retention, improve customer service, and increase its dealerships’ sales.
Connecting with the dealership’s CRM and DMS, Arcade said it transforms set KPIs and business goals into real-time gaming incentives designed to motivate employees around actions and behaviors that the company said could “move the needle” for their dealership.
Team leaders can offer various departmental contests and incentives as goals are met. That can help dealers increase efficiency and productivity, and those dealers can reward sales teams, BDC teams, and service advisors.
“No other industry partner of AIADA offers a solution like Arcade,” Andre Riley, Arcade’s chief revenue officer and head of growth said in a news release.
Riley also said, “As automotive dealerships struggle to keep employees challenged, engaged, and hitting KPIs, Arcade brings a solution that makes work fun again, driving employee motivation, recognition, and performance within your teams.”
Further discussing the younger buyer base, AIADA president and chief executive officer Cody Lusk said those younger buyers might have different expectations in the area of interaction with automobile dealerships.
“With a rapidly changing automotive retail marketplace, Arcade can assist dealers by effectively incentivizing employees with a gamification platform that keeps the team engaged and focused on goals,” Lusk said. “Having access to this new platform gives our members the ability to recognize good employee behavior and celebrate accomplished goals and achievements.”
Buying and selling apps OfferUp and letgo, which feature marketplaces of products that include cars, said on March 25 that they intend to combine their U.S. businesses.
The companies say the deal will create a mobile marketplace that supports more than 20 million monthly active users.
Through the deal, users could benefit from nationwide shipping and advanced trust and safety programs, and automotive dealers could gain access to a larger potential customer base, according to the companies.
In a news release, the companies said they use innovations making it easier for their communities to buy and sell. The companies also said they are consistently ranked as top shopping apps in the App Store and Google Play Store.
Also with the deal, the new company will be well-positioned to tap into a larger share of America’s online classifieds sector, OfferUp and letgo said.
The deal gives OfferUp and letgo users access to a larger network of buyers and sellers, and that will increase their trading opportunity.
The deal is subject to regulatory approval.
“My vision for OfferUp has always been to build a company that helps people connect and prosper,” OfferUp chief executive officer Nick Huzar said.
Huzar continued, “We’re combining the complementary strengths of OfferUp and letgo in order to deliver an even better buying and selling experience for our communities. OLX Group has unparalleled expertise and clear success with growing online marketplace businesses, so they’ll be a great partner as we continue to build the widest, simplest, and most trustworthy experience for our customers."
“letgo and OfferUp have always shared the same core vision for how large America’s secondhand economy can become — harnessing tech innovation to bring about an extraordinarily positive impact on consumers’ wallets and also on the environment,” letgo co-founder Alec Oxenford said.
Oxenford continued, “Bringing our apps together moves us much closer to that vision.”
OfferUp, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., will operate the combined businesses. Huzar will continue serving as OfferUp chief executive officer and chairman of the board.
The agreement includes a new $120 million investment round led by OLX Group and existing OfferUp investors. letgo’s business outside of North America will remain separately owned and operated as part of OLX Group, which is the classifieds business of Prosus and letgo’s majority investor. Oxenford will join the OfferUp board and also serve as senior adviser to OLX Group and Prosus.
Letgo said in an Auto Remarketing article late last year that its footprint in the used-vehicle market has seen strong growth since it launched in 2015, stating at that time that its users had listed 25 million cars for sale, mostly in the United States. According to the article, letgo added 12 auto inventory, marketing and live chat partners to its letgo PRO platform, which it said would further simplify the process of buying and selling cars.
Auto dealership digital marketing agency DealerOn is the latest bronze-level national corporate partner of the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association.
DealerOn chief executive officer Ali Amirrezvani said his company was excited “to leverage the power of our platform to help independent dealers find the same success we’ve been able to bring to franchise dealers across the country.”
DealerOn is a digital marketing technology and service provider that offers products such as websites, SEO and digital advertising to U.S. and Canadian car dealerships.
The company says those products are all powered by “innovative technology and a commitment to concrete data and customer service.”
Brothers and entrepreneurs Ali and Amir Amirrezvani founded Maryland-based DealerOn, and the company says its approach “prizes empirical data and provides its clients total transparency.” The company also has offices in Michigan and Texas, serving more than 4,000 large and small dealerships throughout the United States.
“Our focus has always been on educating dealers and helping them not only increase their website leads but more important, sell more cars,” Ali Amirrezvani said in a news release.
Amirrezvani continued, “We couldn’t be more excited to leverage the power of our platform to help independent dealers find the same success we’ve been able to bring to franchise dealers across the country. And we’re absolutely thrilled to partner with NIADA.”
DealerOn says its customer satisfaction rating is 99%, and it offers various guarantees. One guarantee is that its websites will generate a 50% increase in leads, and the company says it beats that goal routinely.
“DealerOn brings a high-impact and extensive suite of auto dealer digital sales/marketing solutions to our members, including a high conversion rate website platform and a team of Google SEO gurus who enhance SEO leads by an average of 43%,” said NIADA senior vice president of member services Scott Lilja.
Lilja added that DealerOn will refund the management fee if it does not increase leads from the major search engines by 25% in three months.
“That’s an invaluable, cutting-edge digital sales/marketing resource, since that’s where 80% of shoppers reside today,” Lilja said.
NIADA also recently named professional services firm CLA and automotive lead management software company AutoRaptor as bronze-level national corporate sponsors.
