Gumtree, South Africa’s biggest classifieds site, has added the ability to track telephonic leads to their existing automotive dashboard. This will allow dealerships to better evaluate the effectiveness of their ads, says Jeff Osborne, head of Gumtree Automotive.
“We know anecdotally that the vast majority of leads that dealerships receive are telephonic – particularly serious buyers – but dealerships have no idea where these leads are coming from. Professional sellers that are making use of our platform weren’t always sure whether or not the lead was coming from their Gumtree ads or not, which makes it hard to measure the true return on investment…not to mention the effectiveness of the ads themselves,” says Osborne.
“We are pleased to say that the new Call Tracking feature will resolve that issue so that dealerships will know exactly how effective their ads are and be able to employ best practices and key learnings.”
The feature will automatically be available to all existing Gumtree Automotive Inventory Tool (GAIT) customers. “This will be added automatically, and there is no need to take action. After the feature is enabled, the seller will receive a message whenever he or she answers the phone to identify the call as a Gumtree-based lead. Reports will also be made available in the same format as email lead reports and will detail the source phone number, date, time, call status (answered or missed), duration and a recording of every call. These calls can also be downloaded if required.”
Osborne says this is one of many innovations that have seen the light over the last few months. “We are constantly fine-tuning the offering based on dealer feedback and there are several big innovations on the cards still to come.”