Overview
Pearl360 executes automated marketing campaigns that compel consumers to sell their vehicle, enables dealers to source inventory well below auction values, and have unparalleled insights on every car buyer in the United States by zip code, current payment amount, payments remaining, and more.
When I joined Pearl Technologies (an automotive incubator in Plano, TX) in 2016, their portfolio consisted of four products, VehicleXchange, Trade-In Concierge, ShowroomXpress, and Proximity. Automobile dealers around the country raved how they were able to acquire inventory, sell inventory, and connect to customers with successful marketing campaigns. However, the need for an easy centralized dashboard that would leverage all of our products into one "white-labeled" product was needed. The idea of Pearl360 was born. Not only would Pearl360 encompass these features, it would also offer Rapid Proactive Messaging and a Pre-Owned inventory CRM. From a business perspective, it was a smart move!
Challenge
How do we take the features of four distinct products and two new products into one? How do we market this new product at NADA 2018 conference and make an impact? How do we market this to new clients and existing clients. How do we help our clients migrate their existing platform over to Pearl360? I had a big job on my hands so I needed to get started!
Solution
First kick-off meeting! Working closely with the Director of Marketing, CIO and CTO, a creative project plan (part of a much bigger project plan) was developed to identify who was responsible for each role, a timeline, and other key components. After we obtained stakeholder approval, I got my team together and briefed them on the project. The NADA 2018 conference in Las Vegas, NV was coming up in 6 months so we didn't have very long. We needed to develop a demo of Pearl360 (including an InVision demo as a backup). This also included:
New Website
Booth Design
Videos
Print Collateral
Digital Media
Social Media
Direct Mail and Packaging
Branding and Identity
First task at hand was to work closely with the developers in order to understand the information architecture of our products. I assigned one of my art directors who had a good grasp of UI/UX to work with me on identifying the data points we needed so that we could rapid-prototype a few concepts. Time was of essence, we only had a month to come up with a design and the HTML for the developers. For a UI design language, we choose Ant Design since we were already using React.
After some long hours, plenty of Starbucks and Taco Bell, we were able to prototype as few designs that displayed a nice breakdown of the user’s day. Salespeople could quickly access their follow-ups for the day or week, email activity, and drill into their sales CRM. As well as access to quick actions such as scheduling follow-ups, creating new marketing campaigns, acquiring vehicles, and generating daily reports. After some A/B testing, we were able to combine everything we learned into one dashboard. Working closely with my off-shore team, we were able to get the HTML development back in time for the back-end developers who were working on the logic, data, and engine of Pearl360. We had 5 months left until NADA.
To see UI/UX project details Click Here to see Behance Project.
In the creative project plan, I had outlined that during the design phase of our new product that we should start on the marketing collateral. I choose two different art directors to work with me who were strong in print, identity, and event planning. Together with the help of an awesome marketing coordinator, we were able to team up with Dream Racing Motorsport and provide a once-in-a-lifetime experience when our clients sign up for a demo of Pearl360. My team created various mailers, emails and digital banner ads promoting Pearl360 and served them across our client base. A landing page was created for clients to sign up when they received a mailer or clicked on a banner ad.
Next was turning our focus on the big mail piece. We wanted this to be a very exclusive mail piece targeting our highest profile clients. So the team put together a few mood boards.
The giant mail piece (box mailer) in particular was a cool one. Cost and production wasn't too bad, there was a bit of delay to get the video cards since we got them offshore. We co-branded the box with Dream Racing and Pearl, created a promo video, and added a video card that plays the video when you open it. The big box mailers were successful. Our sign up rate for Pearl360 demos was much better than expected as the response rate went through the roof. With the help of Dream Racing, it added value to the package. When clients sign up for a demo, they get to drive some of the fastest cars in the world. Who wouldn't want to do that? See Video
Booth design was probably the easiest thing to do. The branding and identity on our clothing and collateral was nice and clean. Pearl had decided to go with the slogan "Pre-Owned Profitability Is Back" on all collateral showcased at NADA to highlight one of the strongest features of Pearl360. With Pearl360, buying cars from consumers was a game changer in the automobile industry. With companies like Carmax leading in this sector of acquiring pre-owned vehicles, Pearl360 now allows dealerships to buy inventory directly from consumers. Our booth displays included video of the many products implemented into Pearl360. These video were also shown to clients during demos.
Powered by Propensity was later scratch and replaced by powered by Pearl360. Both the booth and our staff looked great at NADA. See the results of our booth at NADA 2018.
I like to work in an agile environment. Something I picked up while at The Richards Group working on digital initiatives for Chick-Fil-A, TGIFriday's, and TXU. If you got a good plan and roadmap, handling multiple projects is not as challenging. After handing off the HTML of Pearl360 to the developers, we were able to also turn our attention to the new website. The highlight of the website, from a marketing perspective, focused on "Pre-Owned Profitability" and that Pearl360 helps simplify how dealers acquire and market inventory.
Working with the same designer I used for the Pearl360 UI, we quickly wire-framed, rapid-prototyped, and tested to make sure we formulated the best user experience for the website using the same process I like to implement on all projects. Since joining Pearl Technologies, I made sure my team of designers adopted this process early on. I was confident that they were able to facilitate each project I handed them effectively.
NADA 2018 was a success. Many dealers and OEM's from the United States, Germany, and Japan were intrigued about the new product. Our Pearl360/Dream Racing Event was also a winner! After the conference, we needed to keep the momentum going with our 'post-conference' assets that we had planned on trafficking after the event. The creative project plan included after event videos, print ads (HID), emails, and leveraging our social media with this content. In the automotive industry, out-of-sight is out-of-mind. So for the next three months after the NADA honeymoon, my team created more content on how Pearl360 reduces dealerships reliance of auctions (COX Automotive) and aggregators like TrueCar, Auto Trader, and Cars.com. We went into production on a series of ads and short videos on topics such as Buying Cars From Consumers and monthly updates like Manheim Index September 2018 that were posted our social media channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn. We also leveraged our content through email campaigns to clients that didn't make the event.
Rooftopoly was a concept I created to show how dealerships who were buying from auctions were losing money due to all the fees they have to pay moving inventory around their lot. These High Impact Displays was a light-hearted attempt to show how our biggest competitor, Cox Automotive has an competitive edge on this market.
Cox Automotive's auction "rooftops" bind dealerships into paying auctions fees, transportation fees, and buyer expenses. To me, that sounds like a Monopoly and thus the Rooftopoly concept went into action. At every corner dealerships are paying fees and with Pearl360, buying cars from consumers will allow them to create their own Automated Consumer Vehicle Acquisition channel. Pearl360 is a game-changer! If you like the ROOFTOPOLY ads, check out the RPM HID ads on the Rapid Proactive Messaging project.
Conclusion
It's now been a little over a year since the start of the Pearl 360 concept as a "white-label" software tool. We have seen Pearl360 used by large multi-rooftop dealerships all over the country with great results. The testimonials of our clients couldn't be appreciated more. Since then, an acquisition of CDKGlobal's lot management tool (An auction tool and CRM) is in progress and in less than 3 years we expect to have an even more powerful tool called LOT360.
In addition to the success of Pearl360, we are currently working on a partnership with ALLY bank and CHASE bank in what we hope to leverage their customer base to buy vehicles and financed through the bank.
My team worked very hard and I am very proud of them.