Car dealers on Autobytel.com drive up lead generation with “form-to-phone”

A “form-to-phone” feature on the vehicle-trading site has helped car dealers increase by 52% the number of qualified leads received after online shoppers fill out automobile information forms, Autobytel says.

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Before the form-to-phone feature from eStara Inc. was available on Autobytel, “our dealers were only contacting about 20% of their Autobytel prospects within the first few hours of when shoppers filled out a form,” says Casey McCaffrey, Autobytel’s director strategic initiatives. “Thanks in large part to eStara Form to Phone, we’re able to connect dealers with hot prospects immediately, often times while the prospect is still at his or her computer and still engaged with that dealer’s offerings.”

Autobytel has been an early tester of the Form to Phone feature, which eStara made commercially available yesterday. The feature automatically connects an online visitor to the dealer sponsoring the information form—or the nearest dealer by ZIP code if the form is sponsored by an automaker—allowing the dealer to instantly reply by either phone or e-mail, whichever the shopper indicates as a preference.

EStara is making the Form to Phone feature available as part of its Click Suite for Local Search product or as a stand-alone application.