Atul Patel: Hey everybody, Atul Patel here at Orbee's Booth at NADA 2024, and I've got Ted Rubin here from ActivEngage, which we're announcing a relationship and integration. And, uh, I'm excited to have you here. And we're going to kind of talk about what you guys do and how we're going to work together. And I'm especially excited about how you're deployed in the marketplace as very different.
And it's, it's sort of broader. And, and there's a lot of exciting use cases from that. So why don't you introduce yourself? What you guys do at ActivEngage and we'll go from there.
Ted Rubin: I'm Ted Rubin. I'm the CEO of ActivEngage. And, essentially, you know, we kind of differentiate ourselves because everybody that we have is live people.
So when you're interacting with us, it's not just, quid pro quo to get definitions or, you know, some specific answers. We're also measuring intent and we're trying to create an emotional response where we're building a relationship like you and I are starting. Building a relationship with the customer and that's much more motivational for the customer to want to buy or deal with that dealer or deal with that OEM or whatever website that we happen to be representing at that time.
That's what creates the feeling for the customer like, okay, I feel like things are okay, I feel like I know.
Atul Patel: And, and so obviously automation is out there and, and dealers want to take advantage of that, but there's something really valuable about that human experience and the contextualization that comes from that.
Ted Rubin: Right. Yeah. I mean, look, people, you know, want to interact with other people. Yeah. I mean, that's just the norm. I mean, and, I think that AI is great. We have, you know, we use AI in the back, and it shows to those reps, so that if we're talking about something that's pertinent in the conversation, it'll bring up data.
You know, I think that it's great to be able to use that way, but look, you know, if I was using it in a doctor's office, I certainly wouldn't mind. I think it would be great to have a computer kind of help me. Understand how to diagnose someone. I don't want it operating on me.
Atul Patel: Yeah, it's just exactly. So I think with with our integration, the goal is really to help dealerships have better visibility into all those interactions to combine those interactions to all the other sort of touch points they have across different tools and experiences so that they have a view of the customer.
And because there's certain things that they're doing, whether it's emailing or running ads, there's so much insight off of these conversations that could be used to activate better. And then on the flip side, there's all this data and signals that the dealer has that could actually be fed into that sort of hinting that scripting capability.
So humans could tap into that information now. Uh, one thing that we talked about is how your presence isn't just on dealers, you're actually across a lot of different sort of channels in automotive. Absolutely. Can you talk about that?
Ted Rubin: Most people know, I think, but you know, we're the messaging provider for Autotrader for all of Cox, actually.
We have special and unique integrations with most of the major companies. We were the first to be integrated with Fortellis and, uh, with eLeads. We have integrations with I think it's about 14 of the digital retailing platforms and it's incredible. Some of them are really significant where, you know, we're helping to actually move the customer through if it's, if it's Darwin or if it's Accelerate, which is a Cox's program or if it's Roadster, then we have additional insight because we built kind of extended integrations where we know what the customer's doing as they're actually moving through it and we can help them navigate
Atul Patel: Absolutely. Now that's actually what's cool is that you guys have already had this mindset. of really looking deep into the signals that the consumer is effectively sharing. But there's not a lot of places where those signals are put together and, and so on. So, yeah, what you guys have visibility into, what, what our dealers use us for, when put together, it's, it's a profound new way to conversate.
Ted Rubin: Yeah, I think that, you know, the, the big benefit to me in partnering with you guys is I think it's going to be a little bit of a revelation for all the dealers that use the joint system. Because we do have access to a lot of stuff, as long as we're the ones handling the conversation. So, you know, we can see historical conversations, we know when they've crossed domains and done other things like that.
But, what we don't have is all the other imprints that we don't normally touch. And that's a lot of impact and data that can really help to redesign the way the conversations are going to be held. It also is a huge amount of data to be able to aggregate on behalf of the dealer so that they can now train their CRMs or use other marketing tools to be able to take different tangents based on what is happening more holistically.
Atul Patel: And in fact, let's use a real use case that we, we are applying to one of our dealer group customers is cross brand engagement. The fact that garages aren't homogenous, they're not all one brand, right? And over a lifetime, different customers engage with different brands, shopping, cross shopping and so forth.
But a dealer group wants to sort of increasingly be seen as the single brand that the consumer is buying from. And so the opportunity for you guys to have stitched together the actual conversation across domain, and our ability to stitch together the activity stream, could really introduce this sort of affiliate marketing capability where if the consumer is looking at two different brands, imagine if the group now uses ActivEngage to say, Hey, so I see that you're not sure where you're gonna land on the brand.
Let us show you what different options we have. Is that kind of a use case you could envision with your system?
Ted Rubin: I think that it has to do more specifically with the way these conversations differ from point of contact to the next point of contact.
Atul Patel: Yes, right. How do you continue it, right?
You don't want to start from scratch, right? You also don't want to make it too...
Ted Rubin: they also interact for different reasons and on different sites, right? Yeah, so when they're, when they're higher up in the funnel, they may, or when they're higher up, you know, looking at a higher site. If it's an OEM, then they may be doing research, not looking to buy it at the OEM site.
So it changes the conversation, but being able to see Well, they've already had this conversation. They've had this.
Atul Patel: Yeah, like if if a home and automotive right here, the client of ours, if you had this conversation and the Audi store, and then you had this conversation, the BMW store, there's something interesting there.
Because now. You know, these stores are near each other and you could actually engage them.
Ted Rubin: Yeah to be able to homogenize all that, put it all together for an individual customer.
Atul Patel: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm really excited about how we're going to integrate this and make it easier for our dealerships. I love how you're really broad in the way you're distributed.
So, all right, well, thanks for joining in this conversation. So reach out to us when. When you guys wanna learn more. All right. Thank you. Great, thanks. Cool.
