Do you know what’s great about working at Marktplaats? On the surface, it looks as if nothing ever changes. Marktplaats is still the Marktplaats we all know, but under the hood so much is changing that you sometimes forget to talk about it. At the same time, our users pick it all up straight away, organically and intuitively, because it’s Marktplaats…

In automotive, we’ve taken huge steps in recent years. We’ve developed a frictionless connection (API) with online lead management systems such as LEF, Walcu and Websolve, as well as trade-in forms and other lead forms where interested customers can note down what they’re looking for. It’s something I notice every day at the Experience Store Doesburg, where you see few ‘bids’ but mostly regular leads with regular questions. Incidentally, a bid is and remains the starting point of a conversation too.

You can also see it in my conversions per portal below: thanks to all these changes, Marktplaats has a solid conversion rate combined with the highest number of leads – and in the end, as a car dealership, you simply want to sell more.

Insight

Something else you want is insight. Insight into what a portal – in this case Marktplaats – is doing for you. Marktplaats has now finally taken the first steps here with the partner portal. It’s the successor to Kracht van Marktplaats, which used to provide much-needed insights, now in a fresh, modern look.

What can you see?

In this first version of the partner portal, you can see the following:

What does it show?

Leads from the past seven days, the ads you can still place under your bundle, and the visibility boosts available in that same bundle. In other words, more insight into what you can still do. As you can see, I still have plenty of options left to bump listings up or place Weektoppers.

Below that you’ll find the statistics, mainly the soft and hard leads. First, and most important to me: VDP views. How often are my ads viewed per month? No views means no leads, no conversations, no appointments and therefore no sales.

Then there’s the soft engagement, the interest: favourites, URL clicks and phone clicks (not to be confused with actual phone calls). The website clicks in particular are extremely valuable, as they convert up to five times better than any other URL traffic on your own website. See also this article (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/de-engaged-shopper-op-het-autoportaal-paul-de-vries-unbve).

Next come the hard leads: online leads (messages), calls (the best-converting lead, of course) and bids. Here you can also see that the share of bids is very low, and that all the other optimisations of recent years have paid off!

This is only the first version of the partner portal, from which you can also go straight to your seller page, your invoices, etc. But of course, more functionality will be added in the time ahead.

The AI follow-up assistant

Another project that has now gone live is the AI lead follow-up assistant. Perhaps a little strange for me, since at #DCDW we’ve had a Marktplaats follow-up assistant for more than five years: Alice, which is used very successfully by many dealerships and in combination with the various lead management systems.

But the AI lead follow-up assistant is mainly intended for the all-round car dealership that needs help outside opening hours or in the first conversation with the customer. And yes, this is what I like most about the AI follow-up assistant: it actively helps you write a better reply.

So if you write:

‘That’s a worthless offer’, the AI follow-up assistant turns it into: ‘Great to hear you’re interested in our car! The price has been carefully set, and we’d be happy to talk further at this price. Shall we make an appointment?’

Now that’s how you really help the all-round car dealership, where that one man or woman also staffs the reception desk, works on cars in the workshop, does the admin and answers leads too. That’s where the AI follow-up assistant adds value and genuinely helps these businesses!