This year came and went quickly for the MetaLocator team, time really does fly by when you’re staying busy. We made a lot of impactful changes to make your locators better, faster and easier to use in 2024. You don’t have to thank us, that’s what we do 😀. In this article, we share some of the best features of the year as a reminder of how awesome we are (not that you forgot…it’s just a reminder). Originally we planned to keep this list to 10 features, but we just did so much cool stuff this year we had to make space for one more 🤷, so 11 it is.
Lead Status Reporting
According to our industry expertise, 34% of leads go ignored by dealers…safe to say you don’t want to be one of those. Lead Status Reporting allows you to automatically capture Lead Status changes from your partners, including New, Rejected, Accepted and Won. These status updates also enable the automated capture of Reviews and Revenue when the job is done! Lead Status Reporting is a major leap forward in tracking customer experience in indirect channels.
Unsubscribe for Lead Emails
Gone are the days of sending inquiries to your partners and being “ghosted”, as the kids say now-a-days. With Unsubscribe for Lead Emails, partners in your network can opt out of communication from the locator all together. Receiving unwanted communication can be annoying (we can all relate to that). There’s multiple reasons a partner may no longer be interested in communication, such as:
- The recipient no longer works for the partner
- The partner used a personal email address
- The leads don’t meet their business size threshold
- They no longer stock your product
But have no fear, MetaLocator administrators will receive a notice when a lead is sent to a contact that has unsubscribed. The lead can then be re-routed to a partner interested in the business…we got you.
Microsoft Dynamics 365
MetaLocator now integrates with Microsoft Dynamics 365, cool, but why is that great? First, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is one of the top CRM platforms, odds are some of you use it already. Secondly, it provides yet another way to streamline your data process in MetaLocator. Our goal is to eliminate those brutal, recurring manual data updates we know you already push off for “later”. By allowing automated data imports from a large CRM, like Microsoft Dynamics 365, MetaLocator can upload and update the data in your locator faster, saving you time and effort…making your life easier.
Google Places API
Yet another new data integration from MetaLocator in 2024, this time with Google Places API. This integration provides a unique way to display location content. With Google Places integration MetaLocator can import location hours, reviews and photos easily for easy integration in your locator. Not to mention, you can also populate Google Place ID data in bulk…you can scratch that “updating records” item off your to-do list now 😀
Lead Data Anonymization
Capture and delivery of contact information in MetaLocator is called a lead. We know you may not want to have that lead information permanently linked to a prospect’s name, phone number or other personally identifiable information. Nobody wants their PII (personally identifiable information) out there for too long, and your business certainly wants to limit the amount of unnecessary PII data. Lead Data Anonymization provides for the safe, selective deletion anonymization of the PII while retaining reporting capability.
Expiring Lead Notifications
You can never be too safe when it comes to data right? Especially when leads contain PII (see above). To better protect those leads MetaLocator admins can now control how long users have access to lead details. When the lead notification expires, a message is automatically sent generating a new notification link, similar to a one-time password. Setting an expiration on leads ensures the leads are only available to the intended recipient. It’s just another way we are trying to look out for y’all by enhancing our security and data protection.
Featured Location & Prioritization of Results
Featured Location and Prioritization of results was developed to allow certain locations to be highlighted at the top of the search results based on their status. These new features allow for MetaLocator users to utilize:
- Priority based on category
- Randomizing within Prioritized Categories
- Priority based on Custom value
- Distance Limitations on Prioritization
For example, users can promote or showcase a “featured” location to display as the top result…sometimes it’s ok to play favorites.
Unified Search
Unified Search is a fun, unique feature we developed in 2024. It automatically suggests locations and keyword matches based on what the user fills the search form with. Results suggestions are grouped by type, the ordering of results is determined by the strength of the match between the user’s term and the results. The example image shows suggestions for locations and keyword matches for the search term “sample”. The goal here is to get you the desired results you want easier…pretty neat huh?
Sending Leads to Multiple Recipients
There are times when it’s helpful to send a lead inquiry to multiple locations simultaneously…with this new feature you can do just that. Sending leads to multiple recipients is great for businesses who provide quotes to consumers. Consumers can now collect multiple quotes from your business partners by selecting multiple results in the interface. This provides more opportunities to convert a sale with the customer, and that’s always the goal.
Lead Email Templates
Out with the old and in with the new. In 2024 MetaLocator said farewell to boring and unexciting email templates…you know, the ones that don’t fully catch the attention of partners in your network. This year we updated our Lead Email Templates, adding features to improve their appearance and functionality, ensuring they command the attention they deserve from your network.
Ratings.MD
Would it really be another year in MetaLocator without another data integration? Add Ratings.MD to the list of places to easily import locations and reviews from to your locator. Good news for all our friends in healthcare, this ensures the locator’s information is staying consistent across platforms.
Overall, we’d say 2024 was a good one in the MetaLocator world. See ya in 2025 with more features to improve your locator.
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