Impel Review: Overview, Features, and Pricing

The internet is the new marketplace for businesses. All the buyers need is to search for the product, make the payments, and have it delivered to their doorstep. Simple as it sounds, some industries, like car dealerships, often require more. To thrive online, they must give each buyer a premium experience and answer all their doubts about the maintenance cost, reliability, and resale value. Impel is one tool that can help achieve that.

Impel is a cloud-hosted customer relationship management platform that promises auto-dealers an increase in sales and customer engagement. They aim to achieve these using image capture, auto merchandising, and custom content production features. 

This article provides an in-depth overview of Impel and its features. It also delves into the company’s plans and pricing, integration options, and terms of use to help you decide if it’s worth your time and investments.

Impel AI Overview

Impel caters to the needs of auto dealers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and wholesalers. It is an engagement platform equipped with several advanced tools and features that deliver a satisfactory customer experience. 

Over the years, Impel has built a robust technology ecosystem and generated countless data on automotive shopper behavior. They leverage this data to deliver exceptional customer services throughout the lead conversion and sale funnel transit, from communications through an advanced AI to merchandising with 360-degree imagery. 

The company was founded in 2014 as SpinCar and, up until 2011, was just a startup in Syracuse, New York. The founders, Devin Daly and Michael Quigley, received a $22 million investment from a group led by a Boston-based equity firm.

True to the statement made by CEO David Daly on receiving the investment, the funds were used to generate measurable results for dealers through advanced digital automotive merchandising technologies. This is evident in the partnerships the company has forged over the years. 

The company boasts of technology partners like Stream Companies, WorkTruck Solutions, and CDK Global. There are also marketplace and solutions partners. 

Following its mission to move the auto shopping experience forward, in 2022, the company changed its name from SpinCar to Impel. This name change was to mark the beginning of the next phase of the company’s evolution.

With Impel, browsing for your dream cars is made more accessible, as you can explore different cars according to their models, features, and several other filters. It’s almost like a bookstore but for cars. You can read the book’s synopsis and get familiar with the characters before finally making a purchase. This is all from the comfort of your home.

• Established: 2014
• Founders: Devin Daly and Michael Quigley
• Offices: Syracuse, New York; Toronto, Canada; Tbilisi, Georgia; London, UK.

5 core features of Impel

Expert Opinion

Rating: 4.5/5

Impel software is straightforward to use, and the platform’s features make it easy to compile photographs for vehicles. It gives shoppers a first-hand virtual experience of their dream car. 

Features like the video tours, F&I advantage, and the 360-degree WalkAround save time spent in the lead conversion process, as shoppers get all the resources and information necessary to make informed decisions, even before coming to the showroom. 

However, Impel should consider working on some kinks concerning the merchandising features. The indoor pictures may be a bit underexposed, and the camera for inside shots may need to be reset again alongside the application. But the detailed hotspot and 360-degree view of the inside and outside of the car make up for this. 

Something worth mentioning is that you can also adjust the settings when taking a picture to eliminate glitches in the app and get high-quality pictures. Overall, the software is easy to train and use, especially with the technical support available at your beck and call to attend to any inquiry.

Notable Features Of Impel

Impel excels in several ways, providing excellent solutions to automobile dealers. This section will explore these features extensively and show how they can help you improve your customer experience.

1. Merchandising

With effective visual merchandising, it’s relatively easier to drive potential customers from the screen to the actual showroom. Impel brings the showroom experience to potential buyers in the comfort of their homes using its 360 merchandising solutions.

With this platform, you can transform static variable data printing (VDP) into engaging experiences to captivate, influence, and educate prospective buyers. The company achieves optimum merchandising through the following tools:

• 360-degree WalkArounds

When browsing the inventory is not enough, Impel puts buyers in the driver’s seat by providing the option to explore every single aspect of the vehicle, inside and outside. Shoppers typically want to see everything while buying a car to determine if it’s the right choice, so why not show them everything they want to see?

Prospective buyers can interact with the picture with clickable buttons and zoom in to see the pictures and panoramic interiors more closely. 

• Video Tour

With video tours, Impel adds virtual tests and full-motion video merchandising to the mix. 360-degree walkarounds and CaptureApp automatically generate high-quality videos from existing images. The video tour also includes fully narrated video test drives to captivate prospective shoppers.

The showcase includes a demonstration of the vehicle’s core features by make, model, and year. This is seamlessly integrated into the variable data printings (VDPs). With the test drive, shoppers can take an on-the-road virtual test drive while being educated on the values of the car.

• FeatureTour

New vehicle models typically come with numerous sophisticated features that can be challenging to comprehend. There’s no better way to build shopper knowledge and confidence than showcasing the vehicle features in a way that is easy to grasp.

Impel’s FeatureTour provides carefully curated images, explainer content, and videos that help shoppers understand the car they’re exploring. The FeatureTour application is powered by a complete library of multimedia content, including more than 10,000 vehicle features from 50 OEMs. It also provides several opportunities for shoppers to interact with VIN-specific vehicle information.

2. Communication

Impel provides an around-the-clock white glove experience with conversational AI that’s always present to attend to shoppers’ needs. The world is always on, and consumers require immediate answers regardless of the time, night, or day. Available AIs include:

• Sales AI

Impel’s sales AI engages in human-like interactions through conversational dialogue using SMS text and email. With efficient machine learning algorithms and proprietary natural language processing (NLP), Sales AI is involved in dialogue with shoppers. Guiding in-market shoppers towards live calls with the sales team or showroom appointments is the nature of the Sales AI.

The Sales AI is designed to respond to off-hour leads and send personalized interactive responses. When a lead is unresponsive, it persistently follows up with leads for 51 days, leveraging approaches designed to ensure maximum engagement. Overall, Sales AI saves labor hours and increases unit sales.

• Service AI

Impel has a conversational AI for the dealership service department that helps build customer loyalty. Most dealerships don’t have the resources or time to focus on proactive business development for service operations. Thanks to the Service AI feature, there’s a fully automated communication platform to drive more service appointments.

This conversational AI continuously mines service records and vehicle purchases to target prospects at critical points throughout the ownership lifecycle. Generating more service appointments and improving operational productivity is relatively more manageable with hyper-personalized messages.

• VINtelligent AI

Investing in digital advertisement is necessary to drive quality traffic to your business website. While display ads and traditional banners may be helpful, Impel provides a more effective way to drive traffic, VINtelligent AI engine. 

This automated technology generates higher ROI using hyper-personalized digital experiences to engage the highest-value shoppers. Instead of the generic “One size fits all,” shoppers can now get digital experiences tailored to their preferences.

3. F&I Advantage

Finance and Insurance (F&I) sales are crucial to a dealer’s profitability, but they often confuse buyers. Impel provides a solution to this with its F&I advantage that educates shoppers before they even arrive at the dealership.

With this feature, valuable protection products are displayed directly on the VDP. Shoppers get educated on protection options and warranties and can make more confident decisions when finalizing their purchase decisions. Impel leverages this feature to make personalized product recommendations according to every individual shopper’s needs.

4. Imaging

A good car can only be portrayed by high-quality media free of distracting backgrounds and missing images. To properly sell a vehicle, it needs to shine and capture the interests of prospective buyers. This is where the benefits of Impel’s imaging suite come in.

With this feature, you can get high-quality photography services with minimal dedicated space requirements or capital investments. Impel allows you to explore CaptureApp, AI image enhancement, image cloning, and damage tagging to render high-quality images. The feature eliminates inefficient processes and costly delays in moving vehicles from the lot to the showroom.

Impel Integration

Impel integrates seamlessly with the technology you most likely already use, from Document Management Systems (DMS) to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and digital retailing platforms. The company has a mobile and desktop application that integrates with major website platforms to guarantee worry-free performance and rapid time to market.

The platform also works with leading third-party marketplaces such as CarGurus and AutoTrader, building the connections for you. Auction platforms like AuctionEdge and Xcira also seamlessly integrate with Impel.

Impel Pricing and Plans

Impel does not have publicly available pricing information on its website, but you can always contact the sales team. You can request a demo on their website and inquire about their pricing plans or any special offer they may have. 

As some companies prefer to provide customized quotes based on your business needs, this is the case for Impel. Impel does not offer a free plan at the time of writing, but you can always get custom quotes by contacting customer support.

Impel Terms and Policies

As a company, Impel collects users’ IP addresses, a record of pages viewed, time spent viewing them, and the web browser used. The company does not collect consumers’ personal information unless submitted through an online contact form, email, or text message. However, as an Impel customer, they collect your name, email address, mailing address, billing information, and phone number.

Impel uses this information to set up and administer your account. Impel also holds the right to change the specifications and features of the products. The company may upgrade the product or substitute the upgrades for previous versions of the product at any time.

Customer Support

To access help from Impel’s customer support, you can send in a ticket from their website. You’re need to provide your first and last name, business email, phone number, company, subject, and a customized message. It’s possible to inquire about their pricing model through this medium. You should get a response through your email address after a while.

It’s also possible to learn more about the Impel platform by booking a demo. To complete this process, you need to fill in your details along with the website URL, country, and state or region. 

If need to speak with sales or support team, you can reach them via the support line at +1 844-384-6735.

• Instagram: Getimpel
• LinkedIn: Impel  
• Facebook: Impel

Alternatively, you can request support by emailing support@impel.io. Impel also provides technical support when you purchase their products. An experienced team of technical specialists is always available to address any issues or questions.

Conclusion

“Impel enables us to deliver a better online shopping experience, leading to a 23% increase in time spent on VDPs and 36% more lead submissions.” These are the words of Tim Ferreira, eCommerce and parts director at GaryRome AutoGroup. 

Would you like to find out how true this is? Then, request a demo or contact the sales representatives to ask questions to help you determine if Impel is the extra sauce your auto-dealership business requires.

Contributors: Roseline Sea-Nduka (Writer), Okesipe Olumide (Graphics designer)