Express Response

When consumers submitted a lead on sites like Edmunds, Cars.com, or TrueCar, they'd get a generic email: "someone will be in touch in 24-48 hours." Then 4 different salespeople would call with 4 different prices. Meanwhile, dealers were drowning in manual follow-ups: emails, texts, phone calls, all just to respond to a lead that might not even be serious.

Roadster had already built Express Storefront, a direct point of sale for dealers. But traffic wasn't getting there. Consumers filled out forms on third-party sites and got no clear path to actually buy a car. I discovered dealers were hacking together a workaround using an existing "Shared Details" feature to manually push leads to the storefront. User interviews validated this across nearly every dealer I spoke to.

We got a two-week timebox and one engineer to ship an MVP with three simple requirements: automate the initial email engagement, include a CTA to Express Storefront, and notify dealers when consumers clicked through. The initial 90-day pilot missed our KPI; we only reduced manual touchpoints by 6% against a 20% goal. Then COVID hit, dealerships shut down their showrooms and furloughed teams. Instead of scrapping the project, I doubled down and expanded the pilot. Without people power to run the manual process, automation became essential.

The metrics told the story: 45% of customer activity happened after hours, 72% started buying within 5 minutes of clicking, close rates jumped from 6.2% to 9%, and 95% of purchasers closed within 30 days. Open rates hit 65% versus a 12.6% industry average. Click-through hit 22% versus 1.2%. Express Response was adopted by 22% of dealerships at $2.1M ARR. When CDK acquired Roadster for $360M, they specifically cited Express Response as an example of the kind of feature development they valued: the ability to create an "Amazon-like" experience for consumers.