Dealership Follow-Thru is a pair of personalized follow-up videos for a car dealership, sold as an Autograf and built to run on Templater. One video follows up with someone who took a test drive and did not buy. The other reminds a customer about service. Each is made fresh for the person receiving it, with the salesperson or service advisor on screen, the car in question and the dealership’s own details.
If you run a sales floor or a service lane, the appeal is easy to see. The customer who drove the car on Saturday gets a short video from the person who handed them the keys. The customer whose car is due in gets a friendly reminder from a face and a name they might recognize. Neither video has to be built from scratch, and neither has to be the same video as the one before.
This page explains what is in the kit, how the two videos are structured, what the numbers on the product page mean for a dealership, how a store would actually use it, and where it stops being the right tool. Everything stated as a fact about the kit comes from its product page on our site. Where that page says nothing, we say that too.
What the kit is
An Autograf is a pre-built After Effects composition template, already rigged with Templater customizations, so that you add data and tweak the template for your audience instead of building from nothing. Dealership Follow-Thru is one of them. The name has a hyphen, and the product page spells it that way.
The page describes it as a set of client-targeted videos geared for test drive follow-ups and a service department reminder. It comes with two video projects. One is designed, in the words of the page, to convert leads for car dealership sales. The other is designed to nurture customers for the service department.
So the kit has a sales side and a service side, and it treats them as different conversations. That is a sensible split. A person deciding on a purchase and a person keeping a car running want different things from the same dealership, and a single generic video would not suit either of them.
Both videos are offered in three output shapes: Square, Wide and Vertical. The page lists them without recommending where each one goes. As with any such template, choose the shape for the place you intend to send it, such as a text message, an email or a social post. That choice is yours.
The two videos, piece by piece
The product page lists each video’s structure. It is worth walking through, because the list tells you exactly what you will need to gather before you build a single row of data.
### Test Drive FT
The page calls this a targeted video for a customer who has taken a test drive but has not purchased. A salesperson can follow up with it directly, to send a personalized message and share an enjoyable moment. The runtime is 15 seconds.
The structure runs as follows: a personalized title for the test drive. A personalized message to reinforce the test drive experience. A photo and name of the sales rep. A photo or video footage of the test drive, with a 10 second maximum for video. A photo, price, year, make and model of the vehicle taken for the test drive. Dealership information and a logo. A background photo of the dealership. A personalized call to action. And dealership information and a logo again at the close.
Count what that asks for. Per customer, you need the rep’s name and photo, a picture or short clip from the drive, and the vehicle’s year, make, model, price and photo. Per store, you need a logo, contact information and a background image of the building. The per-store items you collect once. The per-customer items come from the day’s activity.
### Service Time FT
The page calls this a friendly service reminder that can also be used as a post-service follow-up message. It adds tips on good maintenance with a service member’s face and name, which the page says helps your department keep an excellent rapport with customers. The runtime is 22 seconds.
Its structure: a personalized message to make, or remind of, a service appointment. A background dealership photo. Dealership information and a logo. A personalized service title. A personalized message to educate or inform the client of service needed. A background service department photo. A service date, or a message for making an appointment. A photo, year, make and model of the car for service. Photo and information for the service rep. And dealership information and a logo to close.
Notice the quiet flexibility in one item. The service date can be a date, or it can be a message for making an appointment. So the same video works for a customer who is booked and a customer who is due and has not booked yet. That is a small thing in the page and a useful one on the lane.
The page also says the video can be used as a post-service follow-up. The reminder and the thank-you are the same template with different words.
What the numbers on the product page tell you
The details panel is short, and most of it matters.
Placeholders: 75. A placeholder is a slot that data can fill. Seventy-five covers both videos and all three shapes together. The page does not split the 75 by video or by field, so we cannot say how many slots belong to the Test Drive video and how many to the Service Time video.
Compositions: 6. The project has six compositions. Two videos in three shapes each makes six, which is a neat match. The page does not state that is how they are divided, so treat it as a likely reading and not a fact.
Runtime and duration. The structure lists 15 seconds for Test Drive FT and 22 seconds for Service Time FT. The details panel lists a single duration of 21 seconds. The page does not explain that figure, and we will not guess. Use the 15 and 22 second runtimes in the structure for planning, and check the exact length in a preview.
Authored resolution: 1920 x 1080. The kit was authored as a wide HD video. The page also lists Square and Vertical outputs.
After Effects version: After Effects CC 2019. That is the version the template is listed against. If your machine runs a later release, test the file first.
Product version 1.0.0, last updated 2024-09-16, 278 MB. It is a first version, a data template, and a modest download compared with some kits.
Render tiers. The page lists three tiers by unique renders: 1 to 199, 200 to 999 and 1000 or more. The license follows the number of different videos you expect to make. We do not quote prices. See the product page, and our Templater licensing guide for how Templater licensing works.
The page tags the kit Car Dealership, Follow-Up, Reminder, sales, Service and Test Drive, and credits it to Video Salon.
A Saturday and a Tuesday: how a store would use it
This is a hypothetical, not a customer story. It shows the shape of the work.
Say a mid-size dealership has eight salespeople and a service department with four advisors. On a normal Saturday, a good number of people test drive cars and leave without signing. On a normal Tuesday, a good number of customers are due for service. Both groups are a list of names that someone already has.
For the Saturday group, the sales manager keeps a simple sheet. Each row is one test drive. The columns hold the customer’s first name, the vehicle year, make and model, the price, a link to the photo of the car, the salesperson’s name and photo, and a line for the call to action. Under the template’s rules, each column maps to one layer in the project. Templater reads each row and produces one Test Drive FT video.
For the Tuesday group, the service manager keeps a different sheet. Each row is one customer. The columns hold the first name, the vehicle year, make and model, a photo of the car, the service date or an appointment message, the advisor’s name and photo, and a short maintenance tip. Templater reads those rows and produces Service Time FT videos.
The store-wide items sit in the template once: logo, address, phone number, hours, the background photo of the building and the background photo of the service department.
What flows from this is a division of labor. The salespeople and advisors add facts to a sheet. They do not edit video. The sheet is the interface, and that is the entire point of a data template.
On the Templater side, Templater reads Google Sheets, tab-separated files and JSON data, and each row is a job. If you want the process to run without a person starting it, the Bot role can process rows marked ready. For a bigger store group, QUE can manage jobs from a campaign. Those are separate decisions from the template, and you do not need them to begin. Start with one row and one render.
A few habits make the first batch go smoothly. These are general practice, not claims from the product page.
Standardize the photos before they reach the sheet. A rep photo shot against a different background every time makes eight salespeople look like eight different brands. Take one headshot per person, against the same wall, and reuse it on every row. The same goes for service advisors.
Write the vehicle line the same way every time. If one row says “2024 Honda Accord” and another says “accord 24”, the video will print exactly that. Decide on a format, year then make then model, and keep it.
Test with the longest name and the longest model name you have. A short first name and a short model name will always fit. A long double-barreled surname and a long trim description are the rows that break a layout, so run them first.
Keep a record of who received which video and when. A follow-up that arrives two days after a drive is a courtesy. One that arrives three weeks later is noise, and one that goes out twice is worse. A column in the sheet for the send date costs nothing.
What the page does not say, and what to ask before you build
A dealer’s real question is usually the same: how does this connect to what we already use? The product page does not answer it, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
The page does not describe connecting to a dealer management system or a customer relationship tool. It does not describe how test drive records would reach the sheet. Templater’s own data sources are a spreadsheet, a tab-separated file, JSON or a URL feed. How the names and vehicles get from your systems into one of those is a separate piece of work, and it is the piece to scope first. Someone could type it in. Someone could export a report. A developer could automate it. Our learning hub and data sources article cover what Templater can read.
The page does not say how the finished videos are delivered to customers. That is a process question. Who sends the Test Drive video, from which address, how soon after the drive, and with what words in the message? Decide those before you generate a hundred videos. A timely message from a named salesperson is a very different thing from a mass send.
The page does not describe changing the layout, the fonts or the animation. It does describe personalized titles, messages and calls to action. If your brand standards require something the template does not provide, you may need a custom rigged version.
The page does not claim a result. It says the videos are designed to convert and to nurture. We read that as intent. We would not promise a sales figure from any template, ours or anyone else’s, and we would suggest you track your own numbers.
Where it is the wrong tool
If you only follow up with a few customers a week, a plain phone call or a hand-recorded video from the rep may do more than a templated one. Personalization at scale is useful once scale is the problem.
If your service department needs a long explanation, such as a multi-item repair estimate, a 22 second video is the wrong format. The service video is meant for a reminder with a tip, not a quote.
If your photos are poor, the videos will look poor. The template places what you give it. A dark phone picture of a car in a lot will look like a dark phone picture of a car in a lot, only in a nicer frame.
And if the person on screen is not someone the customer would know, the personal touch is lost. The strength of both videos is a real name and a real face.
The bottom line
Dealership Follow-Thru gives a store two short videos for two moments, after a test drive and before service, and a clear list of the items each one needs. It is a packaged answer to a specific problem: following up with people in a way that does not feel like a form letter.
The template is the easy part. The harder work is the data, getting the right name, car and photo into a row, and the process, deciding who sends what and when. Get those two right with a single row, render one video, look at it on a phone, and only then think about scale. If you want to see how the pieces fit, Templater is the place to start.
Here are the questions dealers tend to ask first about this kit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Dealership Follow-Thru?
It is an Autograf, a pre-built After Effects video template rigged for Templater. It contains two video projects, Test Drive FT and Service Time FT, designed for follow-ups after a test drive and for service reminders. Each can be personalized with the customer’s details, the vehicle, the salesperson or service rep, and the dealership’s information and logo.
How long are the videos?
According to the video structure on the product page, Test Drive FT runs 15 seconds and Service Time FT runs 22 seconds. The details panel lists a duration of 21 seconds, which the page does not explain. Use the structure figures for planning and confirm the exact length in a preview.
What do I need to supply for each Test Drive FT video?
The page lists a personalized title, a personalized message, the rep’s photo and name, a photo or video of the test drive with a 10 second maximum for video, and the photo, price, year, make and model of the vehicle. It also lists dealership information and logo, a background photo of the dealership and a personalized call to action.
What do I need to supply for each Service Time FT video?
The page lists a personalized message to make or remind of an appointment, a service title, a message to inform the client of service needed, the service date or a message for making an appointment, and the photo, year, make and model of the car. It also lists the service rep’s photo and information, background photos and dealership information and logo.
Does it connect to my dealer management system?
The product page does not say. Templater reads Google Sheets, tab-separated files, JSON and URL feeds, so the question becomes how your customer and vehicle data reaches one of those. That could be typed in, exported or automated. We suggest scoping that connection before you buy anything, because it is the part that decides how much work each video takes.
Which output shapes does it come in?
Square, Wide and Vertical, for both videos. The details panel lists the authored resolution as 1920 x 1080. The page does not recommend a platform for each shape, so choose by where you plan to send the video, such as a message, an email or a social post.
Do I need After Effects and Templater to use it?
The details panel lists After Effects CC 2019 as the version, and the kit is rigged with Templater customizations. So you need After Effects and Templater. Templater Rig can preview and test rigged templates, and Pro and Bot are used to produce batches. The product page lists license tiers by the number of unique renders.
