Marketers can use their first-party data to develop more
effective messaging, reduce waste and sell more vehicles.
You know who purchased the vehicle. You have their address,
phone and e-mail. You know the model, trim level, and where and
when they purchased. This information is a strong start for a
customer profile, but it's just a start and everyone else who sold
a car has the same data. Considering that nearly one-in-two new car
buyers today will switch brands, the competition for customers has
never been greater, especially in today's increasingly fragmented
and data-driven economy.
The competition for customer attention, retention and
growing sales will be won in the trenches of first-party
data.
Managing consumer identity and associated attributes touches
every element of automotive marketing. As fragmentation across
media types and customer connection points expands, the challenges
of acquiring and retaining customers increases exponentially.
From building a pipeline for new vehicle launches to generating
service revenue and vehicle acquisition efforts, marketers that can
match targeted offers to specific customer segments are going to be
more effective in driving conversions and improving campaign
performance.
With more than 50 new vehicle launches scheduled for 2025 —
and nearly half will be an EV — every OEM should be looking at
their customer base to evaluate and find the best prospects. The
brands that have the richest view of their customers will
ultimately emerge as the winners.
Are your marketing strategies using first-party data to outsell
the competition?
Shop your own closet — find the best opportunities
in your customer base
Let's say you're an OEM getting ready to launch a Compact
Utility EV. Step one is looking in your own closet and
understanding which existing customers are your best prospects for
an EV and which ones are most likely to be shopping full-size SUV
gas vehicles.
By using the most recent 12 months of insights from Polk
Audiences' data, marketers can learn more about ownership trends as
well as compare marketplace benchmarks between new, existing, and
competitive model customer sets to inform messaging and get the
most of that closet (See Figure 1).
First-party data enhancement helps both manufacturers
and dealerships reduce waste and improve ROI
Additionally, enriching your first-party data assets also
provides an opportunity to clean your closet. Are your customers
still your customers? How many service offers do you send a year to
customers that no longer own that vehicle? At minimum, this is a
lost cost fueled by wasted impressions; potentially worse, a
customer or prospect becomes annoyed with an irrelevant offer.
For example, while using our PAS suite of solutions, a dealer
group recently discovered that nearly 40% of their customer
database was obsolete. This equated to nearly 1 million customers
receiving regular owner e-mails and direct mail service offers for
a vehicle they no longer owned. Imagine the cost savings realized
when impressions aren't wasted on one million obsolete profiles
every year.
Here are a few important ways marketers can use their
first-party data to develop more effective messaging, reduce waste
and sell more vehicles:
- Employ vehicle verification. Does the household still have the
car or not? - Resolve gaps from inaccurate data. Uncover prospects in your
existing customers for new vehicle launches. - Enrich customer profiles. Go beyond the most recent purchase to
bring multiple datapoints together to develop a comprehensive
household profile. - Scale your first-party assets to develop more informed
communications to your customers and extend your reach with these
net-new audiences.
Request more information.
Authored by Craig Prater, Product Management Associate
Director and Julie Mynster, Product Management Executive Director,
S&P Global Mobility.
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