"Overwhelming response yesterday and today from the most recent campaign.
At least 30 responses to me so far. Delivered one yesterday from a guest
that came in with the campaign in hand. And sold two more additional
yesterday from the campaign."
– Stephen Aylward, General Manager, Lexus of Warwick, Warwick, RI
THE NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY
You're probably pretty familiar with the
usual methods of reaching out to customers:
phone calls, emails, and mailers. In theory,
connecting to customers directly should be
effective, right? But the reality is beginning
a relationship is more complex than sending
a single message no matter the channel.
The usual messaging in phone calls are
becoming ineffective since customers have
already made decisions that you don't
know about. Connecting via email is also
challenging since the average open rate for
business emails is only 20%. Simply put,
without data insights, dealers don't know
if customers are ready to buy. How do you
work with all that?
A lot of brands and dealers try to work
around new obstacles with traditional tactics:
mass product advertising based on age
brackets to reach as large an audience as
possible. This includes generic direct mail
with one message, or TV, radio, print/digital,
and mobile advertising that eats up a large
chunk of a marketing budget. To be precise,
the industry average of advertising spend
per sale is $632. But these communication
methods were used before customer data
was at our fingertips. Most importantly, these
methods don't align with today's shopper
journey. To get things right, automotive retail
will have to shift from a product-driven to a
customer-centric approach.
