How to Improve the Customer Experience with a Customer Data Platform (CDP)

There’s no better way to make your dealership customers happy than to give them what they need and create authentic messaging. Meeting customers wherever they are starts with data, and a Customer Data Platform can help you collect, unify, and expose data in ways that create optimal outcomes for your customers and your dealership. You have what customers want; the age-old problem is connecting with them at the right time and with a relevant message. Using the latest technology, dealers can finally pull this off. 

What is a Customer Data Platform?

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a customer information database that creates a 360-degree view of the customer. This single source of truth gives marketers a better understanding of their customers to create more personalized experiences that result in better customer connections and identifying high-intention buyers. 

A CDP takes data to the next level by unifying all the bits and pieces that make up your customer profiles. This includes your first-party data (think sales, service history, etc.) that you’ve consciously collected. It also includes behavioral data that dives deeper into your customers’ buying patterns, marketing triggers, total spending, and other details. 

Analyzing this data over time gives you a more complete picture of your customers, what they need, and what they respond to. To do this, though, you need the bird’s eye view that CDPs provide. 

A CDP is different from a CRM because it doesn’t just store data. It also includes tools that allow you to expose that data to state-of-the-art marketing solutions that connect with customers on a personal level. The more ways you can reach customers and the more frequently you do this, the better. Multiple touchpoints via email, text, and direct mail, follow a logical progression. Basing those touchpoints on interaction and customer behavior creates opportunities to engage customers with relevant messaging that aligns with their journey lifecycle. 

Move Over Data; Engagement is King

Data alone isn’t enough to accelerate sales and growth — that requires action. How we use data to create relationships is key. Dealers need to be able to tap into their data to drive customers toward best-fit sales and service options. Data helps you find the intersection between need and action and deliver personalized experiences. 

Dealerships are so often concerned with acquisition and conversions that it can be easy to forget the importance of the moments in between that led the customer to a transaction. 

Engaging customers between and beyond vehicle purchases will also strengthen their emotional connection with your dealership. Successful customer engagement will keep your dealership at the top of the customer’s mind regarding decision-making when they have compelling events like a growing family or immediate repair.

It’s about empowering customers to interact with your dealership on the channels they want and engaging them with unique and personalized marketing experiences. 

The more engaged they are with your dealership marketing, the more they will spend with you, ultimately future-proofing profits and your bottom line. 

Evolve Beyond Leads, Email Blasts, and Static Campaigns

Part of what makes a CDP so powerful isn’t just the data itself and the actionable insights it provides. Jumping past stale leads, email blasts, and static campaigns, CDPs help you connect the dots between the data to identify high-intention customers across the entire customer lifecycle. Break through the barriers by targeting them on channels where they’re most active.

CDPs become even more powerful over time. The longer you track your customers’ journeys and learn how, when, and where they engage, the more effectively you can connect with them. 

Beyond simply driving customers down the marketing funnel, customer engagement is about connecting beyond the critical touchpoints in their journey lifecycle and meeting them where they are. Deliver a consistent, relevant, and trusted experience for every customer.

Build Better Multichannel Avenues with Activator

It’s time for dealers to rethink how they approach customer data. It’s no longer enough to have data in a neat package — it’s about using data to drive engagement and provide the right experiences to your customers every time. Only the latest technology in automotive can unlock this ability to its fullest extent.

At Activator, we’re driving the narrative on how dealers can do more with data effortlessly. Our CDP activates unified customer data to create real-time journey paths and engages customers across multiple channels.

Activator starts by continuously cleansing and enriching your DMS data and connecting the dots between information and action so you can create better multichannel avenues personalized to the individual. This improves many disparate marketing efforts that are already attempting to engage customers with multiple solutions, including sales and equity messaging as well as service retention and conquest.

Skip the one-size-fits-all marketing by instantly personalizing each customer’s experience. Customers are now automatically matched to our new customer journeys.  

Activator’s Customer Journeys are multichannel, meaning they are made up of email, SMS (text), and direct mail marketing. 

Depending on how the customer interacts with the marketing in the journey, they are sent down a personalized path. Our focus is on nurturing those who have either not considered working with your dealership or don’t have a compelling reason to do so yet. And also reaching those customers that are ready to transact with a relevant offer.  

Customers that indicate they are ready to upgrade, sell, renew, or pre-order a vehicle become Handraisers and are sent to the dealership through the Activator Platform or directly to your CRM.

Our dealers see a 20% increase in reach, a 13% increase in sales volume, and a 14% increase in service-drive revenue year-over-year. Talk to one of our experts and receive a live 1:1 demo of Activator in action.

Join Bobby Gaudreau on Tuesday, November 29th at 2 PM as he takes you through how to improve the customer experience and keep customers engaged with a Customer Data Platform (CDP). Sign up for the FREE webinar here.