The automotive industry is becoming increasingly competitive, and dealerships must find innovative ways to engage customers and streamline their operations. A Hybrid Customer Data Platform (CDP) built specifically for dealers offers a powerful solution that addresses many of the challenges faced by the industry today. This blog will explore why dealers should adopt a Hybrid CDP and its benefits compared to other platforms and systems.
The Power of Hybrid CDPs for Dealerships:
-
Better Customer Profiles: One of the key advantages of Hybrid CDPs is their ability to create comprehensive and accurate customer profiles by consolidating data from multiple sources. By consolidating and rationalizing data from multiple sources, Hybrid CDPs enable dealerships to make more informed decisions about their marketing strategies, sales efforts, and customer engagement initiatives. According to a study by McKinsey & Company, organizations that leverage data-driven insights can achieve up to a 23% increase in revenue and a 19% reduction in costs. This enables dealers to understand their customers better and engage with them more effectively, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
-
Overcoming System Incompatibility: Dealers often face the challenge of managing data across various disconnected systems, such as DMS, CRM, Equity, and service marketing. Traditional dealer systems were not designed to communicate with each other effectively. A Hybrid CDP bridges this gap, allowing for seamless integration. Unifying data from these disparate systems results in more efficient and effective marketing strategies.
-
Addressing Data Incompleteness: While the DMS is a useful tool for managing dealership operations, it is not meant to serve as a marketing database. A Hybrid CDP addresses this limitation by providing more complete data around vehicle ownership, customer contact information, and other relevant details, enabling dealers to craft more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
-
Tackling Duplicate Data Issues: Duplicate records are a common problem for most dealers, leading to confusion and inefficiencies. Hybrid CDPs have built-in mechanisms to identify and merge duplicate entries, ensuring the system maintains clean and accurate customer information.
-
Rationalizing Data for Personalization: Hybrid CDPs are not just about plugging in data sources; they also rationalize data to determine who an individual is and what to send them. For example, with Hybrid CDPs, dealerships can better understand their customers, allowing for personalized marketing efforts that have been shown to increase customer retention rates. A Bain & Company study suggests that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25-95% increase in profits. This level of personalization allows dealers to tailor their marketing efforts to each customer's unique needs and preferences, resulting in more impactful campaigns.
-
Speed to Deployment: Hybrid CDPs can be deployed quickly and efficiently with built-in data sources and fulfillment. This rapid implementation allows dealers to start reaping the platform's benefits quickly.
-
OEM Compliance: Hybrid CDPs can be designed to include built-in OEM compliance features, ensuring that dealers stay compliant with industry regulations and requirements while benefiting from the platform's capabilities.
-
Pre-mapped Meaningful Campaigns: Hybrid CDPs come with pre-mapped interaction-based campaigns, enabling dealers to implement and optimize customer journeys for various objectives, such as equity, service retention, conquest, and defectors. These pre-built journeys make "typical" dealer campaigns more effective and efficient.
-
Cohesive Multi-channel Communications: Many dealerships struggle with managing multiple disconnected channels, leading to inconsistent messaging and a disjointed customer experience. Hybrid CDPs consolidate these channels into a single, multi-channel platform, allowing for a more cohesive and consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. By unifying and rationalizing data, Hybrid CDPs allow dealers to engage customers across multiple channels, creating a more cohesive and effective communication strategy. This multi-channel approach enhances the overall customer experience and helps build stronger client relationships.
-
Journeys that Learn from Interactions: Hybrid CDPs offer true journey builders that learn from customer interactions and evolve over time. This dynamic customer engagement approach allows dealers to continually refine and improve their marketing efforts, ultimately driving better results. Traditional linear campaigns are static and may not adequately address customers' changing needs and preferences. In contrast, Hybrid CDPs offer true journey builders that learn from customer interactions and adapt accordingly, providing a more dynamic and personalized approach to marketing. In fact, Hybrid CDPs with journey builders that target and personalize marketing campaigns can lead to a higher return on investment (ROI) for marketing spend.
Adopting a Hybrid CDP built for dealers can lead to better customer engagement, improved marketing strategies, and streamlined operations. By offering pre-mapped campaigns, multi-channel communication, data rationalization capabilities, and true journey builders that learn from customer interactions, Hybrid CDPs provide a comprehensive and powerful solution that can help dealerships thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
While sole CDP platforms offer CDP functionality, they often require significant customization to meet the unique needs of dealers. On the other hand, hybrid CDPs are designed specifically for dealerships, providing a tailored solution that addresses their distinct challenges and goals.
In an era of data-driven decision-making and personalized marketing, embracing Hybrid CDPs can be a game-changer for dealerships, helping them stay ahead of the curve and forge lasting connections with their customers.
Demand More From Your Dealership Marketing Solution
Built on the Salesforce platform, Activator is a ready-to-use hybrid Customer Data Platform (CDP) combined with an automated marketing Journey Builder designed for automobile dealerships. Activator's data-driven marketing solution prioritizes customers by finding customers, building deeper engagement, leveraging the latest technology, and promoting dealership efficiency to increase sales and service-drive revenue.
The Automotive Industry’s Most Advanced Customer Data Platform
Activator's advanced Customer Data Platform powered with Salesforce unifies your dealership data using multiple touchpoints, enables automatic customer categorization, and actively learns customer preferences. Our platform provides a complete and accurate picture of your customers by combining DMS, Enriched data, Activator's deep equity, OEM Maintenance interval data, and owner verification data. These profiles are prioritized and integrated into tailored, adaptive Multichannel Marketing Journeys that respond to customer behavior and events, ensuring a flexible, customer-centric system.
Send Relevant Messaging Across Multiple Channels
Activator uses Salesforce-powered Multichannel Marketing Journeys to reach potential customers through digital, online, and offline marketing channels. Our Multichannel Marketing Journeys send emails, text, and direct mail based on how customers interact with the dealership and their personal communication preferences, all seamlessly integrated with Activator's Customer Data Platform. Get a consistent yet personal experience for each customer based on their interactions.
Let Activator take the guesswork out of your marketing. Our dealers see an overall +20%-30% reach, a 13% increase in sales volume, and a 14% increase in service drive revenue year-over-year. Schedule a demo to receive a live 1:1 demo of Activator in action from one of our experts.