CDPs Can Easily Double Monthly Sales Opportunities
Every dealer in the United States is looking for new opportunities to move inventory faster and more profitably. I have a solution for dealers who are willing to embrace change and reimagine the benefits of their website and online marketing efforts.
If you have been following my articles on Customer Data Platforms (CDP) in the automotive industry, you know that identity resolution frameworks are at the heart of any strategy to manage customer first-party data. Identity resolution matches known data in a dealership's DMS/CRM with a digital ID. Think of the digital ID as an online fingerprint for the devices a consumer uses to shop on the internet.
By recognizing the digital fingerprint of a consumer who visits their website, dealers can know when customers and prospects in their DMS/CRM are shopping for vehicles, service, or trade values.
Creating Digital IDs For Every Visitor
Assigning a digital ID to known consumers in the DMS/CRM can be done through deterministic or probabilistic identity resolution. In this article, I will focus on deterministic frameworks because they are the most reliable.
Deterministic methods are also safer for dealers who are focused on adhering to online privacy laws and creating a defensible position for how they collected their first-party data and the consent which was granted.
When identity resolution tags are installed on a website, every visitor is assigned an anonymous digital ID. If a consumer fills out a lead form on the website or provides their name, email, and phone on a trade tool, digital retailing sales process, or soft-pull credit application, a digital ID can be associated with that known person. Since the consumer provided their PII, it is called deterministic identity resolution.
Digital IDs can be matched to a known customer in the DMS/CRM without a lead form.
If a consumer clicks on a link in an email generated from the CDP and was transferred to the dealer's website, a digital ID can be deterministically be matched to the known customer's email address. This is done by including in the URL, UTM tagging parameters which include a hashed email and phone number. It can then be read by the CDP identity resolution framework.
Tip: Designing emails with these embedded tags which consumers will open and click will accelerate the association of known customers with an online digital ID.
Dealers Are Starving Off 2%
I have written about this before, but it is worth repeating: less than 2% of the traffic which comes to a dealers website results in the completion of a lead form. Depending on the Call-to-Action (CTA) button, consumers will only tolerate lead-gates so much.
Here are some typical examples of Form Completion Rates (FCR) for popular CTA buttons on the SRP/VDP pages on dealership websites:
When you look at this data, the majority of consumers will not provide their data because there is a perception that the value exchange is not worth getting bombarded by calls or emails.
The highest FCR is a trade valuation because the consumer expects their report to be emailed. TradePending has one of the highest FCR rates in the industry, if not the highest, with their 3-button powerful CTA stack. I wrote about a newer trend where full-stack digital retailing tools are being replaced on dealership websites by more targeted CTAs last month.
How many of those abandoned "shopping cart" sessions are known consumers in the dealer's DMS/CRM?
Answering this question leads to the path where dealers can double their sales opportunities each month.
The Wake-Up Call
Sadly, few dealers can answer the question above because they do not have identity resolution installed properly, and they don't have a CDP in place which can activate that data into a sales opportunity. The DMS and CRM were never designed for online identity resolution frameworks, however VinLens from VinSolutions has a type of online activation system, without having a CDP, which can alert dealers when prospects are back online.
Dealers with CDPs are getting hundreds of additional sales opportunities per month because they are being notified when their customers and prospects are back on their website shopping, researching, or attempting to book a service appointment. In 2025, you will see even more advanced use cases of identity resolution which I will be sharing at the 2024 Modern Retailing Conference.
When dealers have a CDP in place, notifications can be sent into the CRM. What happens next depends on the dealer. Some notifications will trigger an email and other notifications will trigger a phone call. One of the biggest revelations dealers will see, when they have their identity resolution tags in ALL IFRAME tools, is just how bad the online shopping experience can be.
One such area is booking an online service appointment! For a Reynolds & Reynolds service scheduler (shown above), the consumer is asked to put in their email address or phone to start the booking process.
When a consumer fails to complete the booking steps (which is very common), dealers can reach out to these consumers and provide instant help instead of letting them defect to a local independent service center.
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Dealers can increase service bookings significantly with identity resolution built into their service scheduler.
For mid-sized dealers, they have hundreds of failed service bookings each month and yet they don't know about it.
The same is true for trade tools, digital retailing software, and credit applications. When your customers are back online "trying" to get information and the dealer's online sales tools disappoint, saving these deals is now possible. It can more than double the sales opportunities dealers see every month.
Be Rewarded with Higher Revenue and Profits
At the 2024 Modern Retailing Conference (MRC), I will be sharing new research which will document how many opportunities can be recovered by any dealer who cares about their existing customers and prospects enough to invest in a CDP. New technologies are available to improve the customer experience; reducing defection and increasing the dealership's most profitable deals: repeat customers.
We have many great speakers and workshops planned for MRC. One of the most anticipated sessions will be from the leaders of the Morgan Automotive Group who have invested in an enterprise CDP and will be sharing their experience and outlining the benefits to their growth strategy.
Tickets for MRC and hotel booking information can be found here: https://modernretailingconference.com/ but keep in mind that the event sells out in advance each year.
What IF Dealers Still Want More?
When dealers understand what is possible when they install identity resolution on their websites and implement deterministic data stitching, some will want more. Some will ask if they can be notified when their customers are shopping (first) off their websites like on competitors websites and automotive marketplace websites.
The answer is Yes.
There are a number of companies who sell audiences based on their proprietary identity graph which can be matched to the dealer's first-party data. One of the leaders in this space is Client Command, with their patented Active Shopper Network?.
Client Command’s Active Shopper Network? – monitors the online behavior on 90% of connected devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets, PCs) in the United States in real-time. Not only can we identify shoppers the instant they enter the market, but we can identify their automotive needs and preferences based on their behavior.
Dealers do not need a CDP to leverage the Active Shopper audiences. They can purchase targeting lists of active shoppers in their PMA or they can subscribe to the Client Command data activation platform, which will alert dealers when their customers are shopping online, everywhere. They will also allow dealers to market (i.e. email and direct mail) to consumers who would be considering conquest shoppers.
You can request a demo of their technology by visiting their website.
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Great points, Brian. CDPs can help dealers identify and engage with known customers and prospects when they return to the dealership's website, potentially doubling sales opportunities each month. However, it's worth asking this question, should dealers limit themselves to packaged CDPs instead of opting for Master Data Management (MDM) with a composable CDP. While CDPs alone do offer significant benefits, MDM could provide even greater value by offering a more holistic approach to data management across the entire dealership. MDM goes beyond just customer data, encompassing all critical data domains within the organization, including product, supplier, and location data. This comprehensive approach allows for better data governance, improved data quality, and more seamless integration across various systems and departments. At Brain+Trust, we're working with dealer groups to implement MDM with composable CDPs so they can create a more flexible and scalable data infrastructure that adapts to their evolving needs while maintaining a single source of truth for all their data assets.