Dealers Should Rethink Their Conquest Marketing Strategies

It's not uncommon to review a dealer's marketing budget and see monthly investments listed under "conquest" marketing campaigns. These conquest campaigns are frequently offered as email or direct mail campaigns with the promise that the conquest vendor has a fantastic (proprietary) list of in-market shoppers which, when contacted, can quickly drive traffic into the store to fill gaps in the sales pipeline.

Sounds amazing, right?

It's not uncommon that General Managers have autonomy over their marketing spend. I've seen cases where multiple dealers, in the same dealer group, in the same metro, use the same conquest marketing company to send emails and direct mail to active in-market shoppers, despite paying for the same list multiple times each month with obvious consumer overlap.

Sounds wasteful, right?

Conquest campaigns, operated by third parties, are hard evaluate. How long has the conquest data been passed around? Are the in-market shopper lists 30-60-90 days old? How can value be established to a believable ROI when there are no standards for matchback reporting?

Despite the uncertainty of the ROI of many conquest campaigns, investments continue. Few have challenged this long-standing business model because there wasn't a better solution, until now.

Why do dealers continue to invest in temporary/stale marketing lists when they have a better, richer data source at their fingertips?

Rethinking Conquest Marketing Campaigns

Dealer eProcess has been expanding data integration partnerships with our Connected Retail Platform (CRP) and automotive Customer Data Platforms (CDP). These partnerships have opened my eyes to the value of our CRP when matched with advanced identity resolution frameworks.

It's not uncommon for U.S. auto dealers to see 20,000 - 60,000 visitors monthly to their website in Google Analytics. Nationally, across all dealership websites, I estimate less than 2% of these shoppers will fill out a lead form. Another 3-5% will call the dealer or message them. Some website shoppers will just walk into the showroom without an appointment.

The majority of website traffic is anonymous, which can frustrate dealers, but it doesn't have to be that way any longer.

The consumers who visit a dealer's website represent a segment of the best in-market shopper list for sales and service, determined by their website activity. For dealer groups in a local market, the combined activity across multiple websites could be hundreds of thousands of consumers in any given month.

So why are dealer groups buying potentially aged conquest lists when they have daily website traffic that could be better utilized to create fresh lists?

Few dealers have decided to resolve and actively manage the identity of anonymous website shoppers so that targeted, personalized marketing can be delivered via email, direct mail, or phone. Dealers who invest in identity resolution technology and our CRP can own and build their own conquest lists over time, which reduces expenses and increases their ability to calculate a return on ad spend (ROAS).

Dealers who start to manage their first-party data and extend their reach with data partnerships will decrease their reliance on conquest marketing data.

Identity Resolution Technology and Frameworks

Years ago, Dealer eProcess developed our identity resolution technology which allows our marketing team to match back marketing clicks to actual sales in the DMS. Our technology is a basic form of "on site" identity resolution which uses email addresses, phone numbers, web forms, or cookies to match records in the DMS. This technology also allows us to personalize the website when the consumer returns, based on their previous shopping activities, WITHOUT having to log into the website.

As part of expanding the capabilities of our CRP, we are reviewing advanced identity resolution frameworks. Here are three approaches that are offered in the marketplace today. These approaches will help us further extend the personalization of our CRP and increase website visits into sales.

LEVEL ONE:

The ability to recognize existing customers when they visit the dealer's website.

This allows dealers to know in real time or the next day when existing customers are on their website. This helps dealers to lower defection and increase website personalization. Dealers could see 10-25% more "opportunities" to sell a car each month by identifying when their best customers are back in the market shopping so they can be contacted immediately.

LEVEL TWO (L2)

The same features of Level One and the ability to identify a percentage of anonymous shoppers who have never done business with the dealership.

Identifying shoppers who have no records in the dealer's CDP, CRM, or DMS is a big jump in conversion optimization. Since dealership websites convert at 2% to lead forms, L2 could identify an additional 20+% of the shoppers with an email address, home address, and a phone numbers that can be used for instant marketing or outreach.

LEVEL THREE (L3)

The capabilities of L1 and L2 plus consumers who are in the local area shopping for vehicles on other dealer websites and third-party car shopping websites.

The ability to know when existing customers are shopping "in the wild" or when local shoppers in the dealer's PMA are in-market for the cars they sell is amazing data to utilize. While dealers can blindly buy in-market shopper lists, platforms offering L3 will give dealers the ability to send personalized email, mail pieces, or other media that can be more accurately tracked.

Managing the Data Instead of Rinse and Repeat

When you can utilize valuable shopper data from identity resolution technologies, and use in your CDP, you can start to see why reliance on conquest marketing campaigns will decrease for dealers who invest in CDPs. Dealer websites are a gold mine for local shopper data and intent, but, for the most part, it has been ignored.

Best of all, dealership website data is fresh, actionable, and controlled by the dealer.

The Dealer eProcess Connected Retail Platform (CRP) is the leader in helping dealers and dealer groups leverage their first-party data to create a better customer experience and to run smarter marketing campaigns. As dealers build local profiles of consumers in their market using identity resolutions and CDPs, advanced marketing and targeting will be possible.

Data ownership reduces the "trust me" pledges of agencies and puts the power back in the hands of the dealer.

Dealers who want to do more with their shopper data each month should reach out to the DEP team to set up a demo of our Connected Retail Platform (CRP), and we can also share our progress on identifying the best identity resolution partners and Customer Data Platforms to reimagine automotive retailing.

Let's partner to increase market share through better shopper outreach through advanced identity resolution and bespoke website experiences. Why settle for less than all you can achieve with the right balance of website design, first-party data management, and privacy compliant frameworks.

Call us at 877.551.2555 or attend one of our upcoming webinars, seminars, or conference workshops listed here: https://www.dealereprocess.com/upcoming-events/

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