Dealership data is often trapped behind different tools and systems — such as the CRM, DMS, chat and more — and when it is, there’s no way to capture and properly respond to customer behaviors, actions and interactions. And that means there’s no way to create a personalized one-to-one experience.

These dealership systems often contain inaccurate, duplicate or malformed information with mistakes compounding over time, ultimately compromising the overall customer experience.

Duplicate records can result in customers receiving the same marketing emails, advertisements or promotions multiple times. This is seen as spam and irritates your customers, causing them to unsubscribe or disengage from your marketing efforts. 

A malformed customer record refers to one that doesn’t conform to the expected structure or format of a database, such as a phone number field with the number entered incorrectly. Malformed records can lead to a variety of errors, making it impossible to communicate with customers via text, mail, email or phone.

Marketing to invalid email addresses wastes resources, plus it erodes your sender reputation. If you’re consistently sending emails to invalid addresses, email service providers (ESPs) might perceive your domain or IP addresses as a potential source of spam, making it more likely that your legitimate emails end up in recipient spam folders. This will lower your deliverability rates and raise your bounce rates. High bounce rates can signal to ESPs that your list is outdated or poorly maintained. Reduced open and click rates can damage your brand reputation, possibly leading to compliance issues.

Plus, you’ve now missed the opportunity to engage with genuine leads and customers who might be interested in your products or services, leading to missed sales conversions.

All of this can lead to not just data privacy concerns, missed opportunities and wasted resources, but it will also skew your reporting and analytics. It becomes impossible to accurately measure the success of campaigns, track customer behavior and make good marketing decisions.

Pulling all of this data together, however, is a very complex process. The notion of gathering, organizing and unifying, and then subsequently executing marketing campaigns using disparate data sets from varied systems sounds great, but is far from simple.

The solution lies in adopting the right marketing technology stack. A customer data platform (CDP) and journey builders are tools that empower dealerships to harness actionable data and tools for sales.

As defined by various companies, a CDP is a specialized software designed to gather and unify first and third-party data from various sources, creating a unified comprehensive profile for each customer. Within a CDP, we’re able to unify data by collecting it from different sources, providing a comprehensive view of each customer’s preferences, behaviors and purchase history, creating accurate customer profiles.

You can, for example, differentiate between loyal customers or first-time buyers, and ensure marketing efforts are personalized based on criteria like past purchases, vehicle preferences, location, etc.

By using primary marketing records from the CDP, you can focus your marketing efforts on high potential leads. Optimization results in higher ROI, and you’re going to improve your customer retention. Customers who receive tailored offers feel valued and understood, and you optimize your marketing spend. With personalized offers and communication, you’ll strengthen customer relationships, loyal customers feel appreciated, reducing churn and increasing repeat business.

One of the crucial concerns for dealerships is measuring ROI of CDP implementation. Understandably, investments need to yield tangible results. The ability to quantify the impact of a CDP is paramount. Metrics such as increased engagement, conversion rates and improved customer experiences can provide quantifiable insights into the efficacy of a CDP.

Start by assessing the health of your current database. Are those systems plagued by data quality issues like duplicate records, malformed records, outdated or invalid emails? Then the benefits of a CDP will be magnified as you’re able to communicate in a more meaningful way with your customers. So as our industry embraces electric vehicles, permanent changes to consumer buying habits and the role of digital retail, the ability to leverage data becomes even more critical, if not a requirement for future success. And by eliminating the frustration caused by inaccurate communication and outdated details, dealerships can focus on building genuine relationships armed with accurate information.