It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that many dealers would kill to know which of their competition is conquesting their customers. Understanding your retention and defection numbers, including which brands you’re losing business to and why, can produce insights into dealership weaknesses, marketing gaps, and other liabilities.

But, knowing your defectors is only half the battle. You might be able to identify who you’re losing, what make and model they’re switching to, and even why, but what about the all-important next step: winning those customers back?

That’s the other half of the battle: a data-driven approach tailored specifically to the customers you’re trying to conquest.

Targeting your Marketing to Appeal to the Right People

Ironically, when customers defect, they arm you with some of the exact information you need to win them back.

Consider the data you may already have access to in your database:
• Age
• Income
• Housing types
• Homeownership
• Education
• Marital status
• Presence of children
• Employment
• Industry and occupation
• Vehicle ownership
• Vehicle purchasing preferences

This kind of demographic data alone can yield insights into who may be in the market for specific models to suit specific life situations.

But, it’s one thing to speculate about what a person might be more inclined to buy; it’s another to know exactly what make and model they defected to. When you combine demographic data with the knowledge of who specifically is defecting and to which make and model, you can create specific subsets of customers.

You can then target those customers with highly customizable messaging designed to get them back through your dealership’s front doors.

How do you pull that off? Well, first, you have to acknowledge that they left you for a reason. Perhaps that reason is obvious; perhaps it isn’t. So, consider: What are your competitors offering that you aren’t? What needs are their models meeting that yours aren’t?

Or, perhaps make and model isn’t actually the issue, but instead you need to revisit some aspect of the deals you’re making, such as customer-favorable financing or additional sales offers and incentives.

This is also where the expertise of a credible vendor is invaluable. An approach based on this kind of analytics gets results, especially when it’s executed by those who know how to craft customized messages that appeal to customer subsets.

There is an abundance of insights hiding in your customer data and even more in understanding who’s defecting from your brand and why, but combining the two makes consistently successful customer conquest possible. Then, you have a complete picture of the customer and a roadmap to winning their business back.

In our data-driven age, there’s no such thing as knowing too much. Rather than settling for the mere knowledge of retention and defection rates, combine that knowledge with an informed targeting approach to turn recently defected customers into brand-new conquest opportunities.

This article is sponsored by Naked Lime.