Automotive CDP Use Cases – 4 Practical Applications of a CDP at Your Dealership

Automotive-centric Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have become essential tools for dealerships over the past few years. These centralized data hubs offer a unified view of customer information, enabling dealerships to make informed decisions and drive personalized marketing efforts.

Fullpath’s CDP is at the forefront of this transformation, spearheading shopper data activation across the automotive industry. We’ll dive deep into four specific instances of how a CDP can revolutionize your marketing strategies and foster lasting customer relationships.

How Fullpath’s CDP Enhances Dealership Operations

Dealers often grapple with the challenge of duplicate customer data, wasting valuable resources and time on ineffective marketing efforts.  Fullpath’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) takes these fragmented customer profiles from numerous platforms and unifies and cleans them into a 360-degree view of every shopper. 

Once customer journeys are merged and cleaned, Fullpath’s CDP unleashes the true potential of your data. This empowers you to deliver personalized experiences and targeted campaigns that resonate with your customers, driving improved engagement and conversions.

Let’s explore four specific use cases that demonstrate how Fullpath’s CDP can transform your dealership’s operations.

Use Case 1 – Identifying Upcoming Sales Opportunities

Not every offer your dealership provides needs to be solely about the vehicle. Sometimes, the key is crafting the right offer for a specific customer’s current circumstances. With CDP data on every customer going back as far as 10 years, you have a vast amount of information at your disposal that, when leveraged effectively, can make or break a sales opportunity. 

For instance, if you’re looking to re-engage past customers and encourage another purchase, you can leverage Fullpath’s CDP filtering capabilities to segment your data and build an audience of shoppers whose final car payments are due within the next 6 months. Then, layer on a filter that isolates customers with high annual percentage rates (APR). You’ve now pinpointed a group of individuals who are prime candidates for an enticing offer. 

By predicting who will soon be in the market for a new vehicle and understanding their existing APR, you can proactively present personalized deals on relevant vehicles before these past customers even begin actively shopping. This early engagement with tailored offers fosters loyalty and customer satisfaction. 

Use Case 2 – Targeting Specific Body Classes

While some customers are loyal to specific car brands, others prioritize the body type they need. Many dealerships offer a variety of brands, making it important to be able to target customers with cross-brand options. Fullpath’s CDP filtering options make this possible.

Within the Fullpath dashboard, you can create audiences based on their preferred body class. For instance, filter for ‘pickups’ to see everyone who has ever viewed a pickup on your website, regardless of the brand. While this initial list might be extensive, you can further refine it using other filters like recent VDP visits, nearing lease-end, or positive equity.

Focusing your audience on a general interest like body type, instead of brand loyalty, helps you connect with customers who have a particular interest. You can tailor your messaging to highlight the pickup trucks you have in stock, regardless of the brand. This approach not only improves inventory turnover for specific body types but also enhances customer engagement by addressing their needs.

You can adjust the audience filters to be as broad or narrow as necessary. This flexibility allows you to create targeted campaigns that resonate with the right customers at the right time.

Use Case 3 – Selling Challenging VINs 

As a dealer, you’re all too familiar with the inventory balancing act: clearing out older models to make room for new ones, all while keeping cash flow healthy and meeting OEM goals.

So, what do you do with those vehicles that have been lingering on your lot too long?  Blasting an email to every recent website visitor is inefficient. Many won’t be interested in the specific VINs you need to move, and frankly, it’s not the best use of your resources. That’s where Fullpath’s CDP steps in.  The custom audience builder lets you target the exact shoppers who are most likely to buy those older models.

Within your CDP, you can narrow down your audience to individuals who meet the following criteria: they have only a few payments remaining on their current vehicle, they recently visited your website, and they specifically browsed the VIN you’re looking to move. Remember, not every list needs to trigger a marketing campaign. This newly created audience segment is a valuable asset to share with your sales team, and can enable them to do what they do best in a more focused and efficient way.

That’s how you get Michelle – a customer who bought a car from you three years ago, is almost done paying it off, and has been browsing your SUV VDPs the past few weeks –  into your dealership for a test drive of that older SUV model.

Use Case 4 – Audience Suppression

Like many in the automotive industry, you’re undoubtedly aware of the fluctuating EV and hybrid market. Demand shifts, and consumer preferences aren’t always set in stone.  However, with marketing budgets being what they are, dealerships can’t afford to target every shopper with every offer. 

Let’s say you’ve just received a new ICE vehicle and are crafting your marketing strategy. Suppress EV or hybrid shopper audiences to avoid wasting resources on shoppers who’ve recently shown a strong preference for EVs or hybrids. Instead, focus your efforts on those who’ve consistently expressed interest in traditional fuel vehicles in recent months. 

A CDP’s audience building capabilities allow you to do precisely that. You can target shoppers based on their current interests, not just past purchases.  Audience suppression can be just as important as positive targeting. A customer may have bought an ICE vehicle from you five years ago, but if they’ve been browsing your hybrid inventory exclusively for the past three months, your new ICE model probably isn’t the best fit for them.

Leveraging CDP Use Cases for Better Dealership Performance

These four CDP use cases merely scratch the surface of what’s possible for your dealership’s sales and marketing strategies. In reality, the combinations of filters and scenarios you can create are limitless. Whether your goal is to promote time-sensitive offers, connect with broader audiences based on their interests, efficiently sell older models, or optimize your marketing budget by excluding irrelevant audiences, Fullpath’s CDP provides the tools to reach the perfect audience.

By implementing these use cases with Fullpath’s CDP, dealerships can reap significant benefits. You’ll foster stronger customer engagement with personalized offers and messaging tailored to individual needs and preferences. Additionally, you’ll enhance operational efficiency through data-driven decision-making and highly targeted marketing campaigns.

Ready to see how Fullpath’s CDP can transform your dealership’s sales and marketing operations? Schedule a demo today to explore its full potential and discover new opportunities for growth and success.