‘Data Ups:’ A New Era of Sales Enablement

Every dealer knows the stress of nearing the end of the month, hoping that a few more hands will be raised so you can hit the leads you need to reach your monthly goal.

Historically, auto dealerships have relied on ‘ups’ to meet their sales targets. Whether it’s showroom visitors, phone calls, or internet inquiries, these leads have actively raised their hands, asking to be engaged and signaling that they’re in the market for a new vehicle. They represent your lowest-hanging fruit, but they’re not always the ripest. A single phone call or a brief interaction with your website’s chatbot doesn’t necessarily indicate an engaged shopper with high intent to purchase. More crucial than those leads who raise their hands are the shoppers that are actively engaging with your marketing efforts and website. 

That’s where a ‘Data Ups’ strategy comes into play. Every dealer has potential buyers quietly shopping behind the scenes—returning to your website, talking with your chatbot, or clicking on your ads. Just because they’ve not filled out a lead form doesn’t mean they aren’t high-intent opportunities.

Your ‘Data Ups’ refer to those leads that start out as hyper-engaged opportunities that are identified by their shopper behavior data in your Customer Data Platform. These shoppers, recognized by their shopper behaviors as being in-market, are then worked by your sales team to where they explicitly express buyer intent. These are data-driven leads that would have otherwise been missed because they are hiding in the dealership’s blindspot.

In this blog, we will guide dealerships through the essentials of ‘Data Ups,’ why an AI-powered Customer Data Platform (CDP) is essential to ‘Data Ups’ and growing your revenue, and some practical approaches to fully leveraging your ‘Data Ups.’ 

Understanding AI-Driven “Data Ups”

The life of a salesperson is undeniably hectic, making it easy to fall into the reactive habit of focusing on leads who have explicitly reached out in the past few days or weeks. However, leveraging AI technology allows for a more proactive approach. AI can help by identifying shoppers who are actively interacting with your dealership’s marketing, even if they haven’t formally submitted a recent lead.

This AI-driven sales enablement strategy capitalizes on the goldmine of your dealership’s first-party data. When you have a comprehensive, unified view of your customers’ interactions within your Customer Data Platform—including their previous purchases, VDPs they’ve visited, engagement with marketing campaigns, and chatbot conversations—both AI technology and your human sales team members are better positioned to proactively approach your opportunities and give them a personalized customer experience. 

By shifting from reactive to proactive engagement, you can uncover valuable opportunities hiding within your existing data and create meaningful connections with potential buyers before they reach out.

The Central Role of a CDP in ‘Data Ups’

Your automotive Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the backbone of your dealership’s ‘Data Ups’ strategy. By integrating and unifying disconnected customer data from various sources into a single, actionable dataset, a CDP empowers dealers to effectively leverage their first-party data, transforming it into actionable insights and enhanced revenue opportunities. They are essential tools for activating your data and uncovering your hottest opportunities.

By consolidating your dealership’s customer data, a CDP provides a holistic view of each shopper’s journey. With this 360-degree perspective of every individual customer, it becomes significantly easier to identify which customers have the highest purchase intent based on their shopping behaviors and which offers are most likely to pique their interest.

Harnessing this deep understanding of each shopper, the Customer Data Platform allows you to manually segment your shoppers according to your specific needs. Through these hyper-targeted lists, you can surface high-intent shoppers that are ready to be converted into leads. Instead of sifting through a lengthy list of leads based on incoming lead dates or last contact dates, you can focus on those who are most engaged with your marketing efforts, have spent time on your website, those who have actively engaged with your chatbot—or indeed, all of the above.

Transforming raw customer data into actionable sales opportunities is where a Customer Data Platform truly shines. By utilizing customer insights, you can turn valuable data into audience insights that maximize your dealership’s sales potential.

How ‘Data Ups’ Work

While you may already be familiar with traditional ‘Showroom Ups’ and ‘Internet Ups,’ the concept of ‘Data Ups’ is new to the industry. As with any new approach, getting started requires some attention and focus. Let’s explore some of the key steps for effectively implementing a ‘Data Ups’ approach at your dealership.

Connecting and Sorting Data

As noted, a Customer Data Platform is essential for any ‘Data Ups’ strategy at your dealership. It not only organizes all your customer data in a way that’s easy to access and understand, but also presents data from various sources cohesively, allowing you to sort, analyze, and identify opportunities within your dealership data that will become your ‘Data Ups.’ The CDP enables you and your AI tools to dive deep into your customer information to uncover valuable opportunities.

Using an AI-powered sales enablement technology integrated with your Customer Data Platform, allows you to automatically identify your hottest opportunities, rather than spending your time manually sorting through your audiences. It specifically focuses on shoppers with a high marketing engagement score, which considers multiple data points throughout each customer journey. This includes whether they are clicking on and responding to your ads, emails, and texts; viewing VDPs multiple times; and engaging in conversations with your chatbot, as well as taking into account how recent all these actions are.

Segmenting Shoppers Using a CDP

With a deep understanding of every interaction and action shoppers have taken with your dealership, you can create endless segmented lists to facilitate your sales activities and marketing campaigns.

Within the CDP, you can build audience lists using a variety of filters, encompassing everything from shoppers’ actions on your website and their current vehicles to specific details about the vehicles they’re engaging with—such as body class or electrification status—and whether they have positive equity or high car payments. Because CDPs work with real-time data, these lists are fully dynamic, continuously updating in real-time as shoppers meet or no longer meet the specified criteria. With dynamic audience lists, shoppers will receive marketing communications that are highly relevant to their current interests and recent actions.

Identifying Opportunities

Consider ‘Max.’ His lease is nearing its end. He’s diligent with his payments so knows it’s time to start researching his next vehicle. Having previously had a positive experience with your dealership, he has already spent some time on your website exploring models similar to his current car, but he’s now looking for something with a bit more power. He’s also engaged in conversations with your chatbot about the colors available in your inventory and the current offers.

Max never submitted a lead and hasn’t explicitly indicated he’s shopping for a new vehicle, so he won’t show up on any of your lead outreach lists. With integrated sales-enablement AI, the technology will recognize that Max is in-market and has a high intent to purchase, surfacing his profile as a hot opportunity for your sales team to pursue.

Engaging with Potential Customers

CDP filters are the key to transforming your segmentation from simple 2D lists into extensively detailed customer profiles for hyper-targeted marketing campaigns across email, text, and digital advertising. 

These filters and data slicing tools are essential for pinpointing high-intent shoppers within your CDP. By allowing you to narrow down customer lists based on specific criteria—such as website activity, marketing engagement, current vehicle financial status, and much more—filters enable you to quickly identify shoppers who are actively researching their options. This ensures that your marketing efforts are directed at those most likely to convert to leads and, eventually, sales.

For instance, you can filter your data to focus on shoppers interested in electric vehicles who also have positive equity in their current cars, have engaged with your ads, and have viewed VDPs multiple times in the past week. This precise targeting helps you uncover high-intent shoppers with specific preferences, enabling your sales team to deliver tailored messages and offers that genuinely resonate with their interests.

Examples of “Data Up” Opportunities

Now that we better understand how to identify and convert interested shoppers into ‘Data Ups’ in your Customer Data Platform, let’s explore some high-intent opportunities you can uncover with this sales enablement strategy.

Shopper Segments and Criteria

By leveraging your CDP, you can create highly specific shopper segments that make it easy to identify in-market shoppers aligned with your sales goals.

Customer Retention Lists

Focusing on customer retention and maximizing your customers’ lifetime value (LTV) with your dealership can significantly reduce the constant need for new leads. Use your CDP filters to create an audience like: 

• Renewal opportunities: Filter for customers nearing the end of their financing term who have also recently visited your website.

Active Shopping and Purchase Intent

Active engagement on your website is one of the clearest indicators that someone is in the market for a new vehicle. While some may browse casually, repeat visitors are often serious shoppers. Considering the following filtered audience:

• Website visitors with high engagement scores: Instead of just tracking website visits, filter for returning shoppers with high engagement scores, which indicate they’re seriously considering your offerings.

Marketing Engagement

High marketing engagement scores are just as telling as website interactions when it comes to identifying potential buyers. Look at these interactions with your marketing:

• Email clicks and VDP views: Filter for shoppers who have clicked on your emails and subsequently viewed VDPs on your website, indicating they are responding to your outreach.
• Ad interactions: Shoppers who repeatedly engage with your ads are demonstrating interest. A follow-up email or call that references the vehicle they’ve been engaging with can drive meaningful conversations about the offers they’ve shown interest in.

Identifying Shoppers in a CDP

These examples illustrate some effective ways to filter within your Customer Data Platform to reach your sales objectives. You can identify in-market shoppers exploring specific vehicles while personalizing every interaction based on their engagement. Remember some of the key approaches to filtering within the CDP include:

• Vehicle of interest
• Vehicle specifics—such as electrification, new/pre-owned status, brand, etc.
• Ad engagement
• Website engagement and activities

By utilizing these filters, you can better understand who are actually your hottest opportunities and how to reach out based on their behaviors and preferences.

Turning Data into Dollars – The Impact of “Data Ups”

Your dealership already has millions of data points, but without the right strategy, they may not be delivering the value you need. A ‘Data Ups’ strategy both brings to your attention opportunities that aren’t recognized as leads but are in fact ready to convert into a sale and uncovers valuable insights that transform your dealership’s customer data into revenue.

Maximizing Missed Opportunities

Implementing a ‘Data Ups’ strategy enables dealerships to capitalize on previously overlooked opportunities. By effectively using the insights derived from CDP, you can identify potential buyers who you may have otherwise ignored or simply not noticed at all. To maximize these opportunities, it’s crucial to actively engage with these customers through targeted outreach. 

Improving Sales Outcomes

A ‘Data Ups’ approach not only helps you identify high-intent shoppers but also enhances your sales outcomes through targeted engagement. By using AI-driven insights to tailor your marketing messages and offers, you can create personalized experiences that resonate with shoppers. 

The ability to track engagement metrics, such as email open rates, website visits, and interaction with advertisements, allows your marketing team to have a better understanding of the most impactful content and the sales team to prioritize outreach based on the likelihood of conversion. This targeted approach can significantly reduce the sales cycle time, as sales representatives can prioritize opportunities that show the highest level of interest. 

Role of the CDP in Revenue Growth

The Customer Data Platform plays a vital role in driving revenue growth through a ‘Data Ups’ strategy. By consolidating and analyzing customer interactions and behaviors, a CDP provides valuable insights that empower your sales and marketing teams to make data-driven decisions. It enables you to efficiently segment your audience, pinpoint high-intent shoppers, and proactively engage them with relevant offers. In this way, the CDP serves as a powerful tool in turning raw data into actionable sales opportunities, ultimately contributing to the overall growth of your dealership’s revenue.

The CDP allows you to analyze past customer behavior, uncovering patterns that indicate when and why customers made previous purchases. This intelligence can inform your outreach strategies, enabling you to time communications around crucial moments, such as lease end dates or periods when customers are likely to begin shopping based on their last purchase cycle. 

The Competitive Edge of ‘Data Ups’

Leveraging a ‘Data Ups’ strategy can help identify already engaged shoppers and proactively engage them to drive increased sales. Fullpath’s Data Ups Management System uses cutting-edge AI along with your dealership’s first-party data to surface high-intent opportunities based on their shopping behavior so you can utilize the human touch and close the sale. 

Integrating a Data Ups Management System at your dealership is essential for staying ahead of the competition. While other dealerships wait for leads to walk through the door or speculate whether the same individuals clicking on their ads are opening their emails, you have a clear view of who are the most in-market shoppers you should be contacting and how to engage them effectively.

Fullpath’s AI-powered Data Ups Management System offers a dynamic opportunity feed that not only organizes this data, but also provides valuable insights about each shopper, offering actionable next steps to convert your hottest opportunities into actual sales. This includes vehicles and financing options most likely to resonate with them, as well as tailored email content and phone scripts based on their previous engagements with your dealership. 

The data revolution is slowing down for no one. Click here to start your ‘Data Ups’ journey.