How CDPs Can Help Dealers Remain Operational Through a CRM Outage

Cyberattacks are a growing threat in today’s digital world, and dealerships are not immune. An attack or breach on a CRM provider can lead the company to shut down all systems, instantly bringing dealer operations to a halt leaving you with inaccessible customer purchase history, stalled service appointment scheduling, and a sales team that is unable to access existing lead information. This can easily translate to lost sales opportunities and frustrated customers.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) offer dealerships a viable backup plan in the event of a CRM outage or data breach. CDPs work by unifying all dealership data sources into one platform enabling them to serve as a powerful safety net. Let’s take a closer look at the practical ways a CDP can empower dealerships to keep their businesses up and running and minimize disruption even in the face of a cyberattack.

Understanding the Power of a CDP

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a state-of-the-art software designed to unify your dealership’s data sources from multiple first and third-party sources including your CRM, DMS, inventory, website analytics, previous ad data and more. By integrating this data, the CDP creates a single, 360-degree, holistic view of each dealership customer. 

These profiles enable your dealership to gain a deeper understanding of your shoppers and operations, personalize your marketing campaigns, and improve your overall dealership customer experience. But perhaps the most crucial and least known benefit for dealerships is the ability of CDPs to support business continuity in the event the CRM goes down. 

Maintaining Sales Momentum During Down Time

During a CRM outage, a CDP can be leveraged to help your dealership sales team continue their follow-up processes with existing leads and customers. 

One of the central features of a CDP is the list builder which draws on multiple data sources that have been securely and safely integrated with the CDP (read on to learn more about the data security provisions offered by the typical CDP). This feature enables you to create highly granular lists based on specific data points that can then be used by your dealership sales team to continue their outreach and avoid a break in the follow up process. 

The list builder can give you the edge you need to cover your bases and allow you to get creative when reaching out to shoppers by building lists using questions like:

• Who has recently visited my website? 
• Who converted on my website in the last two weeks who needs to be contacted?
• Who has an upcoming appointment that can be confirmed?
• Who missed an appointment that can be brought back in?

By getting creative with your questions, you can build different lists for different teams allowing you to keep things moving forward and prevent the loss of hot opportunities to make a sale during an outage. Learn more about the audiences you can and should be building with your CDP here. 

Uninterrupted Marketing Flows 

In addition to providing lists for the sales team, the CDP can offer a similar creative solution for your marketing team. The CDP holds millions of data points including basic demographic information, which webpages a shopper visited, past purchases and more. The dealership marketing team can then leverage those lists to send personalized targeted email campaigns or SMS blasts promoting specific services and highlighting specific, relevant vehicles on your lot.

CDPs that have integrated marketing capabilities give dealerships the ability to easily communicate through any situation that may arise to quickly and seamlessly speak with their shoppers to ensure they know they are still operational and available to assist with any of their vehicle needs. 

Long-Term Benefits of Using an Automotive CDP

The value of a CDP during a CRM outage is clear – but it goes far beyond the one-off crisis. 

CDPs integrate every data source at the dealership which requires a lot of setup and integration work. This means CDP providers will place a heavy focus on data security which can help your dealership improve your overall data security. Your CDP should ideally be IS0-27001 certified, the highest level of data security certification available.The use of a CDP also reduces reliance on a single system (CRM) and potentially lessens the impact of a cyberattack on core customer information.

How Fullpath is Supporting Dealer Clients Through the Recent CDK Outage 

CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the U.S. and Canada, was hit by two major cyber attacks on June 19, 2024, leading the company to shut down all systems. This left thousands of dealers without direct access to their CRM and DMS. 

Fullpath, in recognition of the drastic implications of the CDK outage, took swift action and created a deep linked easy access shortcut for all CDP clients. This deep link allows for dealers who are logged into the Fullpath dashboard to access all conversions from the last 7 days and all shopper website data for the last 14 days with one click. The deep link also offers access to two actionable work lists that update in real time through the CDP to get dealership sales and marketing teams back to work and ensure no opportunities are missed while CDK works to get back online. 

Fullpath also upgraded all clients who use CDK’s CRM to the Fullpath CDP Pro solution free of charge, allowing dealers to access these lists and Fullpath’s CDP list building tools, while providing full access to customer records to help keep their dealerships moving forward at this time. 

Fullpath also reminded clients to add another channel to their lead routing to make sure they’re seeing the incoming leads during the CDK outage. Whether it’s setting up an adhoc Google sheets integration or making sure email notifications are enabled for every lead provider, this will be critical in making sure the dealership isn’t missing a beat while CRM isn’t functioning.

In addition, when CDK successfully returns to full functionality, if any ADFs from the outage aren’t transferred, Fullpath can help dealers build a full list of leads received during the outage, export them from the CDP and import them directly into the CRM to ensure no leads are lost in the process. 

Learn About Fullpath’s Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Fullpath’s Customer Data Platform is designed specifically for dealerships,integrating and unifying all of the data sources in play at the dealership. Fullpath works with real-time data so every move made at your dealership – from marketing campaigns to sales pitches – are based on the most updated, reliable data. 

Fullpath also offers a suite of AI-powered data activation solutions that enable dealers to automate highly effective, personalized marketing campaigns for hyper-specific audiences that are fully optimized cross-platform with no human intervention. Fullpath’s AI driven marketing allows dealers to automatically target every part of the sales funnel with hyper-specific, relevant and valuable messaging at every point of the shopper journey. 

Get in touch with our team at get.started@fullpath.com or click here to schedule a personalized demo and experience Fullpath’s CDP for yourself.