Transforming Data into Value: Apex Automotive’s Real-World Applications of Fullpath’s CDP

Data is the ultimate superpower in today’s retail automotive landscape. Shopper expectations have reached new highs when it comes to customized shopping experiences and dealers who can successfully leverage their data are coming out on top. 

Fullpath’s Customer Data Platform is designed to complete a dealership’s data infrastructure by unifying previously siloed data sources into one platform, creating a single source of truth. Once the data has been unified, Fullpath leverages powerful identity resolution technology to merge duplicate shopper profiles, creating a clean data set that can then be used to build hyper-segmented lists and audiences of shoppers and vehicles. Those lists can then be used across dealership operations to create the exceptional customer experiences that drive sales. 

Invaluable Insights

Apex Automotive found that Fullpath’s CDP was the game changing tool they needed to take full control of their data, reduce vendor costs, maximize their marketing, and win sales they would have otherwise missed. 

“In the CRM, you can do a little bit of [data] mining and building segments, but you can only see customers who have an open deal or bought a car from you,” explains John Vincent, Director of Business Development at Apex Automotive. “You can’t really tell whether they are re-engaging back with your site or with any of your content. With Fullpath, you can see a full list of all the shoppers at your store and who is engaging.”

Connect the Dots 

Identity resolution, one of the foundational pillars of Fullpath’s CDP, works by merging duplicate shopper profiles to create a singular, 360-degree, data-rich entity that can then be used by the different teams at the dealership to improve workflows, drive sales, and build customer loyalty. 

Consider this real-world application: “John Smith and Jim Smith are really the same person in your CRM but they’re two profiles,” explains Vincent. “Fullpath puts them together so I can export that list and I can have some confidence that’s going to be accurate when I’m telling somebody to call that customer.”

Not only does Fullpath CDP’s identity resolution technology create a better experience for the shopper by ensuring all interactions are relevant and valuable, it helps to optimize internal processes at the dealership by ensuring the right information is available at the right time so the sales and marketing teams can accurately and efficiently engage with shoppers.

Working the Audience

One of the most powerful functions included in Fullpath’s CDP is the audience builder which offers dealers highly granular filtering options so they can slice and dice their data to create hyper-specific lists and segments. Because the CDP pulls from multiple data sources, dealers can build audiences based on specific shopper demographics, behaviors, preferences, needs, and traits that can be leveraged for targeted marketing campaigns and sales operations. 

For Apex Automotive, Fullpath’s audience builder has allowed the dealership to get more granular with their marketing, creating campaigns for specific audiences using targeted messaging. This strategy has allowed the dealership to not only engage shoppers who have previously purchased from the dealership, but to bring in new business that they may have not have won otherwise.

“I built an audience of over 135,000 people. It’s no sale ever, known shoppers. I have their name, their phone number, or their email, so I can then take that info and then I can target them via a conquest email blast and through Facebook,” says Vincent. “The way I look at it is, those are gained sales. It’s not me selling someone I’ve already sold before, where it’s kind of hard to say, hey, maybe I would have sold that customer with or without Fullpath. 

Audiences like the one built by Apex Automotive within Fullpath’s CDP are dynamic, meaning shoppers who go on to make a purchase from the dealership will automatically be removed from the list, and new leads that come into the dealership who meet the audience criteria will automatically be added. This ensures that the dealership is always engaging the right shoppers with the right messaging in a timely manner, creating a positive customer experience with every touch point. 

“I know for this one Honda store, our best selling vehicle is a CRV,” says Vincent. “So if I want to pull people that are looking at CRVs that have never purchased from us, that have recently been on the website in 90 days, it’s an amazing list. Print that sucker, give it to somebody, have them go call them.”

This is the core purpose of a CDP: accessible, usable, actionable data that can help the dealership grow their business and engage shoppers and customers in a meaningful way. 

Not a Far Cry With an Audience API

Once a dealership has unified their data and built custom audiences with Fullpath’s hyper-specific filtering tools, they can activate their data across multiple platforms from within the CDP using Fullpath’s audience APIs. 

Audience APIs allow dealers to directly stream their curated, data-driven audiences to every marketing channel in play at the dealership, including data activation channels within the Fullpath ecosystem, Google ads, Facebook ads, external email platforms,and more. By activating their dynamic audiences across their marketing operation, dealers can optimize their marketing, reduce waste, and increase their ROI. 

“My best performing Facebook campaigns are ones that are being fed by Fullpath’s CDP audiences. I have one that is my current customers with no sale in over one year – that is an audience I target via facebook advertising,” explains Vincent. “That has helped reduce my cost per sale because I can then feed that data into Facebook and it will tell me the attribution on those campaigns.”

AI Integrations: The Ultimate Secret Weapon

Fullpath’s CDP offers dealers the ability to integrate with Fullpath’s AI-powered marketing solutions as part of the Fullpath ecosystem. This direct integration makes it easy to activate dealership data to automatically engage shoppers with meaningful, valuable content. With Audience Activation, Fullpath’s AI-powered email solution, dealers can automatically engage every shopper in their CRM with highly-personalized, targeted email campaigns that speak directly to their individual preferences and needs. 

One of the key features of Audience Activation is Fullpath’s Custom Campaigns which allow dealers to directly engage an audience at any time with customized email content that works alongside the AI engine. With Custom Campaigns, dealers can manually craft their own email content, or use the included generative AI tools to create a customized email in seconds to send to the selected audience.

“This is my secret weapon here,” Vincent shares. “I’m reaching out to people who are looking at Civic CRVs and Accords that are ‘conquest.’ I sent them a $199 lease special. I got 25,000 emails out there and almost half of them opened it, and from there I have clicks and then I actually have attributed sales. Those are five gained sales from people who – I had their contact info, but never purchased from me before.

Clean, Actionable, and Practical 

“If I can do it, you can do it,” says Vincent. 

“The three things I have used [Fullpath’s CDP] for the most is being able to feed in recently sold customers into my advertising campaigns, resulting in not wasting ad dollars, building for the most part, any audience you want and being able give it to someone to go call these customers, [and] the last thing is really just being able to use the CDP as kind of like your sandbox to see how many people I currently have looking at these types of vehicles, making it to my VDP, and segmenting the audience that way,” he shares.

For Apex Automotive, Fullpath’s CDP has proven to be the technology partner they need to activate their data, engage their shoppers in meaningful ways, and grow their business. As early adopters of the CDP, the dealership is already experiencing the difference clean, usable data can make.

“Hopefully it becomes something of a standard to integrate with the CDP,” shares Vincent as he looks ahead. “I think vendors becoming more open to integrate with parties such as Fullpath would be something that I’m hoping to see in the future.”