2015 Bronze Best Data Strategy

MRM Meteorite

Vauxhall

Listening to Leads

The Team

Peter Hope - CX Director- Andrea Caumon - Head of CRM- Steve Gale - CRM Manager-
Tom Hunter - Senior Data Planner- Martin Dibbs - Senior Data Planner- Claudine Daly - Data Planner-
Helen MacKenzie - Senior Account Director- Sam Auguste - Senior Account Manager
Richard Hennis - Business Director Chris Sands - Senior Project Manager Ross Dean - Project Manager-

Campaign overview

Vauxhall’s marcoms were often reaching the wrong people at the wrong time, negatively impacting consideration and conversion. So the brief was to devise a data-led strategy to better target existing customers or prospects looking for a new vehicle, engage them with relevant communications and content and translate this into leads and sales. The manufacturer used analytics to identify actively car-hunting prospects and craft dynamic communications that accurately reflected each customer’s preferences and generate better, more numerous qualified leads. And a simplified, spedup purchase journey across multiple channels helped the brand secure customers before its competitors even realised they were in-market.

Strategy

Buying a new vehicle is a large, rare purchase, so timely, relevance messages are critical to consideration and sale. Vauxhall research suggested personal life-events trigger one-third of purchases, making it almost impossible to predict timing. Vauxhall had historically focused on optimising conversion, but deals were increasingly sealed via heavy discounts and attractive finance packages. Rather than chasing these already overwhelmed leads, this campaign identified customers at an earlier stage and sent them content ahead of its competition. The Vauxhall website, email platform and web-tracking tool were used to profile web behaviour for over 100,000 prospects. Deep-dive analysis isolated typical behaviours that preceded a sale, with quality of interactions with a specific carline related to propensity to purchase.

Creativity

The team set up business rules to pick up online behavioural clues about customers’ purchase intentions and created a triggered email programme to reach them. Emails were dynamically personalised and tailored to the prospect’s model of interest, with content relevant to their stage of the purchase journey. Prospects were able to choose the onward journey that suited them: configuring their dream model online, checking finance options, booking a test drive, contacting a retailer and so on. Vauxhall’s online test-drive form was a major bottleneck, so dropoff was significantly reduced by auto-submitting forms for known contacts. Analytics also showed that featuring specific carlines in other Vauxhall emails caused a spike in dynamic emails sent, so other CRM communications were curated to decide its virtual shop window and influence the volume of leads generated per carline.

Results

Vauxhall now has a data-led process that can, in just a few days, identify a previously hidden potential buyer, proactively provide them with relevant information, prompt them to explore further and fast-track a test drive with their local retailer, who closes the sale. This new data-driven journey has far exceeded expectations, with a short and smooth sales funnel delivering a 523% uplift in prospect-to-lead conversion and 370% sales hike at a 40:1 ROI. Vauxhall has enjoyed its best ever email engagement, with 65% open rates, 50% click-toopen and 5.6% conversion. The programme is now being rolled out across 27 European markets and grown in a wider range of channels, including re-targeting engaged audiences through display and social ads and creating increasingly personalised web journeys.