The UK Motor Industry represents one of the UK's largest industries with a total turnover of £48.5bn in 2006 employing over 820,000 people. Last year there were 2,344,864 new vehicles registered on the road in the UK.
That's a lot of people working very hard to support a lot of customers. The average margin of a new car sale in the UK is less than 3% so the UK Motor industry has to work very hard to ensure they win customers and keep them.
Data Discoveries offers a range of products and services designed to ensure that our motor industry clients manage their customer relationships as effectively as possible. The core areas where we help are split into 3.
The Customer Database
The bedrock of your business is the hard fought for customer database. In the hugely competitive automotive sector, every customer represents a huge investment in:
- Marketing
- Test Drives
- Discounts
- Finance
- Sales Cycle
- Commission
The Vehicle Database
The case of the erosion of margin through bad data quality.
With a high percentage of cars change hands every year its difficult for your database to keep up. An example of the problems this causes is shown in the experience of one of our Directors who continues to receive service reminders from a dealership although he traded the car in at the same dealership over three years ago.
New Sales Leads
Ask most motor industry sales people what the most important thing is and they will tell you lots of people buying cars. Ask most motor industry marketing people the same question and they will tell you lots of people visiting the showroom. Subtly different.
The Customer Database
It is estimated that it costs over £1,000 to make a new car sale in up front costs alone. So every record in your customer database costs at least £1,000. That's a big investment that needs looking after. Without accurate data, processes become complex, increasing workflow, headcount and ultimately costs. Ultimately the customer experiences bad service leading to more expense putting it all right. This vicious circle is usually the direct result of simple things like addresses being out of date or duplicate records in the database and as a result actions against the wrong records. Simple basic errors as a result of data getting out of date. For example in a 100,000 record database, often less than 1% of a company's database can have a 21% deceased and goneaway content just because the records are only a year old. The average cost of sending a letter is 34p which means a sunk cost of £7,140 alone in mailing the wrong addresses. The problem is how do you deal with this constant change to keep costs under control AND your service high.
Our Solution
Data Discoveries' software is designed to protect this investment. We help you:
- Capture customer information quickly and accurately
- Keep the data accurate by identifying goneaway and deceased customers
- Trace lost customers to their new addresses
- Enhance your understanding of customer demand through the latest and most accurate demographic and lifestyle indicators
- Generate customer profiles to identify new and used car sales opportunities
Our solutions are unique. They are embedded in the heart of your organisation and work seamlessly with your systems. No more downloading data out of your systems and sending it off to third parties. And no difficulty loading the results back into it again. You are in control, securely, seamlessly.
Consistent data quality just becomes a habit with Data Discoveries' software.
The Vehicle Database
A Director at Data Discoveries bought a new Audi A6 in December 1999. It was a great car, which he ran for 3 years and serviced regularly at Edinburgh Audi. He loved the car. So much so that when it came to renewing it, he bought another Audi from the same dealer. So Edinburgh Audi won his business and gave him such good service that he gave them more business and he's very happy with it to this day, great.
The problem is, he still gets service reminders from Edinburgh Audi for the car he bought from them in 1999. The car he traded in with them over 5 years ago! And the mailer is always stunning and must have cost at least 75p to mail. If you do the maths, this kind of error must be costing them a fortune.
Audi has 10.3% of the Medium Executive, Executive and Luxury segments in the UK representing 48,770 new car sales last year. Add in the total Audi used sales of a further 63,000 units and you can see that the change in vehicle ownership for this one manufacturer alone is significant.
So with all of this change going on, Audi must be sending out over 250,000 car servicing reminders a year at a total cost of £187,000. Every year 27% of their car fleet is changing owner making a potential error of 27% in their service reminder mailings, a total of £50,490 wasted.
Our Solution
Data Discoveries' vehicle checks would have identified all of these cars had changed owners for a total cost of £11,177 per annum only 10p each. That represents a payback of 451%.
Data Discoveries ensure that your entire vehicle database is kept up to date and have access to over 50 car data variables. Including Make Code, Model Code, Date of Change of Keeper and Scrap Marker. Login or Register to download a full list of car data variables.
Margin in the servicing of cars is the lifeblood of most dealerships. Irrelevant mail, based on incorrect data, at best makes you look dumb and at worst losses you those hard fought customers. With Data Discoveries solutions, via our hosted platform this problem is reduced.
New Sales Leads
Buying a car is an emotionally charged process for most consumers and is often their second biggest purchase. As a result the majority spend a lot of time looking for their next purchase. All this culminates with the visit to the showroom where they are more than happy to spend a lot more time with your sales people on test drives, information gathering, and negotiating. The problem is, you only have a finite amount of selling resource. How do you ensure you spend the best of your resource, with the best of your prospects?
Our Solution
Marketing opens, sales closes. By ensuring you target the right offer to incentivise the best prospects in the first place, you ensure that the people who spend time with your sales team are going to convert more quickly.
Data Discoveries' View and Generate maximise the potential of your database to ensure that this happens. By modelling your existing customers based on their demographics and lifestyles, car ownership lifecycle, and changing circumstances, we ensure that you understand when prospects are moving into their demand phase. By aligning the features of your vehicles to the benefits they will enjoy within offers, your dealerships will sell more.
Register or login to arrange an online demonstration or enquire about how Data Discoveries' products and services can help your business.
