CRM Data Mining

[DrewAment]

Looking for some ideas - both sales and service, for target data mining. Things like:

- Service - No service for 6 months, send an email coupon
- Sales - Has equity, send target email with specials for purchase

etc, etc. Any ideas would be great. What has worked and failed? How do you track the results? Do you use an outside company, or do it yourself?

 

[Alex Snyder]

One that always worked like a charm was paying attention to the wholesale buy list to find a car that you've sold quite a few of in the past. Then going after the owners in the database who have that car with a very targeted email or BDC campaign. The real trick is targeting the campaign on the right car to a very specific and small set of customers in your database. Just to give you an idea of how small: the largest number I ever did was 37 customers.

In the end, 1 hour of work saves you money in the lanes and nets you new sales + quality trades.

 

[derct]

Alex is on to something here. I’ve been doing this type of targeted marketing for a few years in the automotive industry and one of my favorite, most profitable examples would be the equity customers. If you can come up with a list of these customers and then target down specific year/make/models and on top of that make sure they purchased in a certain year range you’ll see a great return.

The one thing the most often is overlooked; however, is multiple avenues of marketing. Don’t just send a mailer, or just make a phone call. To draw these customers back in you need to make sure you’re communicating to them in a way that will ensure contact. In my experiences an email, followed by a mailer (so the customer has something to touch and hold and feel) and then tied together with a live phone call to actually set the appointment is the best way to get them into your store and spending money with you!

For service, I like to go out over 12 months for the lost customers. There are too many service cycles that are 6 months or longer now. But remember; include service offers even with your sales pieces. If you have an equity customer sitting in your waiting room, wouldn’t you want to know about them, or at least have a second run at them?

Let me know if you have any more questions.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

For sold customers I always tell dealers that they should pull a list this month of all the people who bought cars in September 3, 4 & 5 years ago. People have a tendency to trade around the same time of year they previously bought. Start prospecting them using one of these templates:

Loan Expiration
Top dollar for trades
Warranty Expiration