Toyota Australia is driving potential Corolla buyers into dealers by piloting a personalised digital experience.
The carmaker is using a mix of Sitecore and Salesforce marketing cloud and CRM to personalise Corolla sales messages to prospective customers, but for future car launches more work is required to replicate this model.
Lead architect David Johnston-Bell says from a time customers are serious about a purchase to when they buy it is around three months.
In that time, Toyota may have had up to 900 interactions with the customer, 71% of which are digital.
“It used to be four to five visits to a dealership – it’s usually about one now,” Johnston-Bell says.
“The dealer has that one opportunity to get you to buy that car.”
In 2018, Toyota used a Corolla launch to test marketing personalisation strategies, where customers were marketed to based on four profiles of buyer – style, sports and performance, or value.
The result of the pilot was that personalisation could work to increase foot traffic into the dealer network.
“We had a 600% increase in the checking of local stock and a 1187% increase in engagement. It’s driving the engagement that we want with our guests into the dealerships.”
Toyota wants to run similar campaigns across its vehicle range, but the time and effort needed to executive personalisation would need to be significantly reduced, Johnston-Bell says.
Johnston-Bell is hoping to build more personalisation capabilities into the company’s My Toyota app.
“As an example, you might be driving down the road, and you might get an offer on your mobile phone from the local Toyota dealer.
“If you showed an interest in buying a new car, and there’s a sale on, we might ping you if you go past – things like that.”
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