By Kristen Judd
At a recent conference, speaker after speaker talked about the importance of continuing to follow-up with customers – whether previous owners in dealer databases or leads in the CRM. The conventional wisdom in lead handling has long prescribed a periodic follow-up plan after 45 or 90 days that includes a series of “touches”: offers, phone calls, and the like. The traditional mindset in the owner retention side has been standard OEM programs with offers timed around equity position and trade cycles and other time- and mileage-based markers. Data has shown that these approaches result in some incremental sales. At 3 Birds, we questioned whether the current approach is effectively capturing all potential sales or whether some viable sales opportunities were being left for “dead.”
- 90,000 Sales Transactions
- Over 350,000 Leads
- More than 4MM campaign communications
We looked at the entire customer activity record from the DMS and the CRM. We studied whether or not those who had been inactive for a period of time could be reactivated by various 3 Birds Email Campaigns. Campaigns included Sales, Service, Newsletter, Buyback, and other types of our proven campaigns. In order to claim Direct Contribution to the sale, we required that there be a period of inactivity, a 3 Birds Campaign be sent and opened (at a minimum), subsequent activity with the dealership, and a sale within a short time period.
The results are shown in the table below.
Days Aging | Sales | Newsletter | Buy Back | Service | Retention | Other | Sale/Month |
0-15 | 60% | 35% | 0% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 1.2 |
16-30 | 43% | 41% | 10% | 5% | 1% | 0% | 0.9 |
31-45 | 47% | 49% | 0% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 0.7 |
45+ | 46% | 46% | 1% | 4% | 0% | 2% | 5.0 |
Database Retention | 47% | 43% | 2% | 4% | 1% | 4% | 5.4 |
49% | 43% | 3% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 13.2 |
- We found 5.7 incremental sales per month per dealer by sending 3 Birds Campaigns to leads that had been inactive for more than 31 days with 5.0 incremental sales per month from leads inactive more than 45 days and .7 from 31 to 45 days.
- 46-47% of these eventual buyers engaged with 3 Birds sales-related Campaigns that include inventory, special offers, OEM events, and the like.
- 46-49% engaged with 3 Birds monthly Email Newsletters which include product, ownership, and lifestyle content.
- We found 5.4 more incremental sales per month per dealer from response to 3 Birds Campaigns sent to inactive owners in dealers’ previous customer databases.
- 47% of these eventual buyers engaged with 3 Birds sales-related Campaigns.
- 43% engaged with 3 Birds monthly Email Newsletters proximate to their eventual purchase.
- Conventional long-term lead follow-up programs are not sufficient to mine all the sales volume out of your leads.
- Typical OEM and traditional customer retention campaigns are no longer sufficient to reactivate re-purchasing owners.
- Capturing incremental sales from leads and owners requires a system that provides timely and tailored information. This information needs to include a mix of product, lifecycle messaging, and offers in order to trigger customer engagement and encourage a purchase.