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Despite consumers taking out larger loan amounts, they continue to make their monthly payments on time. But, affordability remains a

After Hurricane Florence, Experian is here to help. People can download our free Vehicle Flood Risk Check app.

Trivia question: Millennials don’t purchase new vehicles. True or False?

When it comes to driving the automotive industry forward, Experian Automotive has a motto: “The right cars. The right customers. The right data to know the difference.” We deliver an integrated perspective based on the highest quality automotive information and market intelligence. Data is important to us, and we have the most robust combination of data assets under one roof. The North American Vehicle Database℠, File One℠ Credit Database, Consumer View℠ Marketing Database, Online Activity Databases, and National Fraud Database℠ all fed into Experian’s Auto HyperConnect™.   Auto HyperConnect houses two different solutions: Auto HyperTargeting™ and Auto HyperMonitoring™. There are four different components to Auto HyperTargeting, and the one we will focus on today is Expired Lease. Dealers have found success marketing to their own customers when vehicle leases come due. The challenge has been conquesting off-lease consumers who didn’t buy from them. While off-lease consumer marketing lists are available, they only provide the estimated lease end date and monthly lease payment.  When restricted to this data, it’s hard to tell if a $550 a month payment is for a Ford F150 or a BMW 3-series. And yet this is exactly the level of detail needed to successfully target off-lease marketing. Experian’s new Auto HyperTargeting- Expired Lease addresses this challenge by enabling dealers to identify and engage off-lease audiences through a highly targeted approach that has never been possible! Now, finding customers is much easier and cost-effective. You can use the best mix of selection criteria to maximize your off-lease conquesting strategy. Some of the ways you can identify your audience are: Lease Maturity Date Vehicle Make Vehicle Model Zip Code Model Performance Tier Distance from Dealer Ship Vehicle Status (New or Used) Signing up for Auto HyperTargeting- Expired Lease comes with five perks. The first is a monthly file. This includes name and address, lease maturity date, make/model, monthly payment bands, and phone and email address when available. The second is the ability to make sign up for a subscription monthly payments. Third is marketing flexibility with direct mail, email, and phone. Four there is no firm offer of credit required for this. Finally, a quarterly sales report. ARA reports provide sales metrics industry wide for your targets. Other competitive features also available in Auto HyperTargeting- Expired Lease is the customers full contact information with name, address, email address and phone number. And for online and offline channels, you can select a specific audience that is customizable. Auto HyperTargeting has some amazing features to successfully conquest customers, and Expired Lease is one of the four ways to do this. Stay tuned for Auto HyperTargeting- Vehicle Owners coming up next!

Results two and three are now available for the 2018 Experian Automotive Attribution Study. Learn how to use data and and attribution to gain more sales.

There are many factors attributing to the success of dealerships. When it comes to dealers, empirical guidance is a great way to study effective advertising. Experian brought Auto, Targeting, and the Dealer Positioning System capabilities together in a nationwide study to answer the ultimate question: what drives sales? The answers can be found in Experian’s 2018 Attribution Study. This is a wide-ranging, dealer-focused sales-driven attribution study that analyzed a few key variables. We deployed 187,701 tracking pixels to devices in 41,012 distinct households, focused on 15 digital metrics to learn about shopper behavior, and tied that digital shopping data to 2,436 vehicle sales. An industry first, Experian’s ability to combine automotive registration data, sales data, and website analytics and online behavior data puts us in a position to do something that very few companies can do. We use the household identifiers to not only see who bought a car and who bought specifically from a participating dealer, but also how they shopped the dealer’s site. Our ability to accurately identify a household’s digital behavior is based on the fact that we are a source compiler of the data and have it sitting under one roof.  Others that attempt to provide this type of insight need to contract out for registrations, sales data imports from the dealership, website analytics, household identifiers, or all the above, which generally adds time to the insights. Using our sales-based approach, we can deliver unbiased attribution. Sales-based attribution is attributing credit to different advertising sources/campaigns based on actual vehicle sales – including those targeted consumers that may have purchased outside of the dealership. This is the Holy Grail of attribution for car dealers since it ties an offline activity such as buying a car back to the online advertising that’s taking up most their budgets every month. Because of that offline-online disconnect, sales-based attribution is difficult. Other automotive attribution models are typically focused on website conversions or website behavior – “what advertising can I attribute website leads to” (conversions) or “what advertising is driving users who follow the behavior that I think shows they’re likely to buy from my dealership” (website behavior.) What are the takeaways?   We found three takeaways from our study. First off, we look at shopper behavior instead of isolating KPIs. Later we will discuss how traditional website metrics do not tie-in to sales. Second, we look at optimizing your paid advertising. Finally, we look at third-party investments. Although third parties drive sales, they may not be your sales. Looking at shopper behavior, not isolated KPI’s Traditional website metrics don’t tell the sales story for dealers. Traditional conversion stats are equal for buyers vs. all traffic such as VDPs or page views What this means is on average, buyers converted at a lower rate than overall website traffic. Looking solely at form submissions, hours and directions pageviews, and mobile clicks-to-call, don’t give the best view of what advertising is driving sales. With that, 98% of buyer traffic never submitted a form or went to the hours and directions page. This is a typical website conversion that dealers, vendors, and advertising agencies focus on.  Since traditional web metrics don’t tell the story, there is another way. These are called High-Value Users, or HVU. They purchase at a 34% higher rate than overall traffic although they make up 11% of all traffic.   High-Value Users are an Experian derived KPI. What makes someone an HVU are four different measurements. They must visit a website at least three times Spend at least six minutes on the site in total View at least eight pages in total View at least one VDP High-Value Users correlates to sales better than Vehicle Detail Page or VDP metrics. In this study, the correlation for VDP was measured at .595 which is rated a medium correlation. Meanwhile, HVU scored a .698 which is rated a high correlation. Looking at many different behavioral KPIs, like we do with our High-Value User (HVU) metric, correlates better to sales than just looking at how many VDPs you had. Driving more VDPs won’t necessarily help sales. But driving more HVUs is more likely to correlate with more sales. This also gets back to the attribution discussion above: Experian sales-based attribution is the best, and Experian’s HVUs are a good method for web-based attribution. From this attribution study, High-Value Users are a vital group for dealers to utilize. In our next post, we will go over the second and third takeaways from the attribution study: optimizing paid advertising and evaluating third-party investments.

Backed by Experian Information Solutions, AutoCheck provides a comprehensive vehicle history report. Here are five best practices to use AutoCheck.

Figuring out how to increase customer loyalty and conquesting becomes simple one you consider how to use data to win over market share.

Who would be the ideal customer for a dealership? One that buys or leases a car and becomes a repeat customer? Learn how using data keeps loyal customers.

Data is an important aspect to be a successful dealer. Here are five steps to becoming a data-driven dealer and learning how to conquest.

As a dealer, remember to protect your backyard before you go out to conquest other locations. Owning your own backyard lets you be defensive and conquest.

Find out how to target potential customers for your dealership based on lifestyle segments.

Throughout the year, there are certain models that are incredibly popular. SUVs and crossovers fly off the shelves during the wintertime while down south, the pickup-truck is the sales king. There are times when less popular vehicles flood your inventory, creating stress for your sales team to try and get them into the hands of customers. The good news for dealers is that you don’t need to panic when strange bonus programs are floated out by the manufacturer. Data-driven methods can be used to find potential buyers. The upshot of this is dealers don’t have to wait for buyers to waltz into their showroom. Although you can pick a specific model based on incentives, it is a good idea to review your model goals to confirm they are realistic. Based on the models you are trying to move, identify the sales trends by unit and geography. This analysis may help you discover the vehicle margin opportunity isn’t worth the advertising investment. On the other hand, you may learn competitors are selling a plethora of that model and there is plenty of room to conquest market share. Always let data be your guide. Checking a vehicle’s popularity can determine if you should market it. If the model’s popularity in your geography is growing, it will be easier since potential consumers are going into showrooms, asking questions, and doing research online. On the flip side, a vehicle with declining popularity is more difficult, and therefore more expensive, to market. As vehicles become unpopular or out-of-season, aggressive pricing may be in-store. In the past, the “spray and pray” method was what dealers and marketers would use, simply hoping that your campaign would find your target. Today, the best practice is to pinpoint the demand for your model by analyzing your pre-determined market radius to identify those ZIP Codes™ which show the most interest. For example, narrowing down to neighborhoods showing recent sales of your model can help identify future purchase demand. When combined with demographic, psychographic, web analytics, and your CRM data, the formula for determining model-specific demand becomes a precise science. Determining where to market is one thing, but identifying the in-market customer is another thing altogether. To identify the persona for potential purchasers of your models, utilize a system like Experian’s Dealer Positioning System. It helps determine the demographics and psychographics of consumers along with various buying patterns. This persona will include what interests consumers of your model and what they value in a marketing message. While creating the persona, think about what kind of marketing would be the most effective. Are your customers on social media and would they prefer digital advertising? Perhaps a more traditional approach with direct mail or by phone? Understanding their preferences will indicate which approach will most effectively resonate with them. Now campaigns for your model of choice can begin. Use the ZIP Codes and demographics of your highest potential customers to create an effective media plan. Based on the data, craft out digital, traditional, or other campaign types that can be run successfully. Focus on the features that will most appeal to your key demographic– all-wheel-drive, navigation, advanced safety features, made in America, etc. Moving that model off the lot and onto the customer’s driveway does not have to be difficult. If the model is not popular in the first place or it isn’t the right time to market it, you may not want to spend money trying to promote it. With the methods we stated earlier, selling a vehicle to customers based on geotargeting and specific marketing messages make moving even the most unwanted vehicle easier. Also, remember the where, who, and what. Where are you targeting your customers, who are your customers, and what medium are you going to use? Using this can help to move that model and grant you sales success.