Within the starts and stops of the auto industry, luxury vehicles have been
one of the most resilient, consistent and profitable segments. But stronger sales have also meant greater competition, making it harder than ever for premier brands to stand out from the pack.
“That’s why companies have been talking about big data and how personalization can add value for our customers,” says Jeanice Lee, director of digital, social and relationship management at Lexus.
When Lee joined the automaker nearly 25 years ago, Lexus enjoyed customer loyalty levels that competitors were hard-pressed to match. The brand came about from a 1983 challenge by Toyota’s chairman to his engineers to build the world’s best car. Though Lexus still enjoys an enviable reputation for quality—it has won the J.D. Power U.S. Vehicle Dependability award the last four years—Lee notes that rival car companies have stepped up their game. “That is why it’s so important to find more ways to differentiate the brand,” she says.
As if big data and personalization didn’t make things hard enough, the growing number of channels used by car buyers adds to the complexity. It’s no secret that the Web has changed how consumers approach purchasing a car. Shoppers are leveraging multiple devices (desktops, smartphones, tablets) throughout the process, according to Auto Trader’s 2015 Automotive Buyer Influence study. The challenge for Lexus has been to target its messaging across the multichannel shopper’s journey, but the road these consumers are taking now is by no means straight and linear.
As it looked to navigate this transition, Lexus had its work cut out. The company had a lot of information about consumers, but that data was trapped in channel-based silos. And with new channels emerging faster than marketing spend was increasing, Lexus needed to make its marketing dollars work harder. At the same time, it was important to speak to consumers consistently across channels and throughout the shopping journey.
So about a year ago, the company started to incorporate the Data Management Platform from Oracle Marketing Cloud. This marked a watershed change affording Lexus more granular insights into the makeup of its customers and allowed for cross-channel performance optimization. Lexus could gain a window into cross-channel audiences and shopping behavior, customizing outreach based on where the customer was in the shopping journey. Finally, the DMP provided verifiable KPIs that marketing could use to show Lexus executives the bottom-line value of big data and personalization.
“I think we really surprised everyone with what we were able to accomplish,” says Lee, noting that her team was able to quantify how many customers were touched across all channels, where those customers came from and what actions they took on their journeys.
With the DMP in place, Lexus had such a strong picture of its customer that it was able to execute some test cases with emerging channels such as Facebook to enhance its targeting and relevance. “For the first time ever, we were able to target in-market owners, handraisers and disposers that we did not have email addresses for,” Lee says of Lexus’ use of Facebook. “We were able to target customers that we would not have been able to communicate with in the past. We could also retarget customers who we had emails for with a different message when they signed in to their Facebook accounts.”
Lee used the DMP to share sales and email data with media channels to suppress impressions to people she knew just purchased a Lexus and were currently not in the market. This strategy helped Lexus repurpose those dollars for new channels and more targeted placements.
And to maintain its enviable loyalty figures, Lexus is extending the DMP to track customers across the ownership lifecycle. The increased relevance of these communications will enhance customer engagement and ultimately reduce customer churn.
“After someone buys a car from us, we need to understand where they are in their lifecycle, what their needs are at certain times and then message them appropriately,” Lee explains. “In the past, we weren’t able to take a broad look across all of our channels and say, ‘Here’s exactly where the customer is’ and address their needs.”
While Lexus continues to refine its approach, it is seeing marked progress with performance improvements for highly targeted audiences, including clickthrough rates increasing 57 percent and conversion increasing more than 60 percent. “What’s exciting about the project is that we have been able to reach out to customers and engage with them where we would have not been able to in the past,” Lee notes.
Because customers know brands have their data, they expect messaging that is effective and relevant. “It shows that brands value their customers and respectfully use data to deliver a better customer experience,” Lee says. Lexus sees the strides it is making as a way to differentiate the brand and make all its channels work harder and smarter.
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Knowing your customer is not a luxury
We’ve clearly entered the era of customer centricity, where people expect their brand interactions to be highly personalized and relevant. They want to be treated as individuals, and marketers are challenged to inform, educate and build lasting (and profitable) relationships that demonstrate this promise. That’s why the marketing mantra of “know your customer” has never been more important.
The modern marketer needs a window into customers’ behaviors, attributes and preferences at every touch point across every possible channel. This information needs to inform marketing with messaging that resonates with individual relevance. Oracle Marketing Cloud can help companies develop a single profile across channels, engaging customers more intelligently and turning them into advocates.
Lexus recognized this. Famous for its quality and customer loyalty, the luxury car leader found itself befuddled by inaccurate information and siloed systems. Its outreach offered limited insights into behavior and was more hit-or-miss than marketing art. So it turned to Oracle Marketing Cloud to unify marketing data and enhance its knowledge of its customers so it could create personalized experiences, messages and promotions. The Toyota brand can now follow its profitable customers across channels and reach them in a way that meets its impressive loyalty goals.
