By now, you’ve likely heard that Google has planned to phase out third-party cookies in 2024. In the digital marketing landscape, the third-party cookie has been a key component for collecting data and targeting customers for years.

However, the demise of this method for collecting customer data has the potential to reshape how dealers approach their marketing strategy — and bring the importance of their first-party data to the forefront.

Technology and methods to effectively use first-party data have come a long way in recent years. Enter the automotive Customer Data Platform (CDP). This alternative to third-party cookie-based marketing focuses on your first-party data, and actually gives dealers more control of their customer retention and acquisition.

The future of automotive marketing will be reliant on an automotive CDP managing your dealership’s first-party data. This approach will give you an upper hand in delivering the ultra-targeted marketing that will be essential to compete in crowded markets.

What Exactly Is A Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

First, let’s define what an automotive CDP is. A CDP is a marketing technology platform for dealerships that collects and consolidates customer data from multiple sources, such as:

• Website interactions
• Your DMS and CRM systems
• Social media
• Advertising

This data is then organized and analyzed to create a comprehensive customer profile, which can be used to personalize marketing messages, improve customer experiences, and increase customer engagement.

You might be thinking, “Wait, I already have a CRM system. What’s the difference between that and a CDP?” A CRM system typically focuses on managing customer interactions, such as sales and customer support and often requires a fair amount of manual entry. A CDP focuses on automatically collecting and analyzing customer data from multiple sources, and then creating specific audiences you can use for marketing outreach.

What we’ve also found, in most cases, is that a dealer’s CRM and DMS are filled with inaccurate and unreliable customer information — a real pain point that has plagued the industry for years. This poor customer data leads to reaching out with irrelevant messages. Our AutoMiner CDP is particularly unique in that it’s the only one that also cleans and appends your data to ensure you have a “golden customer record” to accurately represent each customer in your database.

How Can An Automotive CDP Benefit Your Dealership?

Here are a few ways:

Personalized Marketing Campaigns

With an automotive CDP, you can create personalized marketing campaigns that target specific customers based on their interests, behaviors and stage in the ownership life cycle. For example, if a customer has shown interest in a particular make or model, you can send them targeted ads or promotions for that specific vehicle. This not only increases the likelihood of a sale but also improves the customer experience by providing relevant and personalized content.

Improved Ad Effectiveness

With the assurance of clean data, you can effectively target audience segments on a wide range of marketing channels — with the confidence of targeting the right customer at the right time. The combination of clean customer data sourced from an automotive CDP and a powerful marketing technology platform will provide results like improved costs per conversion, reduced ad waste and deliverability rates of up to 95%.

Organized Customer Data

An automotive CDP makes data ingestion simple by putting all of your data sources into one secure data lake. You no longer have to untangle data feeds to find — or use — the data you need.

From there, your customer data is a treasure trove of audience insights that you can customize depending on your strategy. You can easily create customer segments that you can target with any outbound marketing channel to increase profitability in both sales and service. With these audiences at your fingertips, you can reach customers throughout their purchase or ownership journey.

What Should Automotive Dealers Look For In A CDP?

Now, you might be wondering, “How do I choose a CDP that’s right for my dealership?” Here are some key factors to consider:

Clean Data

If you’ve ever paid to clean the data in your database, it was likely the opposite of dirt cheap. DMS providers often charge hefty fees for this task  — sometimes as much as $20K per scrub.

To make matters worse, this one-time cleaning is really only effective for a month or two. After that, all of the factors that went into plaguing your database with bad info are already having the same effect.

You need to rely on your customer data to be clean and accurate year round. (That’s why the cost of cleaning and appending your data is included with our AutoMiner CDP. And, it’s done automatically every month — or even on-demand if needed.)

Secure

The secure storage and delivery of all data should come standard with an automotive CDP. It’s more important than ever to ensure your dealership is prepared for any and all privacy, data security and encryption policies — and the potential hefty fines associated with them.

Data Sources

Make sure the CDP you choose can collect data from all of your dealership’s relevant sources, such as your website, CRM system, social media platforms, and more. The more comprehensive your data, the more effective your marketing campaigns will be.

Marketing Integration

Your cleansed customer data will be used to effectively target audience segments on a wide range of marketing channels. Your automotive CDP should give you the ability to securely and dynamically share audiences with your ad tech platform to create lists for digital marketing campaigns, social media and BDC outreach.

The AutoMiner CDP also gives you access to additional channels, like email, text and direct mail — giving dealers the potential for a true one-stop shop for all of your customer data management and marketing needs with PureCars.

Give Your Marketing The Edge By Taking Control Of Your Data

When handled by an automotive CDP, your dealership’s first-party customer data can provide audience insights that you can customize depending on your strategy — and easily create customer segments. These audience segments allow you to target the right customers at critical points of their life cycle.

Taking advantage of an automotive CDP will help you stay ahead of your competitors. When you can clean and take action on your first-party data, it offers limitless marketing opportunities. Pairing clean customer data with a powerful marketing technology platform will enhance your dealership’s marketing effectiveness and reduce wasted ad dollars — now and in the future.

Ready to get more from your first-party data with a Customer Data Platform? Schedule a demo to see how.