Motorpoint scales up personalised marketing 300%.

Using customer data to keep communications relevant increased click-through rates 18%.

6 min read

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According to Motorpoint – the UK's leading independent retailer of used and nearly new cars and vans – the average vehicle owner replaces their car every three to four years. They start their journey online, take a test drive from their nearest dealership, and come back later to close the deal.

“There’s a lot to consider when you’re buying a car. It’s a long sales cycle. Our challenge is to create omnichannel journeys that keep us front-of-mind until the customer is ready to buy.

Direct communication with the customer across email and SMS is a key part of our strategy. We want them to only receive content from us that is relevant to where they are in the buying cycle." said Lorreine Chittenden, Head of eCRM at Motorpoint.

To get a single view of customer data and tailor personalised, relevant communications throughout this journey, Motorpoint needed to connect numerous disparate systems. It implemented Sales Cloud as its central CRM and Marketing Cloud to put the marketing execution in the hands of the marketers.

With better visibility of leads, the company sends more targeted emails to different customer segments throughout the buying journey. Motorpoint also scaled up marketing communications 300%, without increasing headcount, using automation and templates. And, after redesigning its newsletter sign-up page using Salesforce templates, click-through rates have increased by 18%.

Let’s take a ride with Motorpoint and visit four pivotal points on its road to success.

Harnessing real-time data to plan, build, and deliver more relevant communications.

Motorpoint has 20 locations across the UK, and manual data feeds across the business was making it difficult to pull real-time insights. “Historical data is great for exploring trends over time, but we wanted to track the impact of external factors such as the cost of living on customer behaviour,” explained Chittenden.

The plan was to use this data to build more impactful communication strategies and give the eCRM team the power to create reports. This team is responsible for making sure customer communications are consistent across all channels. They plan, build, and deliver all email and SMS communications, and support paid media using CRM data to segment leads into audiences for targeted campaigns.

When the company introduced Sales Cloud, it seamlessly connected all company data in one place. This includes demographic data and contextual data, such as whether a customer part-exchanged their last car. Now, the company has a deeper understanding of where customers are in the four-year buying cycle with insight into the make, model and value of their current vehicle, their budget and preferences.

“Salesforce means we’re not pulling data manually and can spend more time thinking tactically. We can respond quickly to changing trends as we detect them and make more informed decisions,” Chittenden added. “We also report on marketing campaigns, tracking engagement, lead generation, ROI, and conversion, so we know where to adapt strategies to get better results.”

Taking a more strategic approach to marketing campaigns.

Before Salesforce, Motorpoint sent one marketing email a week and triggered emails were the responsibility of the IT team. Since moving to Marketing Cloud, email sequences are owned and managed by the marketing team for the first time.

“Marketing Cloud empowered us to become more strategic in how we communicate with customers,” revealed Chittenden. “We’re confident we know where our customers are in the buying journey and that we’re engaging them in the most relevant way.”

The marketing team uses the platform to build communication journeys and design content. It has all the features they need to automate campaigns, nurture leads, create trigger-based workflows, and send communications across multiple channels. For example, “The eCRM team uses surveys and attribution methods to segment subscribers for more targeted follow-ups,” explained Chittenden. “For example, we introduced an interactive email form that goes to customers after receiving a valuation of their current car. That tells us whether they plan to sell it or not, and we can send them on the most relevant journey.”

Using templates to boost click-through rates 18%.

Email Studio has been a game changer for the marketing team. Now, the marketing team can design and send communications independently -- without leaning on the IT team. Templated layouts make it easy for the team to keep every communication on brand.

“Email Studio is brilliant. We can customise communications and get so much more creative,” said Chittenden. “The quality of our content has significantly improved since giving the marketing team more control over it.”

The team also used these templates to redesign its newsletter sign-up page to be more appealing and easier to navigate. As a result, click-through rates increased by 18%.

Use predictive AI to nurture relationships without oversaturating your contacts.

Before Salesforce, segmenting leads was a slow, manual process. Today, the eCRM team can easily segment audiences based on interests and where they are in the buying journey. Einstein Engagement Frequency uses predictive artificial intelligence to categorise leads based on engagement and loyalty. It then automatically controls how many emails go to each contact and how often, hitting the sweet spot between nurturing the relationship and oversaturation.

Knowing that emails land with the right person at the right time, Motorpoint are now more efficient so have been able to scale up the number of email sends by 300% without requiring additional resources. In addition, with better segmentation, Motorpoint are able to be more strategic with marketing content to ensure motorists are getting the most relevant content wherever they are in the buying journey.

It's also building a content library in Marketing Cloud so it can reuse evergreen content, which reduces the amount of time and resources required to create new campaigns.

“Salesforce helps us to be more productive and to scale up marketing efforts quickly and easily,” commented Chittenden. “Now we can focus on improving the customer journey and enhancing our omnichannel offering.”

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