| | May 20158CIOReviewopinionin myLast year I recall a friend of mine saying it's crazy that it seems like every other house in his neighborhood had a Chevrolet Corvette in their garage. My friend is a 45-year-old professional living in suburban Detroit. He is married with two teenagers. During the last 20 years, he and his wife have seen 19 vehicles come and go in their own garage. He is fairly particular about his vehicle choices and has always had domestic or German brands. Not surprisingly, in 2000 after their first child was born, they leased three minivans in a row. Recently he sold a Porsche that he had owned for about five years. Six months later, he pulled into his driveway with a sleek new Corvette Stingray. He told me that he had spent significant time researching his new ride online, using configuration websites and even the Chevrolet website for almost a year ahead of the purchase. The funnything about his experience is that he does not remember ever getting targeted through a marketing campaign to purchase a new Stingray. At the same time, he was getting ambushed with some really impressive campaigns from Porsche, including hardcover books with beautiful pictures of the latest Porsches. He also received a really cool USB memory stick in the shape of the car. It is clear that these must have been some expensive marketing campaigns; yet he heard nothing from Chevrolet, which is surprising.In the case of the Corvette Stingray, the product did all the work for General Motors. However, most of the time, the consumer has a much more complicated decision to make regarding their next vehicle purchase. The fact of the matter is that marketers spend a disproportionate amount of their marketing dollars retaining existing customers as the return on the investment is so much greater; it costs significantly more to conquest a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Retaining customers is less expensive in part because it is managed from internal systems at the OEM, namely CRM, and these customers are known. Conquest efforts are traditionally sporadic, sourced from varied audience/marketing providers, and measured inconsistently. Lack of systemization around conquest efforts is one key reason it is much more expensive. According to an IHS Automotive analysis of vehicle registrations, customer conquests represent 50 percent of sales annually for nearly every brand. As the automotive market recovers in the U.S., the true winners will be those that can effectively manage their conquest and loyalty programs with an eye on the bottom line.Why is it so hard to target these customers? There are several challenges facing automobile Predicting Your Next Car PurchaseBy Joe LaFeir, SVP, IS&S (Information Systems & Solutions), IHS AutomotiveJoe LaFeir
< Page 7 | Page 9 >