Published: December 2024

With the new year comes new budgets, and marketers typically have to battle to retain their share, a process made easier if campaign outcomes can be evidenced in a clear and transparent way. Ultimately, measurement helps all parties better understand the return on marketing investment and informs effective future planning.

But what does success in retailer marketing actually look like? A seemingly positive performance for one group might seem somewhat less impressive when viewed through the lens of the wider motor retail sector. As ever, context is crucial.

By aggregating data from digital marketing activity across more than 500 of our retailer customers, we have created some useful benchmarks to help gauge effectiveness. These are now being updated by our team on a quarterly basis to track deliverables against evolving trends.

Numbers only tell you so much

We advise clients to take a holistic view of customer interactions. Key indicators of success will ideally include email and SMS open and click rates, website engagement and enquiries, as well as sales conversion, speed to sale, actionable customer feedback and aftersales retention rates. Retailers will also ideally map how these different data sets impact one another.

The marketing department should be fully aligned with the rest of the business, having full visibility of the operational results. For example, to maximise budgets, marketing must know the business’ average profit per unit to understand the value of a conversion. This will also help with strategy; how can marketing work hard to meet the business needs? Looking at whether the average number of days in stock has increased or if the workshop has capacity are also tangible and measurable aspects that can influence a marketing strategy.

Impressive outcomes can only be realised, of course, if the underlying data is accurate and the communications are both timely and relevant. In Q3, for an average of 40% of customer records, there was a discrepancy, with the vehicle having changed ownership (35%), been scrapped (4%) or been stolen (1%). In order to contact the right customer at the right time, retailers must follow the three Cs: Capture, Consent and Cleanse.

Adopting an agile approach

With the retail landscape changing constantly, having a robust Test – Learn – Refine process in place is critical. This can be applied to all stages in the customer journey to enable true omnichannel communication.

Once activities have been refined, are these outcomes being shared across the business? Although success may be communicated amongst the marketing team, is the operations team on the same page, fully understanding the numbers? Making sure the whole business is aligned will ensure marketing plans are embraced, and investment is directed in the most effective way possible from the start of 2025.

Contact us today to kickstart your 2025 with a no-obligation discovery call.

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