Hills Motor Group

Published: February 2025

Find out how Marketing Delivery helped Hills Motor Group:

✔️ Strategically Target Customers with Automated Emails

✔️ Achieve Open Rates Well Above Sector-Wide Benchmarks

✔️ Attain an 8% Conversion Rate

The Business

Founded in 1905, Hills Motor Group is a multi-site franchise retailer of Toyota and Lexus brands. In addition to its sales functions, the family-run Group offers extensive aftersales facilities, all located in East London.

The Challenge

Hills Motor Group wanted to engage with customers in a more consistent and efficient way, while also capturing, categorising and storing accurate customer data in a GDPR-compliant manner.

Making sure the right customers are contacted at the right time during the sales process is imperative for boosting enquiry conversion, so Hills sought an intelligent, automated solution that would tailor communications for each customer and also increase efficiency. Representing both Toyota and Lexus brands means the messages need to incorporate two distinct brand identities. To boost aftersales revenue, the Group also wanted to devise a way to increase bookings and support local activity.

The Solution

Starting in July 2024, Hills enlisted the skills and expertise of Marketing Delivery, which allocated a dedicated account manager to explore some of the key challenges and plan effective solutions.

Utilising Marketing Delivery’s VoiceBox software, Hills can now strategically target customers with automated and timely enquiry follow-up emails, including Stock Alerts which automatically shares details of stock that closely matches the customer’s initial enquiry, as well as ‘lost sale’ follow-ups designed to either re-engage those customers still in market or capture actionable customer feedback.

To enhance aftersales retention, Marketing Delivery devised a communication strategy to target owners of vehicles where the manufacturer’s warranty had expired, offering a 12-month warranty extension free of charge when having their service carried out by Hills.

The Outcome

During the first six months, VoiceBox issued over 6,800 automated sales-focused CRM emails, achieving an impressive average open rate of 66%. Looking at data from 500-plus retailers using its technology, Marketing Delivery has been able to identify average engagement figures across all of its email campaigns. Notably, Hills’ open rates have achieved the sector-wide benchmark for enquiry follow-ups and for ‘lost sale’ follow-ups.

More than 2,000 automated Stock Alerts emails were sent to over 230 customers during the same period, delivering an 8% sales conversion rate. These messages from Hills had an average open rate of 67%, well above the sector-wide benchmark of 55% seen during the same period, underlining how the business was reaching the right people at the right time.

These high-performing open rates are a key indication of the quality of Hills’ enquiry data. Marketing Delivery’s BrainBox reporting tool allows Hills to monitor data quality, including capture and consent rates. It also helps the Group improve the efficiency of the data capture process, issuing ‘Bounce Alerts’ to sales teams so they can follow up with customers if contact details appear incomplete or incorrect.

Nahide Crisp, group sales and marketing director at Hills Motor Group, said: