The various surveys regularly show that motorists trust their repairer and that attractive offers are not the only criterion for their choice. However, these are numerous and therefore customer loyalty is not guaranteed.
Unlike everyday consumer businesses (food, clothing, etc.), car maintenance remains a low-frequency activity and offers little customer satisfaction ; in contrast to the renewal of the vehicle for example or the acquisition of any property. It is therefore important to maintain a link with the customer.
The objective of a predictive marketing tool is to anticipate maintenance needs to create a personalized contact pretext ; it has been shown that targeted communication adapted to the consumer is more effective.
For car maintenance, predictive marketing software forecasts are based on traffic laws and vehicle maintenance data (age, odometer reading, monthly mileage, history).
Thus the analysis of all these data makes it possible to propose maintenance recommendations on different families of services:
- Braking
- Timing belt
- Tires
- Shock absorbers
- MOT
- Air conditionning
- Oil change.
As a result, the more complete the data from the DMS, the finer the analysis and makes it possible to target a potential customer in a relevant way.
To maintain the relationship with the driver, the marketing software offers monthly action plans. The manager is then free to partially or totally validate by category the communication actions (letters, emails or SMS) to be carried out and therefore freely manages the budget he wishes to devote to it.
Performance: predictive marketing software by Solware Auto
Performance is the predictive marketing tool published by Solware Auto. This service is evolving with the arrival of a brand new platform and important new features for our customers. The solution is now international and multi-channel (letters, emails and SMS) to communicate according to information from the customer database and according to the families chosen (8 after-sales families). Performance is now open to other DMS on the market, also with the possibility of carrying out one-off on-demand marketing operations in addition to predictive.
Beyond the advantages described above, it also allows to measure returns on investment (ROI). Thus, we have noticed in our customer base, on the basis of a validation rate of 38% of the action plans offered to our subscribers, a ROI rate of almost 8% for all families of services combined. In financial terms, for 1€ of communication invested, Performance generates nearly 10€ of turnover ; the MOT generates the most ROI (16%) and the most business with a ratio of 21€ for 1€ invested.
Still on the basis of this analysis, the ROI also show that the choice of communications (services, commercial offer, etc.) is not essential.
ROI analysis
All families combined, 76% of repair orders generated correspond to a service family different from the reason for contact. Among the returns, it is also noted that 25% of customers who received a communication return to the garage to perform services on another vehicle.
There are also many who return to the garage when they had not visited it for more than 12 months, perhaps in logical connection with the low frequency required for car maintenance or because their loyalty to their repairer is not strong enough.
In conclusion, the garage that has an established and strong relationship with its customers retains major advantages over its competitors, but it must maintain them proactively to maintain this advantage.