Paper marketing still relevant to auto finance; personalization key

Paper marketing assets are still utilized in the auto finance industry’s shift toward digitalization, but lenders will need to add a personalized touch to stay ahead of the pack.

“As for the medium, I still believe in paper — call me crazy — but there’s still a demographic that’s very attracted to that,” Anthony Capizzano, head of consumer lending at Axos Bank, said at the Auto Finance Summit East in Nashville, Tenn., last week. “Dealerships respond to it. They’re still looking at those [assets], so we use it.”

Still, expectations are changing, Capizzano said. “People want to know that you know them. And people want to be specific and feel unique to you. The more you can hyper-personalize, the more you can create that experience [the more successful you’ll be].

“Gathering the data that you have on customers or dealer customers and presenting that back in a very personalized way is really what our focus is,” Capizzano said.

For example, Axos Bank has a “very large” call center, but auto customers are routed to a specialized group with knowledge of the auto finance market, he said.

The auto specialists “know about auto, they know about interest rates, they have all the knowledge,” Capizzano said. “Some of our customers are smarter than we are — they know these contracts backwards and forwards — but at least they can have a somewhat intelligent conversation with someone who knows their world and can answer their questions.

“That has made a big difference in the personalization component,” Capizzano said.

The Big Wheels Auto Finance Data 2023 report, the only tabulation of the top 200 auto lenders by outstandings, is available now.