Personalization Is Key
If there’s one piece of the sales and marketing puzzle that auto lenders are fitting into their strategies, it’s personalization — and that starts with knowing your customers.
“We want to know exactly where our membership is coming from,” said Ivan McBride, Pentagon Federal Credit Union’s vice president of automotive lending products and sales. “What are the products they’re interested in? What’s driving the traffic on the site? Where are they located? What are their shopping habits?”
Understanding the interests consumers have in common enables Pentagon Federal to “drive our marketing dollars in the best way possible,” he added.
For Chase Auto’s Chief Marketing Officer Melinda Welsh, that targeted demographic is women. Welsh noted that women are responsible for more than half of new-vehicle purchases and service work done at dealerships. Still, auto finance marketing campaigns or products rarely cater to or represent females.
“We, as an industry, can impact that by having products and advertising that are more geared toward women,” she said. As the head of the bank’s direct lending business, Welsh is one of the driving forces behind the pilot of Chase’s new female-oriented car-buying product. “We built it using women as our focus groups, rather than men,” she said.
Meanwhile, Navy Federal Credit Union is looking to target young people. According to a Navy Federal survey published in April, “50% of those that plan to purchase or lease a vehicle in the next 12 months are Generation Z and millennials,” said Consumer Lending Product Strategist Jennifer Felts.
Navy Federal uses specific imagery and messaging in its advertising and marketing campaigns to appeal to its military-affiliated consumers. “The younger generations are all about experiences, so [marketing] will [show people] camping outside or at the beach, or a young military couple starting out in their fun car,” Felts said.
Wells Fargo Auto, too, groups consumers based on commonalities and adapts services based on data. “We’re developing what we’re calling ‘customer personas,’ which is really taking a look at the different ways that consumers interact with us from a credit perspective,” said Eric Halvorson, head of customer excellence at Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo will consider the behaviors it can expect from consumers in any given credit tier and decipher the best way to service those personas. “How do we approach those customers in a way that is solution-oriented?” he said. “How do we leverage our existing technology and look at new ways of connecting with customers?”
The answer, it seems, can be found through harnessing customer data.
