Customer Loyalty: Are you Born with it?
The data doesn’t lie – not everyone is a top-value customer, and the highest level of customer loyalty can’t be created with even the best marketing.
So, what do you do?
Outsell conducted a study with RXA to discover the nature of top-value customers, their importance to dealers, and how to capitalize on them while keeping them loyal to stores and groups.
Drawing data from 26 OEM brands, 841 dealerships, and more than fourteen and a half million consumers, the results conclude that while you cannot create top-value customers from nothing, you can smartly focus resources on better keeping the ones who are worth the most.
What are top-value customers?
Top-value customers are the ones who engage more, spend more, and who ultimately carry the dealership through the worst of times – if they remain at the same store/group.
A few highlights from the study found that:
- Over the next 3 years, 30% of your existing customers will account for 80% of total gross profit
- Top-value service customers are 6X more likely to repurchase
- In 2020, 20% of a dealer’s top customers represented 89% of returning servicers
We also know that two years after a sale, less than 60% of VINs have been serviced in the past 6 months. Given the data of which customers end up being worth the most over time, sales needs to reinforces service and service needs to reinforce sales.
Outsell offers Service-to-Sales communications that populate recommended VINs from your lot to your customers based on organic behavior. Someone who you might not otherwise know is in the market for a car is served up a VIN based on what they clicked on in other communications and their subsequent activity on your site.
Through our study, we found that customers who purchase a vehicle that was recommended to them have a 106% higher likelihood of service, and a 67% higher future repurchase score. These vehicle owners also have a 119% higher three-year value.
This isn’t just great for the customer, who’s getting information about a vehicle they’re already likely interested in, but good for you both in the long and short-term. Recommended vehicles have a 19% lower days on lot and have been shown to sell for a 26% higher profit.
Customers spend more – at the time of sale and over the years to come – if they feel valued and understood.
What now?
Keep your top-value customers – those who spend and engage most consistently and frequently – by communicating with them the right way and see the returns for years to come.
Here’s how to start:
- Clean your data – and consolidate it
- Examine your distribution to find top-value customers
- Change how you communicate by using personalization
- Stop blasting top-value customers – engage them
Read more about our recent study with RXA in the following infographic.