Case Study: Digital automobile marketing rollout based on Salesforce

20 November, 2020

The situation

A car manufacturer, which is among the largest suppliers of premium passenger cars and is one of the world's largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles, has set itself the goal of selling more than 25 percent of all vehicles online by 2025. The focus is on a new, digital distribution channel of the company. It supplements the traditional  three-stage distribution model via dealers.

The transition to a central agency has created the preconditions for innovative automobile marketing at the organizational level. Cloud platforms by Salesforce, Adobe, Google and SAP are also used to support the marketing and distribution processes.

In this context, the customer journey as well as the entire marketing funnel are to be optimized in an agile setup with better personalization and retargeting use cases to address customers more individually.

Salesforce Audience Studio and Marketing Cloud were selected as the central platform for this purpose. The existing Experience Cloud and the ad-tech stack of the company will be integrated into that platform. In addition to design and rollout of the solution, the car manufacturer's focus is also on operational support and local enablement.

Our approach

Our Marketing Advisory Team pursues an innovative approach in this respect, in cooperation with the customer's experienced team. The objective is to enable an agile and coherent DevOps approach for the design, the implementation and the global rollout of a digital marketing solution.

The key element of the approach is an enhancement track process and team. This permits to record all demands at an early stage and to prioritze them with regard to added value and effort. In short sprints, usable increments are then developed as part of MVPs and pilots on the basis of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and the PwC BXT approach. Then, rollout packages are created and made available for everybody.

These BXT packages are processed in the course of a global rollout by an agile team that cooperates closely with the enhancement track team. The rollout takes place onsite, remote or only via enablements that can be used as a self-service. In this way, over two years, more than 37 markets have been enabled with a wide variety of use cases in the fields of personalization and retargeting.

An example of such a package is the use of optimized customer segmentation which permits to address larger target groups in a targeted manner and to suppress undesired targets. Central monitoring of all platforms and their use ensures that the in-line operation team can optimize the implementation of the marketing strategy and communication in the markets. This all is done globally using Salesforce Datorama.

The project outcome

The outcome is amazing!

Click-through rates in selected campaigns rose by up to 160 percent. Optimized customer segmentation and reduced ad waste enabled seven-digit savings to be achieved throughout the company.

Consistent integration of further data sources and frequency management helped to optimize the reach in campaign execution. Always-On campaigns for personalization also help to keep conversion in the marketing and sales funnel at a high level.

In detail, the following results were achieved:

  • 160 percent increase in the click-through rate
  • 5 percent reduction in cost per click
  • 62 percent increase in efficiency - as a result of improved personalizations
  • A better e-mail open rate (180 percent increase) which led to a 519 percent increase in click-through

We are pleased to have been awarded the Partner Innovation Award 2020 in the field of marketing by the IDC and Salesforce.

Contact us

Michael Graf

Michael Graf

Lead Customer Transformation DE & EU, PwC Germany

Tel: +49 151 11135371

Mathias Elsässer

Mathias Elsässer

Partner, Marketing Advisory, PwC Germany

Tel: +49 175 5158588

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