Challenge
Achieving effective customer engagement has always been core to securing success. But with increasing volumes of information available to prospective auto buyers online, how can you be sure your brand will resonate with the right buyers, at the right times and at the right stage of their purchasing journey?
81% of buyers conduct online research before making a purchase decision.
For Automotive brands, the issue is complex: too often sales via digital channels are low, as customers believe they will gain better support and a faster experience in-store. After all, traditionally, consumers need to see and physically evaluate products before they buy.
Opel Spain, as most of the auto brands, was in the process of digital transformation: modernizing their static website as their customer experience based on forms was not engaging enough for the modern-age customer. Consequentially, the brand was not generating enough pre-qualified leads through their digital channels.
“These days, customers don’t just drive our cars, they also drive our decision-making. During my 25-plus years in the auto industry, I’ve seen the buying experience change drastically. Thanks to mobile and other new technologies, today’s consumers are not only more demanding than ever, they’re also research-obsessed. Their purchase journey no longer starts when they walk through the door — it’s instantaneous.” Dean Evans, Google
Opel wanted to invest in Whisbi’s Conversational Marketing platform in order to address challenges and experience the benefits such as:
• Increase trust and transparency: By bringing the traditional F2F sales and showroom online.
• Increasing online lead volume and quality: Engaging the web visitors with a conversational CTA button and connecting them with a brand expert in real-time.
• Increasing sales revenue from digital channels: Retail is increasingly costly and the Automotive industry is starting to focus on the website as a central source of the sale.
Solution
Opel started their Conversational Marketing journey with one car model – Opel Astra and have built a digital showroom for this project:
Fig. 1 – Opel Showroom
After the first 6 months, the performance results were incredible; therefore the brand decided to invest more in this project and have expanded their showroom so that they were able to add a range of new car models, besides Astra: Mokka X, Insignia, Crossland X and the new launch of Grandland X.
Results
The key moment for the brand happened on June 2017, when the company changed the host platform of their website, which allowed them to use the full functionalities of the Whisbi Conversational Marketing platform including the Smart Conversational Button (shown below):
Fig. 2 – Opel Smart Conversational Button
Thanks to this change Opel made the shift to mobile-first, which is where 50% of site visitors currently come from!
The brand was now ready to embrace its success in digital! With the Conversational Marketing platform, they were able to achieve a 50% increase in pre-sales coming from their website. Furthermore, by September that same year, the brand has increased the number of leads per month by 5x!!
Opel has seen that their sales cycle for a new car was shortened to only 3 weeks and the brand has increased the number of leads per month by 5x since the implementation of Whisbi’s Conversational Marketing platform on their website.
Fig. 3 – Opel experience
The traditional automotive brand’s sales cycle for a new car is around 6 months. Thanks to the Whisbi’s Conversational Marketing platform this has now changed, as customers do not need to go to the dealership to receive information from a salesperson, they can now find it online anytime and anywhere. Opel has seen that their sales cycle for a new car was shortened to only 3 weeks!! What is more, they were able to attribute over 100 cars sold to the pre-qualified leads that were sent to their dealership from the live Whisbi sessions and their online conversion rate from pre-sale to real car sale is astonishing 6%!