A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a great way to store, unify, and enrich your customer data to personalize the car buying experience and tailor your outreach efforts. But how much effort do you really need to put into a CDP? Can you leverage an automotive CDP for retail right now without having to overcomplicate your operations by adding new, unfamiliar technology to your dealership?  

The answer might surprise you. This article will outline the benefits of CDP technology and how you can leverage your existing solutions—including your CRM, dealership website, and advertising solutions—to unlock a CDP right now. That means you can start collecting and making sense of your customer data in a way that improves sales and the overall buying experience for your customers, at no extra cost to you.  

What Is a Customer Data Platform? 

A CDP is a centralized information system that stores deep customer data and delivers valuable insights about what customers might be interested in. For example, a shopper might browse your website and focus in on a few different makes and models. A CDP pays attention to this behavior and collects it for you.   

This allows you to make informed decisions about how you interact with each customer to personalize their buying experiences with marketing content that relates to each customer’s interests. In short, a CDP offers three primary benefits for your dealership:  

  • Stores Customer Data: Automotive CDPs track customers throughout the buying journey and compile their information, shopping habits, and buying preferences into one convenient record repository that you can easily see and sort through. 
  • Cleans Customer Data: A CDP cleans customer data to create unified profiles, eliminating redundancies and duplicate leads, purging outdated records, and filling in data gaps to create a single source of truth for every customer. 
  • Enriches Customer Data: High-quality CDPs don’t just store customer data, they enrich it with insights and third-party data to inform your interactions with your customers, so you can give them the best possible buying experience.  

How Can You Leverage a CDP Right Now? 

A CDP can be an invaluable asset for your dealership giving you unrivaled insight into your customers’ behaviors and preferences and allowing you to deliver the personalized experiences they prefer. And while implementing a CDP certainly justifies the challenges that come with new technology, there’s a better way to leverage a CDP right now, without having to add new technology.  

Cox Automotive is uniquely positioned in the automotive market to collect and store customer data. With access to exclusive consumer shopping data from Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and Dealer.com, plus high-quality third-party data, Cox Automotive offers insights about your customers that are unavailable anywhere else.  

If you have Cox Automotive technology like a VinSolutions CRM or a Dealer.com website, you already have CDP-powered technology that you can leverage today. Cox Automotive CDPs use AI and automation to activate personalized advertising, marketing, sales, and service experiences that drive greater efficiency and profitability at your dealership. And because you already have the technology, your CDP comes at no extra cost to you.  

You also get the benefit of connected Cox Automotive solutions, so your customer records are unified across your solutions. You get connected identity profiles that ensure consistency, and your data is enriched and powered by Cox Automotive consumer data, so you get everything you know about your customers, plus everything Cox Automotive knows, in a single view.  

Best of all, a CDP within your existing Cox Automotive technologies helps you avoid the challenges that come with third-party CDP vendors. These include installing a new technology ecosystem, paying for consultants and engineers to manage and make sense of your data, and trusting your data to an outside agency. 

Activate Your CDP-Powered Solution

Automotive CDP software is a great way to separate your dealership from the competition to give customers the personalized experiences they want and optimize your marketing spend to deliver content that moves more cars. Cox Automotive understands the value of a quality CDP and what it can do for your dealership. That’s why your CDP is built into your existing solutions.  

As the foremost experts in consumer data and dealership technologies, Cox Automotive will continue to support and evolve your CDP to serve your needs and the interests of your customers. If you want more information, your Performance Manager can help. In fact, your Cox Automotive solutions come with expert support to help you get the most out of your technology. 

Unlock the full potential of your data with VinSolutions and Dealer.com — no extra systems needed to buy, learn, or manage.