CDP 101: What Is an Automotive CDP and Why Should It Matter to You?

Customer data platforms (CDPs) can help your dealership make more sense of your data and improve the car buying experience. Here’s your guide to automotive CDP software: 

• What is a customer data platform (CDP)?
• What does a CDP do?  
• What’s the difference between a CDP and a CRM?  
• Do you really need a CDP? 
• How can you leverage a CDP right now?
• How do you activate Cox Automotive CDP-Powered Solutions?

Automotive CDP Overview

Consumers want the freedom and convenience of buying online AND at the dealership. Connecting these otherwise separate purchase pathways into a single, seamless experience across every channel is referred to as an omnichannel buying experience.  

This relatively new consumer journey is changing the car buying game in more ways than one. Dealers are adapting to new consumer preferences and adopting new technologies for these experiences. They’re also benefiting in a big way by collecting important consumer data across channels as consumers shop.  

CDPs power personalized car buying experiences and targeted messaging and outreach efforts that attract more leads, bring in more customers, and close more sales.  

What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)?

A CDP is a centralized system that stores, cleans, and enriches your customer data, enabling you to activate personalized experiences using modern technologies like AI and automation.  

What Does a CDP Do? 

Stores Customer Data 

When shoppers begin the car-buying process, they might explore your website, fill out a lead form, or contact your dealership by phone or in person. They may also browse inventory, enter financial details, estimate monthly payments, or engage with your content — reading articles or watching videos. 

Automotive CDPs for retail track and compile all of this information to create a comprehensive record for every potential and existing customer. It also acts as a repository of records, giving you the ability to easily sort, see, and understand valuable customer information. 

Cleans Consumer Data 

The omnichannel car buying process naturally lends itself to creating multiple customer records. The same shopper might approach and interact with your dealership in more than one way, which can lead to redundant data points with your dealership.  

A CDP cleans and normalizes this data to create unified profiles for each customer. It eliminates redundancies and duplicate leads, purges outdated records, fills in data gaps, and unifies important information into an easy-to-digest customer record that acts as a single source of truth for your dealership.  

Enriches Consumer Data 

Consumer data by itself is only so valuable. But when paired with insights and shopping data about each customer’s unique preferences and interests, it can help your dealership to personalize the experience for every customer.  

The right CDP should offer the ability to enrich your customer data with high-quality insights and third-party data to inform your customer touchpoints, so you can make your buying experience stand apart from the competition.  

With Cox Automotive, your data is enhanced with shopping data from Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book and Dealer.com websites. This gives you a unified view that combines what you already know about your customers with what Cox Automotive knows so you have a more complete picture of every shopper.

What’s the Difference Between a CDP and a CRM? 

While there is some overlap between a CDP (Customer Data Platform) and a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), there are several important differences that make both technologies valuable to dealerships.  

While a CDP focuses on collecting deep customer data and delivering insights about what a customer might be interested in, a CRM organizes and manages customer interactions between a dealership’s sales team and an individual customer.  

So, while a CDP might be useful for informing you about a customer’s interests in a particular make, model, and color, a CRM can tell you when and with whom a conversation about that car took place. At the end of the day, a CRM and a CDP work together to equip sales personnel with the information they need to improve and personalize the customer experience.  

Do You Really Need a CDP?

CDP technology is nothing new. Dealerships and vendors have been collecting customer data to create individual customer profiles for years. But as more consumers continue to leverage multiple channels to shop for and buy cars, CDPs are becoming an invaluable resource in delivering the personalized car buying experience today’s consumers expect.  

With a CDP, you can improve sales and marketing efficiency by communicating more effectively with customers about their interests. This improves the efficiency of your campaigns, so you can get more out of your marketing budget. And, because a CDP integrates with your other tools, it allows you to streamline the entire purchase and ownership process to inform your conversations well beyond the buying experience. 

How Can You Leverage a CDP Right Now? 

The best way to leverage a CDP right now is take advantage of your existing tools that already come ready equipped with a native CDP. Cox Automotive solutions, including Dealer.com and VinSolutions, are CDP-powered solutions that offer immediate benefit and impact to dealers. Because the CDP is a part of those tools, and not an additional technology to invest in, you don’t have to hire a separate vendor or spend time learning a new technology. 

You also get the benefit of connected Cox Automotive solutions, which means your CDP and your customer records are unified across solutions. You get connected identity profiles that ensure data consistency across all departments. And, your data is enriched with exclusive consumer shopping data from Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book and Dealer.com websites, so you get everything you know about your customers, plus everything Cox Automotive knows, in a single view of every customer.  

You can always contract with a third-party CDP vendor to collect, sort, and store your customer data, but these off-site technologies come with their own customer data platform challenges and problems. You have to pay consultants and engineers to manage and make sense of your data. But when you’re always dependent on another team, it can override individual store autonomy and accountability.  

How Do You Activate Cox Automotive CDP-Powered Solutions?

If you have Cox Automotive solutions, like a Dealer.com website or a VinSolutions CRM, you are already using a fully functional, feature-rich CDP — there’s no need to integrate another customer database. It’s what makes it possible to use customer data to personalize your sales and boost your marketing efficiency, while streamlining the entire purchase process. 

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