Branding means everything in the automotive industry. What car a person drive embodies elements of their personality and world view. That’s why car shopping is not just a high-consideration purchase because of the substantial price tag: it’s an emotional experience for the consumer where they seek to balance self-image and whimsy with practicality and cost. For Suzuki Australia, their cars invoke excellent quality, high value without sacrificing the fun and playful side of life. The manufacturer operates across 90-plus dealerships, supported by a small and savvy marketing team led by General Manager - Automobile, Michael Pachota.

Suzuki Australia’s branding is solid, backed by an above-the-line campaign that cleverly uses humour to amplify their car line-up’s selling points. Online, their website pops with colour and personality, inviting visitors to explore their model range and book a test-drive. Although they were receiving an average of 5,000 unique daily visitors, they weren’t seeing strong conversions. “We relaunched our brand platform, ‘For Fun’s Sake’, driving a lot of unique visitors to our site, but we were losing them at the back end,” says Michael. “We started to think about how to communicate in a more targeted and meaningful manner, but we were in the dark and needed an automation platform to give us the resources and tools to do that.”

Also, Suzuki’s databases were scattered across different systems and Michael’s team lacked clarity regarding their leads’ integrity. Email marketing became a manual and time-consuming process, where data had to be pulled from one system and then emailed through another, with no ability to measure the outcomes.

“We were falling in terms of our below-the-line and one-to-one communications. We needed to step it up and close the loop,” says Michael. “We had a lucrative pool of prospective customers, yet no way of effectively communicating with them.”

Michael worked with his partner agency, V.I., led by director Kieren Redpath, to implement a marketing automation strategy powered by Adobe Marketo Engage. Chosen for its flexible nature and scalability, Kieren says “Adobe Marketo Engage ticked all the boxes for what was possible: lifecycle modelling and automation, while also fitting very easily with Suzuki’s tech stack, including CMS, which was critical.”

To start, V.I. migrated and consolidated all of Suzuki’s data sources into Adobe Marketo Engage and ensured all digital forms submitted data into the platform to manage lead distribution, forming a single source for truth. They then ensured integration with the Suzuki sales system to better track programme effectiveness.

The next stage involved rolling out nurture programmes to engage car-shoppers earlier in the journey. Before Adobe Marketo Engage, Suzuki relied on website visitors to submit test-drive forms to gather data. Their new strategy shifted to piquing visitors’ interests earlier in the journey, by encouraging them to sign up to receive news and updates. The new programmes introduced Net Promoter Scores, to ensure a prospective customer was sales-qualified before being sent to their local dealership for follow-up.

To improve conversions, Suzuki introduced nurture programmes to address early, mid and late-stage lifecycles, to engage leads with ongoing communications, based on their interaction with the website. “We found out very quickly that we would get significantly more form submissions using a softer approach. It allowed us to nurture people through the process, engaging them with content with third-party endorsements. With these programmes we’ve found that people are 5 times more likely to convert to sales,” says Kieren.

Before launching, Michael went on a roadshow, visiting the company’s network of 200 dealers to explain the capabilities that Adobe Marketo Engage. He explained how the marketing team would deliver nurturing programmes and how this would provide high-quality leads through the introduction of lead-scoring. Each dealership is a stakeholder, so Michael understood that getting their buy-in was critical to fostering success.

Integration with Adobe Marketo Engage and Suzuki’s CRM helps track when leads convert into customers, delivering a new level of attribution and transparency. Kieren explains, “With marketing automation, there’s a lot happening in the background that people may not see. We worked with Michael and the team to develop internal communications that clearly articulated what happens at each stage so everyone can understand, appreciate and feel comfortable behind the scenes. This added a collaborative approach.”

Ensuring an omnichannel approach to their communications was also critical to success, according to Michael. Across their advertising, website, social media and email marketing, the brand look and feel remains strong and consistent. Synchronised social media communications ensure prospects receive content tailored to their interests through Adobe Marketo Engage’s segmentation and Dynamic Data. If a lead showed interest in a Suzuki Swift on the website, that’s what they’ll see on Facebook. “This added a level of complexity to the whole project: to make sure we were consistent in all our communications. It’s consuming and involved, but it’s worth its weight in gold in delivering that consistent experience,” says Michael.

Suzuki’s end-to-end communications and marketing now flows smoothly and consistently across all channels. After 6 months of implementing nurture programs earlier in the life-cycle with Adobe Marketo Engage, Suzuki identified that leads are 5 times more likely to convert to a purchase, a statistic that the marketing team can now measure with the integration to the sales system. The dealers value the leads that come from marketing, appreciating the quality provided by Net Promoter Scoring. Consolidating their database, improving lifecycle and nurturing and all the other benefits since the implementation, has delivered an average increase of 25% per month in nurture sales. 

“It’s a project that will never be completed. Now we’re looking at ways to bring more people into the nurture programme. We’re always working on how we can further optimise the automation platform to drive strong results for us,” says Michael.