Exploring a new digital roadmap.

Mitsubishi Motors Australia, part of the global Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, has spent four decades delivering next-generation safety and value to customers across Australia. The company has invested heavily into analysing data about manufacturing and tracking its vehicles to improve reliability. But leaders realised that the company was missing data on one very important part of the vehicle lifecycle: customers.

“We don’t sell to cars; we sell to people,” says Trish Ind, National Digital Marketing Manager at Mitsubishi Motors Australia. “We realised that we needed to rethink our marketing model and focus more on customer-first experiences.”

The Mitsubishi Motors digital marketing team created a digital transformation roadmap that emphasises gathering information about customers, developing insights into customer behaviours and ultimately delivering personalised experiences that meet customers where they are on their journey.

“Perhaps their first car was a Mitsubishi Colt when they were a uni student and then they migrated to a Mitsubishi Lancer in their 20s and then became a Mitsubishi Outlander family after they got married and had kids,” says Ind. “We needed to learn about the history of our customers, how loyal they are and how they've gone through milestones in their lives.”

While many industries are promoting personalisation and digital transformation, the automotive industry faces unique challenges. Automotive websites are built to inform and inspire. Consumers research vehicles online, browsing through stunning visuals and using complex configurators to build out their dream vehicle. Then customers visit a vehicle dealership to test drive and purchase a vehicle. Mitsubishi Motors needed support from an expert partner working with a top solution to help capture all of each consumer’s unique preferences and use that information to deliver personalised experiences.

Partnering with Isobar and Adobe to enrich customer experiences

After analysing many platforms, the Mitsubishi Motors team decided to build its digital transformation around Adobe Experience Cloud applications. The team was particularly attracted to the way that Adobe Experience Cloud unifies customer data through the Adobe ID and then allows integrated applications to use that data to deliver engaging customers experiences across websites, email, text and all other digital channels.

Mitsubishi Motors selected Accordant, now a part of Isobar and the Isobar Enterprise Solutions Group to drive value from the Experience Cloud environment through expert strategic methodologies and best practices.

“Isobar really stood out from other agencies because it understood how our goals of digital transformation and personalisation ultimately need to support dealerships,” says Ind. “We want to curate content, enrich experiences across all touchpoints and provide our dealerships with a better understanding of each customer so that they can close a deal faster.”

Transforming data into customer insights

The digital transformation at Mitsubishi Motors started with data. Isobar first rolled out Adobe Analytics, using the Adobe ID to capture detailed information about a customer in real time. Adobe Analytics provides clear insights into customers, from their age and location; to preferences for vehicle model, colour, trim and accessories; to online behaviours such as whether they’ve booked a test drive or requested a quote online.

Once Mitsubishi Motors had a firm grasp on data, it brought in Adobe Audience Manager. Isobar aggregated the first-party data from Analytics with third-party Channel 9 data. In the future, Mitsubishi Motors hopes to bring in off-line data from dealerships to create a fuller view of audiences. By creating a central hub for data management in Audience Manager, Mitsubishi Motors creates audience segments that it uses to create unified messaging across websites, email, text and even external parties such as paid media platforms.

“Understanding our customers is a critical first step to our digital transformation,” says Ind. “The insights from Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager give us confidence that we’re spending our marketing budget efficiently and not wasting time sending irrelevant messages to customers. If someone is looking exclusively at our smaller vehicle models, we don’t want to invest time and money promoting our Triton truck to them.”

Creating an engaging, personalised website

Mitsubishi Motors built on the success from Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager with a complete website refresh using Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Assets. The company again selected Isobar, which used its Invent, Make, Change framework to complete this massive replatform and redesign project in less than a year.

“Automotive websites are the perfect opportunity to drive innovation” says Scott King, Vice President, Enterprise Solutions at Isobar. “They are highly interactive, with dynamic real-time vehicle configurators, dealership locators, brochures and the likes. They required considered, orchestrated long time consumer journeys as they represent such a high investment and highly considered investment. The digital experience must be reflective of the car brand, the lifestyle capability of the vehicle itself. Finally, it must bridge the gap between digital experience and research, to physical test driving and vehicle purchase.”

In the Invent phase, Isobar worked closely with stakeholders from across the company, including consumer sales and business sales, fleet customers and dealerships. This phase helped Isobar understand the unique requirements for an automotive website, including the need for highly visual displays, unique configurators and interactive elements that draw customers in and make them want to learn more about each vehicle.

This time of discovery helped Mitsubishi Motors understand how it could better reach customers, such as the under-served small and medium business market. The buying cycle for small and medium business owners resembles individual consumers in many ways: business owners are focused on their own work during the day, so they like to research options, browse online and test drive new vehicles outside of typical working hours.

“By strengthening our business messaging on the website, we increased business-related leads by 3,000%,” says Ind. “It shows what a difference understanding our customers could make to the bottom line.”

Designers, developers and UX teams used an agile methodology during the Make phase to build and develop content and components on Adobe Experience Manager Sites in just five months. During the final development sprint, Isobar added personalisation and optimisation to the website with Adobe Target. Adobe Target, operating alongside Isobar’s proprietary Experience and Optimisation frameworks, creates highly personalised experiences using data from Analytics and Audience Manager.

“The new website is a game-changer for us,” says Ind. “We’re trying to create a link between digital and physical, using the engagement and insight from digital channels to drive higher quality leads to dealerships. With Adobe Experience Cloud, we show customers content that excites them and gets them ready to talk with sales reps.”

Improving efficiency and messaging

With Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Assets, Mitsubishi Motors now has a beautiful, highly interactive website that is still very easy to update. There’s no customised code to worry about. Instead, the digital marketing team’s three content authors can use the templates, components and experience fragments developed by Isobar to quickly update and publish content without outside developer assistance.

Marketers also take advantage of reusable content and experience fragments in Experience Manager to unify branding and imagery across email with Adobe Campaign. When combined with customers insights from Adobe Audience Manager, marketers can create consistent messaging across digital touchpoints to improve experiences for customers. Someone who requests a quote online for a Mirage might get an email detailing Mirage options and a text recommending a Mirage test drive.

Working with Adobe Experience Manager as a Managed Service reduces overhead and maintenance costs while allowing Mitsubishi Motors to focus IT resources away from day-to-day website maintenance. Managed Services also improves flexibility and scalability for the website, which is critical for Mitsubishi Motors as traffic volumes tend to increase before the weekends when consumers are doing research and scheduling test drives.

“With Mitsubishi we have created the perfect partnership and the latest in digital capability and innovation in terms of design, development and Adobe technology,” says King. “Our work involved implementing an advanced insights and analytics capability, leveraging one-to-one audience actionability via the DMP in partnership with Channel 9’s People-Based Destinations, executing marketing automation and journey orchestration with Campaign and personalisation and optimisation activities with Target and maturing to a full web site redesign and redevelopment of mitsubihsi-motors.com.au. The team at Mitsubishi should be commended for their innovative approach.”

The latest update to the website is the addition of Adobe Commerce, which adds e-commerce capabilities to the website. Vehicle accessories are a big source of revenue for Mitsubishi Motors. The company has more than 20,000 accessories, with dozens of compatible accessories for every vehicle model. Adobe Commerce easily manages all product configurations and data to put accessories online.

“Adobe Commerce handles our product lines beautifully,” says Ind. “It integrates into our ERP stack as well as with Adobe Experience Manager, which adds a clean and attractive interface for accessories. Currently we direct customers to dealers for purchase, but when we’re ready to start online sales, it will be as simple as flipping a switch to add e-commerce to our website.”

Looking to the future of automotive sales

Mitsubishi Motors digital marketing team took advantage of Adobe Digital Learning Services and it’s 12-month learning path to get up to speed on Adobe Experience Cloud applications quickly and start bringing value to the company. Isobar continues to support the team by refining personalisation and rolling out new functionality across the website. One of the next big goals for the website will be to better integrate dealers into data and sales cycle.

“Ultimately we want a salesperson in a dealership to look at someone coming in for a test drive and know what models, colours and features the person has been looking at online,” says Ind. “This should make it easier for sales teams to make suggestions, highlight vehicles in their best light and close sales faster. With Adobe Experience Cloud, we’re speeding through our digital transformation roadmap and creating a stunning new car-buying journey for our customers.”