Reposted from Tranzact Information Services
A consumer with a lease ending in the next twelve months should be one of the most sought-after prospects for OEMs, regional auto marketing divisions, and dealership groups. Yet few auto marketers seem to use lease maturity lists at all, much less in well-planned and measured conquest programs. In the next 24 months more than 1.4 million consumers will have maturing leases. Segmented by a credit score of 720 or higher, you may be missing out on 360,133 possible customers with maturing leases in 2012 and 537,990 in 2013. (Tranzact Information Services maintains credit information from all three bureaus and can provide counts for consumers by many different credit criteria, including near prime and subprime.)
The time is right for conquest programs. Share is shifting, according to motorintelligence.com (a division of Autodata) and reported in the WSJ data center. In October, year-over-year sales, Chrysler was up 27%, Toyota was down 7.9%, Nissan was up 18%, Hyundai was up 22.8% and Honda was down .5%. That is just one month in a year of significant changes, caused by vehicle shortages, hot new models, a strong yen, and the fluctuating financial situation of consumers. Loyalties and buying patterns are in flux, so now is the time to conquest.
What data makes for the BEST Lease Maturity list?
The best lists are created from multiple sources. Tranzact Information Services maintains all the sources mentioned below, in house.
From the credit bureau files
Lease maturity date
Estimated monthly payment amount
Credit score, including special scores based only on auto payments
From third-party files
Make/model of current vehicle
Demographics of the lessee and household (e.g. presence of children)
Estimated discretionary spending
(Not all data may be available on all consumer records. When using lists sourced from credit files, a firm offer of credit must be made.)
Important steps that lead to conquest
The right data is the foundation of a conquest program, but it is just one part of a well-planned marketing project. Keep these tips in mind:
Timing – if you wait until three to six months before maturity to start talking to lease customers, you may be too late to reach many consumers. Some dealers are calling customers six months prior to maturity and pulling them forward.
Offer – Consider making a two-part offer in the same mailer or email. For example, offer a reward just for taking a test drive (such as a $25 restaurant gift card) as well as $500 or more in discounts or a down payment incentive. Of course, the marketing materials must also include a firm offer of credit, such as pre-approval.
Repeat – Consumers often spend months considering vehicle purchases and search many web sites. Don’t lose touch through this long process. Consider multiple touch points and marketing activities, such as mail/mail, mail/call or email/mail/email.
Don’t let a conquest program become a frustrating quest
At TranzactIS, we focus on making complex programs easy to administer and more effective. We can pull maturing lease customer names from all three credit bureaus and suppress your customer names – in one pass. No need for multiple vendors. Call 800-488-9113 or complete the contact us form to speak to one of our data professionals and get counts for your markets.
Also sign up for our free blog and recieve future postings about making prescreen offers by email, targeting for auto refi offers and a variety of “best practices” of interest to financial marketers. Recent blogs of interest include: Credit Proxy vs. Prescreen Data: Rules for Auto Marketers.
