[Case] Turning data into drive: How The Relevance Group boosted Louwman’s conversions by 14%

With over 100 years of experience, the Louwman Group is one of the largest car distributors in Europe. Besides vehicle sales, the company operates in retail, leasing, financing, logistics, and healthcare. Louwman Group is also the official importer of Lexus, Toyota, and Suzuki. TDA Analytics, which is part of The Relevance Group, supported the Louwman Group in optimizing marketing expenses for the Suzuki brand by leveraging target group data.

Background: Only focus on relevant segments

The Louwman Group wanted to use its marketing budget for Suzuki Netherlands more efficiently. By making smarter use of data and resources, unnecessary costs could be reduced, and campaign effectiveness increased. A key focus was gaining a better understanding of the target audience. Additionally, they wanted to see if other customer segments would emerge when focusing solely on the “new car buyer” group.

Renee de Bruyn, CRM Marketer, Suzuki at Louwman Group: ''While previous research focused on all customers, TDA Analytics’ data now allows us to zoom in specifically on new car buyers; a crucial target group.''

Approach: Segmentation based on data

The foundation of the approach was building clusters from a brand perspective. Specific customer clusters were created for each Suzuki model, providing insights into existing customer groups and enabling comparison with the Dutch market. These clusters formed segmentation based on relevant characteristics.

By shifting to generic clusters within Suzuki Netherlands, it became possible to better identify, from the customer’s point of view, which type of customer is looking for a particular model, such as the Suzuki Vitara.

Factors considered for clustering included:

Age
Areas of interest
Household size
Sports preferences
Income

This resulted in recognizable segments, such as young families and middle-aged couples, each with different purposes and usage patterns for their cars. Working with generic clusters thus leads to a better customer-product match.

Enrich internal data with external data

To complete the customer profile, this data was enriched with external target group data by TDA Analytics. This enabled look-alike analyses to estimate how many potential customers exist and where they are in the Netherlands on both provincial and municipal levels. Finding potential customers like the existing customer profile allows Suzuki Netherlands to attract new customers more precisely and efficiently.

Additionally, within demographically similar groups, Suzuki differentiates further based on lifestyle factors such as the number of cars in a household, employment status, and hobbies. Depending on a customer’s life situation, a specific model fits better.

Results: 14% uplift in conversion

A concrete example of how marketers use these clusters is in personalizing email campaigns. Marketers also apply the clusters for more targeted advertising in online campaigns. In search campaigns, bids are increased when a person’s search originates from a postcode area matching one of the clusters’ characteristics. This led to a 13.9% uplift in conversions on the website during the Suzuki Vitara search campaign.

Suzuki also dared to step outside the traditional automotive sector by successfully participating in a non-automotive trade fair. This was made possible through in-depth prospect analyses revealing brand preferences and target group characteristics.

Pamela Jansen, Digital Marketer, Suzuki Louwman Group: ''Using the data of TDA Analytics, we can see how many potential look-alike customers are in a postcode area. This provides valuable insights into location potential and enables more focused marketing.''

Finally, a major advantage of target group data over traditional market research data is the ability to link internal data and customer profiles directly. This direct connection is often not possible with conventional market research, resulting in richer and more actionable insights.

www.tda-analytics.nl
www.therelevance.group

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