Creating hype and converting it into action.

Generating excitement and pre-orders for a premium automotive retailer’s first electric vehicle by not just launching a car, but a feeling!

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The problem

The automotive market is one of the most crowded and achieving stand out can be hard. So when we were asked to support the launch of a new electric model – the marque’s first foray into electric – we knew we had to do something special to achieve the desired 2,000 pre-orders nine months ahead of showroom availability.

The hypothesis

Instead of launching a car, we launched a feeling.

A feeling that came with a money back guarantee - an automotive first. To secure pre-orders we believed that we needed to disrupt the default futuristic, neon-blue electric car marketing that had gone before by communicating something meaningful in a personal way.  

Our strategy

To bring this to life we devised a multichannel digital and CRM campaign that would tie in with the above the line activity comprising retailer assets, a dedicated web page, paid media, social media and a customer engagement campaign.  

It was important to build a database of engaged individuals so the first stage was to build hype and capture interest ahead of the launch, encouraging people to register their interest. We bolstered this by identifying consumers who had shown an interest in electric vehicles based on their web browsing behaviour. 

The customer engagement element then took a three pronged approach:

1.   Prime: Generate interest amongst the brand’s database.

2.   Interest nurture: Convert interest into orders.

3.   Order nurture: Turn orders into advocates.

The database was segmented and a series of 13 email touchpoints were devised and sent according to an individual’s unique customer journey based on how they interacted with the electric campaign. The emails addressed key barriers and showcased the benefits of the car, all underpinned with the brand’s unique sense of optimism and the campaign’s ‘good feeling’ messages. 

Social content was developed to be posted across all of the brand’s channels and influencers were identified and given sneak previews of the electric model to create excitement.

And finally a booking system was developed for retailers with individual retailer level access and a retailer pack comprising a series of assets was available for download.

The results

We achieved our aim and exceeded our target for orders. We built hype and excitement, but most importantly converted it into confirmed orders. 

More retailers than ever before engaged with the launch and the assets had more downloads than any previous campaign.

Social activity received overwhelming support with a reach of close to 2 million across all channels.

The customer engagement campaign generated phenomenal results achieving open rates amongst some segments of between 50 and 85 percent.

In fact, the emails were so successful that a group of super-engaged consumers even shared multiple screenshots of the communications across their social channels!

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