Marketing Cloud Enables Merchant Offers to GM Drivers

Posted on by Patty Odell

General Motors has made it a goal to bring technology and connectivity to its vehicles. OnStar is one example many people may recognize. With the push of a “blue” button a driver can get emergency help or monthly vehicle diagnostic data. But GM has taken it far beyond those simple services to differentiate itself from its competitors.. For example, Buick owners can now videoconference from their cars and kids riding in a Chevy can connect through Wi-Fi.

“Our brand has made connectivity a very important part of our messaging,” Rick Ruskin, General Motors/OnStar Global Connected Consumer, Commerce Team, said today at Connection 2016. “We’ve put the technology in our cars and now we’re applying it in one-to-one customer communications.”

GM AtYourService
A pic of the dashboard AtYourService app located on the dashboard of a GM Chevy

One of its latest technologies is a platform that delivers content, including offers from merchants who want to connect with GM’s customers through its OnStar AtYourService system. The content can be accessed three ways: through OnStar, a cellphone app or through an app that appears in the vehicle’s dashboard. Several merchants currently participate, including Dunkin’ Donuts, Audio Books, Priceline.com, Exxon Mobile and Groupon.

But there were a few stumbling blocks along the way. GM has more than 6 million customers that engage with the brand across multiple platforms, generating disparate data from multiple sources across the Web and social media that was all housed in individual silos. Its marketing platforms did not enable it to deliver one-to-one communications.

“We knew it was important to build experiences with the customer at the center,” Luciana Chamberlain, manager, marketing strategy, at General Motors said. “We had misalignment between the platform and the data and a lack of campaign automation. We had a multi -channel strategy that created multiple silos focused on the performance of each silo, not the customer experience. We needed an omni-channel approach that put the customer at the center of the strategy.”

To reach that goal, GM invested in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a software platform that personalizes experiences across email, mobile, social, advertising and the Web and Salesforce Journey Builder, to create one-to-one customer journeys across all touchpoints. The goal was to consolidate data sources and use a more flexible platform to deliver campaigns in an automated way.

“You can imagine that we immediately jump into a critical path of communications to convert them from [OnStar] trial to paid subscription,” Ruskin said. “That was one way of using the communication platforms. As we added more features and benefits, all of the sudden they were all sorts of new ways and reasons to communicate. This was a really important factor to move to take many platforms and consolidate around one platform to organize those journeys ahead of time. With individual silos we really didn’t bring the data together.”

“We did not have the automation required to deliver individual experiences using all this complex data,” Chamberlain added. ”We knew we had to move into a space creating an omni-channel strategy. We had to look at the entire customer journey. Understanding who the customer base is creates millions of different journeys. The platform will enable us to do a one-to-one journey with each customer.”

For example, Dunkin’ Donuts may deliver a coupon or Audio Books might recommend a good audio read for a long trip.

“We’re going out with content as opposed to just telling you about your OnStar, that’s where merchant-partner relationships become more relevant on a daily basis” Chamberlain said. “It’s no longer talking about ourselves and our services, it’s leading with content.”

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