How to improve your car dealership’s first-party data with guest Brian Toole

Today on Kain & Co., host David Kain, President of Kain Automotive, sits down with Brian Toole, Director of Carpathic, to take a deep dive into managing first-party data at the dealership level. In this episode, we’ll find out how car dealers can best clean, manage, and utilize their first-party data.

Toole has been in the car business since 1999 when he landed a position with Seattle-based automotive digital marketing firm, The Cobalt Group. He was also an internet consultant for Autotrader in the early 2000s, when digital marketing was still very young. For the last several years, Toole has been focusing on helping car dealers utilize their first-party data.

It’s an area that many car dealers still struggle with, but if managed properly, can become a huge asset. Toole recommends for car dealers start by cleaning their data. Vin verification is one of the first things to check for when cleaning this data. It should then be run through a National Change of address (NCOA) to make sure that past customers are still serviceable in your area. There are also services that will merge multiple records for a single customer. Once the data is cleaned up and compressed into a single customer view, append your records.

The core value of clean first-party data is the ability to talk to your clients intelligently about their circumstances. You need to know your customers, says Toole. Clean data makes this much easier. It also enables your marketing campaigns to be more efficient and personalized. Clean data allows for deeper personalization of the customer experience while optimizing marketing spend. Stay tuned to Kain & Co. for more information about first-party data.

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