For decades, the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs / car brands) of the automotive industry have been selling cars through dealers. With the rising expectation of online shopping, OEMs are seeking to provide the options customers demand these days. Currently they are missing out on seamless experiences up to the physical outlet, real-time data about their customers’ purchasing habits and a means to enable holistic customer experiences, loyalty and trust. With the rapid digitisation of the automotive industry, the way is paved for D2C (direct-to-consumer) approaches. Customers are demanding purely digital-driven purchasing experiences and smart is now positioned to meet that need.

smart, was ready to reposition itself as a source of fully digitised and electric vehicles. But why stop at a product reinvention when you can revolutionise everything about auto sales at the same time? The brand needed a data-driven e-commerce experience to bring its new, fully electric SUV smart #1 and other products & services to market beyond the usual online sales platform tied to a traditional dealership model. The ambition is to make the car shopping experience easier and personalised to each customer by implementing a D2C model including a fully digital-driven buying experience where the customer chooses the journey and data offers relevant personalisation.

smart’s aspiration: Making purchasing a car as simple as buying a T-shirt.

With the data-driven approach and democratised use of data by the internal teams, smart is not only informing more robust business decisions, but is also enabled to understand how to personalise the experience at every turn. This spans the website, app, customer engagement centre and the dealership interactions. Through the richness of profile information captured, smart is enabled to deliver on the promise of (hyper-)personalisation customers expect so explicitly today. By deriving an understanding of interests and needs, the experience can be tailored to be super-relevant and hence support the purchasing journey through simplicity and ‘breathing’ the brand values in real time.

Data gathering

• Data interpretation

• Targeting

smart started down the road to a direct sales model built around online purchase options with access to dealerships, which would allow customers to switch seamlessly between online and offline experiences.

smart’s aspiration: Making purchasing a car as simple as buying a T-shirt.

Users should be able to customise a car, see similar vehicles ready in stock or search stock directly with cars currently available, book a test drive. When they are ready, then explore finance options and eventually purchase their chosen car. Help is available via smart’s Call Centre (CEC), with easy contact via phone, social channels or WhatsApp.

The enablement of this vision was the execution of the platform spanning e-commerce, marketing automation, a CDP, CRM and a headless frontend. A robust architecture with decoupling and a composability pattern puts data at the core to help smart understand its customers, resulting in a seamless and personalised experience.

A business model built in tech.

The most important business KPI was to deliver a commerce platform within only 2.5 years to enable the business model in time for the launch of the new car on a greefield.

In addition, in order to sell cars without customers having been able to experience the car physically in a store, the digital experience had to live up to the brand, convincing them to purchase the car online.

With the new platform, built from scratch, customers can trigger a purchase at any point and complete it entirely online, resulting in a seamless, immersive experience.

Results 12 months post launch, which exceeded smart’s expectations:

a. Pre Orders - 6.318

b. Order intake - 1.548

c. Website traffic - 3.004.223 sessions

d. Newsletter subscriptions - 32.838

e. A real seamless end-to-end and online-offline connected experience journey, enabling a fully digital purchase including leasing (no paperwork).