Understanding Auto Buying Audiences
Contextual Engagement in Autosales
In 2025, more than ever, understanding and engaging with potential buyers is crucial. A recent large-scale Kaisa analysis of used car buyer behaviour across Europe, sheds light on the critical role of contextual engagement in driving sales success.
The analysis encompassed 3 million monthly automotive experiences across 100,000 dealers and one million high-intent consumers, revealing that understanding consumer audiences is the key to effective engagement and re-engagement strategies.
Defining Audiences: Beyond Demographics
Traditionally, audience segmentation has often relied heavily on demographics and browsing history. However, when it comes to Marketplaces and used vehicles, the picture becomes significantly more complex and nuanced.
Prospects can view multiple vehicles and vehicle types simultaneously. Visiting and revisiting over days and weeks.
The Kaisa analysis proves the need to move beyond simple demographics and delve deeper into consumer behaviour to truly understand an Auto lead’s intent.
The Interplay of Action and Context
The key to successful re-engagement lies in the interplay of two crucial elements:
- Action: These are the observable behaviours of consumers, such as calls, inbound messages, form submissions, test drive requests, and finance inquiries. While actions provide valuable data, they don’t always paint the complete picture. For instance, a simple phone call to a dealership could be for various reasons, including service inquiries or general information, not necessarily indicating high purchase intent.
- Context: This encompasses the entire customer journey, providing a holistic view of consumer behaviour. Key contextual factors include:
- Vehicle Interest: Which specific vehicles are customers interested in? Are they considering multiple options?
- Call Details: Call duration, call content, whether the call was answered or missed, or if the dealer followed up.
- Form Submissions: Are customers pre-approved for financing? Are they requesting a test drive?
- Website Behavior: Which pages did they visit? How long did they spend on the site? What did they configure?
- Timelines: When did they visit? Are any patterns visible?
Predicting Behavior and Optimizing Experiences
By combining action and context, dealers can:
- Build highly targeted audiences: Identify groups of consumers with similar behaviours and preferences.
- Automate engagement and re-engagement drastically reduces missed, and lost leads.
- Predict future behaviour: Anticipate customer needs and proactively address their inquiries.
- Optimise customer experiences: Tailor communication and offers to individual customer journeys, increasing engagement and conversion rates.
Conclusion
In 2025, contextual re-engagement is no longer an option but a necessity. By leveraging data and insights from CX platforms like Kaisa, Marketplaces can unlock the full potential of their customer relationships for dealers , drive sales growth, and ultimately achieve lasting success however uncertain the market.