Fiat Commercial Vehicles
Practically a nationalised industry in Italy, indeed the initials stand for Fabrica Italiano Automobilia Torino - clearly indicating the original home market orientation of Fiat.
Fiat nowadays is a global brand, going way beyond both its national boundaries and manufacturing cars.
Crazy Horse has worked alongside Fiat UK for many years, primarily in the role of developing and actioning a highly successful direct marketing programme, extolling the virtues to the SME market of Fiat Commercial Vehicles.
The relationship is epitomised by the business cliche 'an extension of a client's marketing department'. We work in a seamless fashion with the Fiat team. Have a look at how Paul Godden, Fiat CV Brand Manager characterises how we both work together.
We live and breathe their business, forging a highly trusting, enjoyable and successful partnership.
Our job is to vigorously wave the Fiat CV flag not only to customers but also internally within the Fiat dealer franchise network.
Commercial Vehicles is a highly profitable area for Fiat, no surprise then that the market is highly competitive. This, coupled with a modest budget, has really called for an especially hard working direct marketing programme, and the results speak for themselves.
Crazy Horse Brand Response radically changed the strategy in 2003, moving Fiat from a programme of generic communications and broad targeting with high wastage and cost per sale, to one of informed, relevant and timely communications, refined targeting and radically improved efficiency.
The success of the programme lies in the relevance of the communication. We incentivise the core audience to identify themselves and their key purchase triggers and barriers to us via a questionnaire. The data is then segmented via Cluster Analysis into five discreet segments addressed via letter personalisation. A segmented mail/phone strategy around in-market dates encourages prospects to take a test drive in the vehicle which best suits their needs.
The questionnaire delivered an extremely high volume and quality of respondents, with some cells responding in excess of 16%. Unexpectedly, the questionnaire also set the phones ringing with prospects requesting test-drives, as well as providing Fiat CV with a robust prospect database.
Conversion rates to sale were high. The programme is being rolled out to larger fleet audiences during 2004. A full prospect and customer contact strategy sits alongside the data gathering strategy, to drive retention and longer term sales.
Fiat Commercial Vehicles is firmly back on the map. And with a rapidly growing market share, the white van man in front is more likely than ever to be driving a Fiat.
