Case Study
Mitsubishi Motors Canada uses propensity modelling to increase conversion rate
Mitsubishi Motors has pioneered automotive innovation for more than a century. The global brand established itself in Canada in 2002 and has continued to champion leading automotive technologies. Its latest car, the Outlander, has virtual assistance to help drivers with lane centring, speed control, traffic jam stop-and go and much more. With this new vehicle driving Mitsubishi further into the future, the automaker wanted to channel that innovation into their marketing strategy.
“When you are a cutting-edge brand with a great story to tell, you need to look for innovative ways to reach consumers“
— Steve Carter, Director of Marketing, Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada
The Challenge
The marketing team at Mitsubishi realized that consumers were increasing their time researching product information online before purchasing. With this knowledge, the automaker decided to shift to a digital-first strategy. The “build-and-price” tool on their website took center place in their approach. This interface allows consumers to compare features and cost before visiting a local dealership. Mitsubishi used this tool as a “proxy conversion,” because it’s the clearest digital signal of interest in purchasing the vehicle. The carmaker wanted to acquire more of these “proxy-conversions” which would eventually help the brand drive more car sales at dealerships.
Mitsubishi’s ad tech solutions partner Dandelion proposed to use Google Marketing Platform and
Google Cloud to harness the power of the brand’s first-party data and predict which consumers were more likely to use the build-and-price tool. Mitsubishi would then be able to build digital marketing campaigns to reach those customers.
The Strategy
Dandelion first exported Mitsubishi’s Google Analytics 360 data to BigQuery, part of Google Cloud. With BigQuery ML, they created and executed a machine learning model which predicted the likelihood or propensity of consumers completing the build-and-price tool. This enabled Dandelion to develop a custom audience that could reach Mitsubishi’s ideal customer.
The next step was to utilize these models. By importing these audiences back into Analytics 360, Mitsubishi could then make them available for activation across multiple Google advertising solutions.
“Automation is a key component to taking our
digital campaigns to the next level”
— Steve Carter, Director of Marketing, Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada
The Conclusion
With those audiences automatically available for activation in Display & Video 360, Mitsubishi easily reached their ideal audience. The brand’s creative digital agency Jan Kelley built the media campaign using these audiences, determining the best channels to activate. Over the 6 months that the campaign lasted, Mitsubishi saw a 81% decrease in their cost per acquisition and 14x increase in their conversion rate.
After seeing these convincing results, Mitsubishi decided to use propensity modelling for their future campaigns. They plan to activate it in other solutions like Search Ads 360 and continue channelling their innovative spirit.
1.8x decrease in cost-per-action
14x higher conversion rate
70% of total conversions driven by modelled audiences
Dream bigger with data
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