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Adobe Marketing Cloud Success Story
AutoTrader.com
Drive for success
AutoTrader.com
Atlanta, Georgia
www.autotrader.com
www.kbb.com
Results
• Boosted landing page conversion
by 33% through a single test
• Increased conversion by as much
as 8% through specific pricing
modifications
• Helped transform relationship
from a vendor into a strategic
business partner
• Measured increases in search
traffic from 133% to 1,775% for
specific vehicle models during
the Super Bowl
• Improved visibility into current
market trends and cross-channel
marketing opportunities
• S hared insights across the
organization and with business
partners
• Improved visibility into online traffic
and visitor segments
• Delivered enhanced online
experiences to audiences
Trusted resource for new and used cars uses Adobe Marketing
Cloud to improve insights into multichannel audience behaviors
and create additional value for business partners
Whether it’s a hybrid or sport utility vehicle, foreign or domestic, daily-driver or a
dream car, AutoTrader.com has built its reputation on providing consumers and
dealers with the optimal environment for buying and selling new and used cars.
The trusted resource connects buyers with dealerships and private owners not
only to make one-time transactions, but also to create lasting relationships through
positive buying experiences.
In 1998, the company established itself as an innovator in the automotive industry—when other
companies relied heavily on traditional print media, as well as television and radio ads, AutoTrader.com
chose to go digital. Today, that same spirit of innovation lives within its digital marketing and sales
groups by delivering higher value services and industry insights to its advertisers and customers, as
well as finding new, cost-efficient opportunities for dealers and manufacturers to sell cars and capture
the attention of online visitors.
“For AutoTrader.com, the key to success has always been delivering more advertising value for our
clients than any other medium by increasing product exposure and brands across digital channels,”
says Thomas Gage, senior director of business development at AutoTrader.com. “After nearly a decade
of digital innovation, we are now inventing a new future by leveraging our rich audience data to provide
a more relevant consumer experience and a deeper understanding of consumer behavior through
analytics for our clients.”
“Our dealer service levels are outstanding, maintained through the largest sales force in the automotive
shopping space,” adds Scott Hernalsteen, senior director of enterprise analytics. “The analytic solutions
and insights provided by an unparalleled consumer base offer our dealer customers and consumers
valuable information to better target their products. We care about their success.”
AutoTrader.com wanted to create new audiences for sellers by learning about specific online visitor
segments, driving them toward a more targeted experience, differentiating between an enthusiast
surfing for a car and a buyer that will visit a dealer’s showroom this weekend, and ultimately influencing
buying decisions. Additionally, the company wanted to share its insights into audiences with dealers
and manufacturers to help them understand the value of a proposition delivered by AutoTrader.com,
as well as generate additional sales opportunities for its online properties—including Kelly Blue
Book—through both car sales and advertising.
To bring all of these elements together, AutoTrader.com chose to build on its outstanding creative and
merchandising capabilities with a more integrated, data-driven approach to its online properties. The
company selected Adobe Marketing Cloud, including the Adobe AudienceManager, Adobe Analytics,
and Adobe Target solutions, to bring analytics, content optimization, and audience management
together through a single, unified platform.
AutoTrader.com uses Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions to gain deeper insights into online visitor behaviors and preferences to
enable marketers and partners to optimize content display and offers, as well as marketing and ad campaigns.
Challenge
• Delivering additional value to
business relationships
• Enhancing customer experiences
• Driving new sales opportunities
Solution
AutoTrader.com is using Adobe
Marketing Cloud, including Adobe
Analytics, Adobe Target, and Adobe
AudienceManager to build valuable
insights into multichannel user
behaviors, deliver superior online
experiences, boost sales and
conversion, and enhance business
relationships.
Systems at a Glance
Adobe Marketing Cloud, including
the Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target,
and Adobe AudienceManager
solutions. Capabilities used include:
• Marketing reports and analytics
• Ad hoc analysis
• Audience management
• AB testing
• Multivariate testing
Optimizing, not cannibalizing
Leveraging Adobe Marketing Cloud, AutoTrader.com gains granular insights into online interactions
and delivers actionable data to business partners—adding value to its relationships and creating
enhanced experiences for online visitors. Adobe solutions enable the company’s marketing teams to
create and deliver targeted, personalized experiences that enhance visitor engagement with content
and advertisements.
For example, using Adobe testing solutions, AutoTrader.com can display alternate types of
advertisements and content based on user behaviors and preferences, while at the same time screen
for fraudulent or computer-automated activity. “Using Adobe solutions we can quickly identify and
segment real user navigation from automated activities to improve confidence behind our testing
and content delivery—all while enhancing security,” says Gage. “On a day-to-day basis, Adobe
solutions allow us to incrementally grow revenue by optimizing small changes to our sites, as well
as clearly identify greater opportunities that translate into significant gains for our business units.”
Advanced testing functionality enables rapid prototyping of all aspects of AutoTrader.com’s website,
such as adjustments to overall page design, navigation, and imagery. Easily digestible reports deliver
real-time results that help marketers make positive business impacts across channels. Landing, search
result, product, and many other pages are optimized to improve engagement, user experiences, and
conversion under cohesive branding umbrellas. Using Adobe solutions, the company has compressed
the time between testing and deployment to just four days and decreased the bounce rate by 10%
in the process.
Additionally, if a unique customer has shown an affinity towards a specific type of content or has
engaged partner brands prior to arriving on its website, the company not only delivers custom-tailored
displays and content, but it also refines displays to incorporate vehicles from targeted manufacturers
and varies layouts and offers. Adobe solutions helps AutoTrader.com business partners identify specific
audiences and deliver targeted campaigns, resulting in increased conversions and more car sales.
By integrating advanced testing and analytics capabilities, AutoTrader.com gains granular insights
into how customers interact with content, optimizes end-user experiences based on new layouts
and displays, and quickly measures success. For example, through a single landing page optimization
test, the company saw a 33% lift in conversion by aligning layout and calls to action with customer
behaviors and preferences. Using Adobe solutions and data-driven insights, AutoTrader.com helps
ensure benefits within one area of its site are neutral or positively impact revenue in other areas.
“Adobe solutions enable us to constantly engage our customers
with new, relevant content and offers—guiding more people more
often down a conversion path.”
Thomas Gage
Senior director, Business Development,
AutoTrader.com
“Adobe solutions enable us to constantly engage our customers with new, relevant content and
offers—guiding more people more often down a conversion path,” says Gage. “We realize that a
visitor’s true intent becomes clear when looking at interactions across sites, which the integrated
Adobe Marketing Cloud platform enables us to do with ease.”
AutoTrader.com also is gaining deeper insight into cross-channel marketing opportunities to help
position the company and its business partners as industry leaders. To illustrate, the company measured
“off the chart” spikes in traffic across its property during the Super Bowl and directly related those
boosts to the airing of television commercials for each brand. During the broadcast, AutoTrader.com
measured increases in vehicle searches for specific models between pregame festivities and commercial
air time from 133% to 1,775%, as well as increased search traffic for related models from the same
brand weeks after the Super Bowl was over—demonstrating the short- as well as mid-term power
of online and offline cross-marketing opportunities that cannot be ignored.
“Shoppers will visit the website that most immediately comes to mind and advertisers may not see
the full benefit of their investment,” says Gage. “AutoTrader.com has great brand awareness and was
able to measure Super Bowl automotive TV audience engagement by showing the immediate impact
during the game and the weeks following.”
New revenue streams
Once content is optimized for sales and conversion, AutoTrader.com can share these insights with
manufacturers and dealerships to help them develop new advertising and display tactics, as well as
help monetize campaigns through the company’s online properties. By offering business partners
more valuable insights into content—such as the importance of price points and the impact gas prices
have on consumer choices in vehicles—as well as online traffic and visitor preferences, the company
leverages Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions to extend the value of its services to business partners.
For example, an unexpected finding was that data showed that vehicles priced at $15,000 were more
exposed than vehicles priced at the long-revered $14,999 price point. Pricing at $10,000 versus $9,999
created even greater lift (8.05%).
With Adobe AudienceManager, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, AutoTrader.com can take raw data
about web visitors and translate it into meaningful insights that inform more successful advertising
campaigns. As a result, AutoTrader.com is enabling its business partners to reach customers with
highly relevant ads as customers move across manufacturers’ and dealers’ websites. For example,
using Adobe solutions, AutoTrader.com identified a specific user segment for a major national
automotive manufacturer, enabling the company to target new advertising and display content that
mapped closely to customers’ previous inquiries and use patterns.
“Providing data-driven insights and audience management
solutions demonstrates the value of doing business with
AutoTrader.com and has offered our business partners new
sales opportunities.”
Thomas Gage
Senior director, Business Development,
AutoTrader.com
“By targeting the right ads to the right audience, we helped generate a significant increase in revenue for
our business partners by helping them sell thousands of new cars across the United States—everyone
walked away a winner,” explains Gage. “Providing data-driven insights and audience management
solutions demonstrates the value of doing business with AutoTrader.com and has offered our business
partners new sales opportunities.” Additional findings have catalyzed AutoTrader.com to publish a
series of industry-leading analytic reports that educate dealers, manufacturers, and consumers.
Moving forward, AutoTrader.com plans to leverage Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions to more tightly
integrate audience data with mobile and social media channels to develop a complete picture of
audiences everywhere they touch AutoTrader.com. This robust customer analytics and audience
management solutions refine optimization strategies, improves customer engagement across
channels and devices, and helps AutoTrader.com’s business partners use metrics with certainty to
drive the most revenue.
For more information
www.adobe.com/solutions/
digital-marketing.html
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