How SEAT uses Criteo to find new prospects and convert them to leads through the funnel

As part of the Volkswagen Group and headquartered in Barcelona, SEAT is the fastest growing auto brand in Europe and in France over the past years. The car manufacturer has surpassed sales records for three consecutive years, rooting its success in classic best-sellers such as the Leon, and expanding into new directions with the introduction of a range of SUVs, as well as the launch of their exclusive CUPRA brand.

Celebrating its 70th birthday this year, SEAT has successfully adapted to consumers’ rapidly changing needs through a focus on electric solutions as an alternative for mobility. SEAT also offers flexible SEAT SANS ENGAGEMENT (no commitment contracts), and also recently launched the brand SEAT MO to promote solutions for mobility— for example, a moto-sharing service to help consumers easily get around Barcelona. Today, SEAT promotes a dynamic, innovative and design-driven brand that has attracted young and modern auto buyers across the globe.

Adapting to the auto buying journey

The auto buying journey has continued to shift over the past years. The traditional approach consists of a potential buyer researching online before visiting the dealership to learn, test, and eventually buy. Today, this process is becoming more efficient: the majority of the decision-making process takes place online, and the purchase of a vehicle is made through the dealership only once the final decision has been made. The recent pandemic has accelerated this process as more people are spending time online, replacing multiple in-person interactions.

In the wake of the pandemic, SEAT understood that they needed to adapt to their consumers’ needs. They were the first in the industry to launch a new offer: “Purchase your car now and only pay in 2021.”

“With this message, we wanted to drive visibility online, get more people to visit our website, and generate leads over a period of three months,” says Brice Renvoize, Head of Digital & Experience at SEAT. “And because we were not sure how consumers would react coming out of the pandemic, we needed a solution that was flexible enough for us to pilot in real-time so that we could monitor the engagement with our consumers.”

With the help of their agency, Re-Mind PHD, they partnered with Criteo for a full-funnel, campaign targeted and geo-localized for car dealerships. The campaign aimed to broadcast their new message quickly and at scale with the goal of finding new prospects, which would then fuel tactical lead generation through to their local car dealerships.

A full-funnel approach

To first increase visibility online and get their message out to the market, SEAT focused on finding potential auto buyers that would be interested in their brand. They used Criteo’s exclusive intent data to build an audience of ‘Discount Lovers’ made up of people who regularly engaged with key sales events over the year, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

“Criteo’s audiences are granular and unique,” says Brice. “It allows us to reach people based on active online shoppers from across the web.”

On top of this, Criteo was able to expand this reach to find additional potential auto buyers by running lookalike audiences off of SEAT’s existing website visitors.

Then, to generate qualified leads and drive them to their local dealerships, Criteo re-engaged SEAT’s website visitors by displaying cross-device, dynamic product recommendations. Working directly with the media agency, Criteo was able to display personalized car models that were in stock at their nearest car dealership for nearby users.

Driving immediate success while building a long-term partnership

The campaign was a success, generating a 12% increase in website visits from new prospects while also decreasing the cost per visit from those prospects by 54%. On top of this, the campaign also generated a 38% increase in leads to car dealerships while decreasing the cost of these leads by 12%.

More than performance, the SEAT team saw value in Criteo as a consultative partner. Brice says, “In the context of the pandemic, it was exceptional to see how Criteo was able to quickly and efficiently work with our media agency Re-Mind PHD to get this campaign up and running, and how they were able to provide expertise along the way. Criteo fits perfectly into our strategy of differentiating ourselves from a media perspective and we will continue to work with them in the future.”