Citroen has become the first manufacturer to sign up to a prospecting tool added to the Touchpoint dealer marketing system from MarketingFile.

Touchpoint enables dealers to analyse their customers, source similar prospect data and then schedule email and SMS delivery and send direct mail by high quality digital print and post to both existing customers and new prospects. 

The new managed service prospecting option does not require the dealer to do anything, other than sign up to the service. 

A timetable for a full year of conquest marketing or general prospecting activity is agreed between the client and MarketingFile, which then launches the agreed volume of direct mail, email and/or SMS messages for each dealership according to that timetable using creative supplied regularly by the client’s agency.

It is an extension of a dealer’s DMS and can be implemented either at a single dealership or across a dealer group and is operated by the dealer’s own marketing team.

Some 50 Citroën dealers have so far signed up to the service which is already delivering weekly direct mail and email campaigns on their behalf using creative supplied by Citroën ’s agency Acuity.

Kristian Cholmondeley, Citroen's dealer marketing manager, said: "This managed prospecting service ticks a lot of boxes for both Citroën and for our dealers.

"From Citroën’s point of view it ensures that prospecting is undertaken properly, on a regular basis, in appropriate volumes and using agreed creative. 

"The dealers like it for all the same reasons, but with the bonus that it removes all the time and effort associated with getting mail and email campaigns out. In a busy dealership sometimes there is simply not the time to do all the marketing that we would like to do.  MarketingFile’s managed prospecting service ensures that it does get done.”

> More information on Touchpoint.