Car dealers are maintaining marketing contact under GDPR by securing consent for nine-out-of-10 new customer sales enquiries, according to Marketing Delivery.

The eCRM and social media specialists evaluated more than 30,900 sales enquiries from 103 dealers, during April 2018 and found that customer email addresses had been collected for 86% of all enquiries, with consent for future communication secured in 87% of cases.

In a quarter of the cases looked at, it would not be possible for the customer to be re-contacted by email, either due to the lack of an appropriate address or because consent was lacking, Marketing Delivery said.

Jeremy Evans, managing director of Marketing Delivery, said: “With GDPR coming into force this month, the importance of maintaining data quality and accuracy has predictably been a hot topic across the industry.

"Our analysis indicates that dealers are responding well, capturing crucial data and consents in the overwhelming majority of cases.

“There is, however, still room for improvement. Dealers should continue to optimise their processes and systems to capture data and secure appropriate consents – and monitor the status of those consents across their full database – to ensure productive ongoing communication with customers."

Mobile phones details

Marketing Delivery identified that telephone numbers were collected successfully for 78% of all enquiries, and of those, consent for future communications was in place in 86% of cases.

By contrast, 33% of all customers making a new enquiry during April could not be re-contacted by mobile phone – via SMS or a call – due to a lack of a mobile number or the absence of clear consent.

The results of the analysis come in the same month that Marketing Delivery has been accredited with the ISO 27001 standard for information security management.

Separate research by Marketing Delivery earlier this year revealed email to be consumers’ most preferred method of communication with car dealers.

Nearly half of customers (48.3%) prefer email contact – double the number that favour telephone calls (19.7%) or SMS (17.3%). Marketing Delivery’s analysis encompassed a wide range of dealerships throughout the UK, representing both prestige and volume brands.