What Car?’s new service, the brand’s biggest investment in a decade, will draw upon rich data that is collected from millions of users every month.
What Car? publishing director Andrew Golby said: “We are in a unique position to help our car-buying customers on their research journey by connecting them with information from our clients. What Car? Connect will provide the automotive industry with high-quality sales leads and direct access to the What Car? audience. We see more than 30 million visits to What Car?’s digital products every year and our unique view of the new and nearly new car buyer can now be shared with our clients in great depth.2
“The What Car? Connect infrastructure incorporates our own highly trained contact centre, which is capable of 50,000 calls a month to users who we know are in the market for a new car. It is our biggest ever commitment to bringing the new car buyer direct to the door of manufacturers and dealers.”
“We shall also be developing predictive buyer behaviour insight for the industry on a scale never before attempted. Over the coming months, a team of analysts and data specialists will study research trends across What Car?’s digital platforms, add insight from our conversations with users and track behaviour to identify car-buying trends.”
Since January, What Car?, which is best known for its car reviews, has been collecting the records of more than 2 million users who have completed a used car valuation on the website. The high-quality in-market audience has responded well to a pilot project, and What Car? Connect will be fully operational in January.
What Car? Connect’s lead-generation service will take a sophisticated approach to qualifying and segmenting users who are in-market for a new or nearly new car. The methodology will include advanced profiling of the audience and a closed-loop check to identify purchase outcomes. It is the most rigorous approach to lead generation ever introduced to the UK automotive market, says Haymarket.
What Car? editor-in-chief Chas Hallett said: “We are all excited by the new opportunities that Connect will offer, and we anticipate it contributing towards the development of our own core products. It won’t just be our clients who learn more about buying behaviour. We also look forward to understanding research trends in even more detail than before.”
“We will be taking great care to maintain the trust that users have placed in What Car? over the years.”
