The challenge
A regional multi-brand dealership had 8,400 lease-end and closed-lost contacts sitting dormant in their Salesforce instance — three years of marketing spend with zero ongoing return. Manual outreach had been tried twice and abandoned because the sales team did not have the bandwidth. Lease-end customers were defaulting to whichever showroom called them first, which was usually a competitor.
How we deployed
- Ran DND scrub and WhatsApp Business consent check across the full 8,400-contact list.
- Segmented by lease-end month, previous vehicle class and original purchase reason.
- Sent tailored WhatsApp openers per segment — new model launch, exchange offer, EMI revision.
- Followed non-engaged contacts with a single SMS at day 7 with a service-centre soft-touch.
- Routed every reply within 60 seconds to a human relationship manager with full transcript and prior history.
- Retired confirmed-dead contacts so future campaign runs cost less and stayed clean.
What changed
- 12.6% of the 8,400-contact list engaged in real conversation.
- 94 booked test drives in the first 6 weeks of the campaign.
- Rs 3.6 crore in net-new vehicle revenue closed inside 60 days.
- First deal closed on day 8 — a customer who had been silent for 19 months.
- Total program cost was under 3% of recovered revenue.
"That list had been written off as dead. It funded our entire Q2 advertising budget and gave us our best September in five years."
— GM · Regional Dealership