Dear Toyota: You never write, you never call….

I should start by saying (admitting?) that I own a 2004 Toyota Highlander (a year before they came out with their hybrid and about three years before owning an SUV became the social equivalent of smoking). But I have enjoyed the vehicle, and most importantly, have not had a single issue with it, from a maintenance perspective, that is. The issue that I do have, though, is that no one at Toyota or the dealership I use for regular servicing has thought to ask if, by chance and after six years of driving the same vehicle, that I might be in the market for something new. And what type of vehicle I might be interested in next. And whether I would like to visit their website to learn more about what might suit my needs in a new vehice. You get the idea…

I don’t mean to single out Toyota, since I suspect that the lack of any kind of programmatic example of a customer engagement strategy is probably the case with the other auto makers as well. And I am also not surprised by this, having spent a lot of grey matter working as part of an analytics group in the past to build in-market models for another auto maker. I wondered then, too, why they didn’t try to find out for themselves directly, if and when some of their customers are interested in buying again. I was told that getting co-operation from the dealers – independent business people for the most part – would be difficult for any kind of communications program like this.

Does that seem like a significant roadblock to you? And for something that would directly benefit the dealers and that could even be co-branded with them?

So what have been your experiences with the auto makers you’ve done business with before? Have they stayed in touch? Have they tried to anticipate when you’d be interested in considering another purchase? Or is engagement marketing an idea that is still stuck in neutral in the auto industry?

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