The Power of Influence: How the World’s Premium Car Manufacturer Builds Life-Long Fanatics at Scale

Today’s customer journey doesn’t start in the showroom — it starts miles earlier. A potential driver spots a model on social, hears it discussed by a trusted expert, watches it hit the road in real life, and joins the social conversation long before a test drive is ever booked. In today’s fast-paced environment, consumer preferences and perceptions naturally gain momentum. How can marketing teams take the wheel to harness relevant data and channels across the business to influence engagement throughout the customer lifecycle?

SAP Engagement Cloud teamed up with the world’s leading manufacturer of premium cars and motorcycles to deliver personalized customer journeys, from new car purchases through connected car upgrades, to drive life-long loyalty. Keep reading for an inside take from their Head of 1:1 Campaign Management who shared how her team built credibility in a crowded landscape–where staying top of mind is crucial and influence is reshaping how brands manage customer engagement at scale.

The challenge at a glance

• The organization sells 2.5 million vehicles per year, employs nearly 160,000 people and operates in more than 30 production sites worldwide.
• Complex data infrastructure with customer touchpoints spread across email, mobile app, in-car experience, web, call center, SMS and dealers.

It’s a challenge every enterprise-sized business has experienced: a complex data infrastructure being accessed by countless sites globally.

Simply put, they were up against the “huge amounts of data with no path to use it” problem.

According to SAP’s recent research from the Global Engagement Index Report, this organization is not alone. Over 50% of enterprises say they can’t access and use real-time data, while 60% suffer from dark data — data that is collected but never used.

However, they also understood that much of what shapes customer decisions happens beyond their direct control. First impressions form early and gain momentum fast, leaving the team with a decision to make.

They either needed to understand their customers better or risk getting passed by for the newest luxury vehicle to hit the market.

The answer? Harnessing their first-party data at scale.

The teams driving customer engagement needed a solution that could meet their enterprise complexity needs as well as the growing demands of today’s consumer.

Rather than trying to control every brand influence a customer encounters, the 1:1 Campaign Management team focused on clearly defining the moments where they could add value and where personalized customer engagement would make the most impact.

The team was tasked with driving sales and customer engagement across markets by enabling tailored, customer-focused 1:1 communications across omnichannel customer journeys.

Their enterprise complexities meant this small team faced many challenges supporting cross-functional teams across the globe, each with unique local market requirements. This meant giving these teams the tools and direction needed to build more meaningful relationships and drive more sales.

To help position themselves internally as an impactful Center of Excellence, they created an internal enablement roadshow to showcase what their customer engagement approach looked like in practice and how it would benefit each region.

Their enablement efforts outlined example customer journey campaigns that each region could choose to run in their local market. This approach helped regional sales and marketing teams understand where they could focus their efforts, as well as the tools and support needed to achieve success, instead of trying to tackle every part of the customer journey and seeing little to no results.

One of their customer journey campaigns focused on launching a new product.

This campaign created initial momentum and awareness, setting the emotional and strategic foundation for the journey.

They discovered product launches were a great way to spark interest, but value could be compounded through what follows as customer engagement grows.

In the post-product-launch glow, customers were typically excited, but also not quite ready to buy yet.

For shoppers in this market, a new product launch could feel complex. New technologies raise questions, and it’s not always clear what truly fits their lifestyle. For the campaign team, this left a lot out of their control. But when they focused on personalized customer engagement and what truly matters to the individual, lifelong fans were made.

The campaign’s role was to remove friction early by simplifying choices, addressing concerns implicitly, and focusing on reassurance rather than persuasion.

Its intention was to lead with relevance and values, not specifications, to build trust and desire. This is how strong emotional foundations are built in preparation for every customer engagement that follows. The key to each campaign stream starts with the customer.

In order to bring this campaign to life, they created personas to understand the journey through a customer lens.

Take Sarah, for example. She represents a customer who is new to the brand, values sustainability and quality, and is navigating a busy urban lifestyle. For the marketer, that means the goal of a product launch is not to push a model, but to help her orient herself, build confidence, and feel understood.

Every communication is designed around what Sarah needs at that moment:

First inspiration, then relevance, and only later more concrete offers. This mindset is what allowed the team to scale personalization while keeping empathy at the center.

A customer like Sarah is curious but still uncertain – especially around electric mobility, range, and whether a vehicle like the product being launched truly fits her lifestyle.

In the product launch customer journey, the campaign addressed this through a sequenced stream of email communications. Sarah is first met with a light “keep me informed” entry point, followed by messages that build confidence step by step – highlighting design, sustainability, everyday usability, and charging reassurance.

As Sarah’s interest grows, the customer engagement becomes more interactive, inviting her to explore configurations, request an offer, or book a test drive. Each touchpoint is designed to answer her next question, not to rush a decision. This is how the team translated customer empathy into structured, scalable launch execution.

Now how can the team operationalize this personalization at scale amongst millions of customers across the globe, with multiple devices and channels – all going through different customer lifecycle stages at all times? The real value comes from the layer underneath the customer touchpoints.

The team partnered with SAP Engagement Cloud to bring together signals from their customer data – profile attributes, behavior, vehicle context, and past interactions – and then AI agents translated that into decisions: who should be contacted, what is the most relevant message, which channel makes sense, and how frequently the customer should be engaged. More than 500 individual customer attributes help the team tailor both the message and its orchestration.

Because the team built a foundation that could harness the individual attributes of each customer, they were able to move from a single-campaign approach, to a multi-touch 1:many campaign strategy, and ultimately to true 1:1 campaign management based on the next best experience for each customer – so the experience feels helpful and timely, not automated. And because those agents optimize continuously, they keep improving relevance over time.

Their philosophy is that it’s not about one campaign or one channel – it’s about combining knowledge, learning, intelligence, and execution. They started by using the data they already had to automate and scale engagement. Then they continuously learned through reporting, A/B testing, and control groups. They applied data science models to guide decisions like next best vehicle or next best action. Finally, they activated everything consistently across channels – from email and app to in-car experiences, web, call centers, and dealers.

The results of this 1:1 campaign management approach, backed by a customer data foundation built for scale, proved an increase in sales conversions. How do they know it worked? For many of their 1:1 campaigns, they consistently work with test-and-control setups, holding back a percentage of the potential audience.

For example, they examined a 1:1 campaign targeting customers with upcoming expiring digital services and reminded them to repurchase. By withholding the campaign from a control group, they could clearly measure the impact of their 1:1 campaign efforts by comparing sales outcomes between the two groups.

This allowed them to continuously learn, compare behavior with and without communication, and clearly prove impact – both for the business and for the customer experience. Testing and learning is a critical part of their customer engagement strategy. It enables them to move from assumptions to evidence and continuously improve relevance over time.

Together, we’re redefining premium 1:1 customer engagement – not as a single campaign, tool, or model, but as a system that connects strategy, intelligence, and execution end to end.

For the teams driving customer engagement, premium means three things:

• Scaling personalization without adding complexity
• Moving at the speed customers expect
• Shaping the future of engagement across teams, partners, and technology

1:1 is no longer about sending better messages. It’s about making better decisions for every individual, at every moment, across the entire customer journey. That’s the shift this prestigious organization is driving – and that’s how premium customer engagement will be won in the future.

The future of 1:1 isn’t more communication – it’s more relevance, delivered intelligently and at scale.