Every Single One Of Us

BMW ran a campaign in 2007 to sell winter tyres, using mobile phones. They achieved a 30% conversion rate and sold 45 million dollars worth of tyres and rims in Germany, on a campaign that cost about 200,000 dollars

BMW collected the mobile phone numbers and permissions to market to its new customers in Germany. In Germany there is a winter season, when snow is on the ground, and winter tyres are mandatory. Cars sold during winter months have winter tyres as standard features. BMW analyzed its new car buyer customer base and removed all who had received winter tyres with their cars, and also removed fleet buyers. Of the remaining residential car buyers, the prepared a customized mobile phone campaign, tailored for each driver. They prepared an MMS picture message, which featured the front quarter of the BMW car, with the right car model and colour of the buyer. Then they offered in the picture, the recommended tyre, fitted onto the rims that the buyer had.

BMW waited until the first snow fell in Germany, and on that day, sent the MMS message as a bulk mailing to all such buyers. The MMS message included a link to connect to the mobile internet site where the BMW owner could trial other tyres, virtually, as well as other rims, for his or her car model.

The campaign generated an actual conversion rate of 30%, meaning of all who received the ad, three in ten actually walked into an authorized BMW dealer, and bought at least tyres, often also rims. BMW has not released the actual numbers of sales generated, but industry analysts Romi Parmar and Ajit Jaokar have dug up the numbers and calculated that in Germany of BMW’s new car sales in 2007, the total fleet of cars sold in the summer months to non fleet buyers was 117,000 vehicles. Out of these, 35,000 customers appeared at the stores. Romi and Ajit estimated the average spend per buyer to be (based on German prices of tyres and rims, and a reasonable mix of the two) 1,300 dollars. Thus the whole campaign delivered 45 million dollars worth of extra business to BMW.

The total campaign cost about 60,000 dollars in MMS transmission costs, and it has been estimated at Forum Oxford, that the campaign design costs would not have exceeded 100,000 dollars. So the whole campaign cost far less than 200,000 dollars. Yet it yielded 45 million dollars worth of new business and 35,000 satisfied customers.