Buyers often fall head over heels for a new car—the fresh scent, the glossy finish, the thrilling sounds, and that unbeatable power. But once the excitement fades and the bills start rolling in, will they still feel the same way? Many Subaru owners would definitely say yes. Just look at New England, where the brand has a nearly cult-like fan base and plenty of families who pass down their Subarus through generations. And this love for Subaru isn't just a Northeast thing. Research shows that Subaru consistently ranks high in customer loyalty. In fact, a recent J.D. Power study found Subaru to be the top choice among mainstream car brands for loyalty.

Streamline Customer Data to Enhance the Customer Experience While Cutting Costs

As Subaru continues to expand, with annual revenues surpassing $29 billion, the pressures from the market and the rising costs of automotive development related to CASE technologies are putting a strain on the company's profit margins. Seeing a chance to boost efficiency, Subaru looked into Customer Data Platform (CDP) solutions to lower customer acquisition costs and enhance marketing ROI in Japan. The aim was to better utilize both first- and third-party data to improve the online customer experience and optimize web advertising.

Ogawa Hideki, Subaru's chief engineer of Digital Innovation, explains, “Unfortunately, the data we needed was scattered across more than a dozen sources—advertising logs owned by agencies, web data stored in Google Analytics and other tools, campaign data captured by different in-house departments, and basic customer information contained in a variety of dealer management systems (DMSs). To give you an idea of the complexity, our marketing department managed website logs, the sales organization stored purchase history, and customer support maintained service data.

Our third-party data was equally scattered—separate agencies, for example, managed the unique advertising data associated with each of our eight car models. So the challenge was to consolidate all of our existing data onto a single platform that could also scale to accommodate what we expected to be exponential data growth.”

Treasure Data CDP Offers Pre-built Connectors, Scalability, and Powerful Analytics

Ogawa shares why they chose Treasure Data. “The Subaru team started with a trial of an on-premises Hadoop setup, but it turned out to be pricey and didn’t scale effectively. On the other hand, Treasure Data provides the scalability we need, along with pre-built connectors that make it easy to gather data from all our offline and online sources, plus a variety of tools for analytics and machine learning.

"As a SaaS solution, Treasure Data CDP enabled us to kick things off quicker and at a lower cost compared to setting up on-premises infrastructure. Another advantage of the SaaS model is that we can adapt to fast-evolving technology without having to build a large team of big-data experts. Our focus is on automotive engineering, not IT.”

The Subaru Digital Marketing team estimates that creating a custom solution would have taken nearly a year. In contrast, Treasure Data CDP provided an 80 percent faster time to value, with initial services operational in just weeks and the full solution deployed in about three months. Atsushi Yasumuro, senior manager of Digital Marketing at Subaru, mentions, ““We could hardly believe the onboarding process with Treasure Data was completed in such a short time. We encountered no technical problems in the process.”
 

Reach Top-tier Scale As You Move Towards 5G

Just six months after rolling out the Treasure Data CDP, Subaru managed to gather one billion data records, which included:

Ogawa explains that the segment data provided by the media is accessible to all car competitors, turning it into a numbers game. However, Subaru stands out because we can segment based on our own data, which gives us a real edge. Our online advertising is more effective, allowing us to better reach new customers.

Treasure Data also offers us enterprise-level scalability. With the growth of 5G networks, we anticipate gathering a huge amount of connected-car data, likely matching the volume and frequency of log-data collection. Treasure Data's Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the only one we've found that can manage that scale of data collection quickly and flexibly.

By consolidating customer data in the Treasure Data CDP, the Subaru team can forge meaningful connections with shoppers, ensuring they receive the right content at the perfect moment. Marketers have noted that by focusing on customer behavior instead of just devices, they’ve seen a 350 percent boost in advertising click-through rates (CTRs).

This enhanced marketing return on investment (ROI) directly leads to noticeable revenue increases and cost savings. Since Subaru started using the Treasure Data CDP, they has:
 

Treasure Data's CDP analytics and machine learning tools allow Subaru marketers to keep improving their campaigns. Ogawa explains, “Right now, we’re using Apache Hivemall, which is a scalable machine learning library for Hive that comes with Treasure Data. Plus, we can now run Python on the Treasure Data platform. This capability to manage large data sets really helps us apply different variables and speed up our PDCA process.”

Boost Your Sales With Predictive Scoring  

The Subaru team is leveraging machine learning to help dealers zero in on the shoppers who are most likely to make a purchase. According to Murakawa Yuichi, an engineer in Digital Innovation at Subaru, a decade ago, customers would typically visit a dealership six or seven times before deciding to buy. Now, that number has dropped to just two visits, with most of the research happening online. Often, buyers have already made their decision before stepping foot in a store. “We need to go beyond just providing dealers with a list of potential customers. With Treasure Data CDP tools, we can use predictive scoring to pinpoint which showroom visitors are most likely to buy. Thanks to machine learning, we've boosted our forecast accuracy for 'likely' buyers by up to 30 percent. This insight significantly enhances sales efficiency, allowing dealers to better manage their limited staffing resources.  

“It’s also crucial to mention that all these strategies are implemented with the customer's consent. The ability to easily manage consent is another advantage of using a CDP for data collection.”

Subaru's Mission: Say Goodbye To Goodbyes  

Check out Subaru's internal marketing map of the customer journey, and you'll spot a key milestone called ‘Prevent Farewell’.
Subaru really isn't a fan of goodbyes. Throughout the company, Subaru team members are dedicated to making sure customers not only love their cars but also enjoy driving them and the whole customer experience. Back in 2018, Subaru set a clear goal to shift from being just a manufacturer to a brand that brings smiles to people's faces.  

From all indications, Subaru is nailing that mission and creating a loyal and excited customer community along the way. Here are just a few of the recent awards the company has received.

Those consistent results are definitely not just luck. “We’re dedicated to creating vehicles that offer both comfort and enjoyment,” says Ito Takashi, the manager of Digital Innovation. “As a small car company with a global presence, it’s crucial for us to understand why customers choose Subaru so we can keep meeting and surpassing their expectations. Treasure Data helps us achieve that understanding.”

“Our marketing team initially turned to IT tools like the Treasure Data CDP to enhance our operations. While we’re still refining our efficiency, our main focus now is on leveraging data to create value and foster long-term relationships with our customers. For instance, we’re already incorporating driver data into our design process. In the future, we plan to closely link customer and mobility data with factory data to continuously improve vehicle design and production. Using the CDP for data management and analytics truly helps us discover more ways to make owning a Subaru enjoyable.”

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