Heroes in Business - Experian Identity Report with Laurel Malhotra, Senior Director of Automotive Client and Solution Development for Experian

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Experian Identity Report with Laurel Malhotra, Experian’s Senior Director of Automotive Client and Solution Development, where she’s responsible for aligning the needs of the automotive market with Experian’s MarTech, AdTech and Data products. Learn how automotive professionals can leverage identity to reach in-market car shoppers. Listen as David Cogan, Host of the Heroes Show and Founder of Eliances entrepreneur community learns all the facts about this important topic.  

up in the sky look it's captivating it's energizing it's alliances heroes alliances is the destination for entrepreneurs investors ceos inventors leaders celebrities and startups where our heroes in business align now here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. And you know what? It's going to be another amazing morning. Why? Because we have so many people to interview and to go through and to share what's going on, to share the latest news, to share the developments, all for you. So I'm excited. Let's get started with our first interview for the morning. We have with us Laurel Mahatra. She is Experian's Senior Director of Automotive Client and Solution Development. Because the thing is, is I'm bringing you the Experian Identity Report on the Alliance's

Hero Show. And we bring you these special reports with the world's leading experts about the game-changing impact of identity and the needs to use reliable data to make confident decisions that safely accelerate customer engagement. And that's why we have Laurel on our show today. Again, she is the one responsible for aligning the needs of the automotive market with experienced martech, ad tech, and data products. So let's get started, Laurel. Today's automotive market, it really is complex with the inventory challenges and the increasing vehicle prices.

Why is it reaching out to the right customer at the right time in the right place? So important. customer at the right time in the right place. So important. Well, thanks for having me. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be here. Well, this year over the last, you know, last few years, marketing and the automotive industry has been even more complex has been even more complex given the pandemic, but also the complex mix of mediums that consumers are using. There are fewer vehicles to buy and market and OEMs and dealers are now and always have been needing to be hyper-focused on consumer needs in order to generate business. But the new complexities in the marketplace have put a challenge in front of marketers to find the consumer and, you know, in the place where identify the consumer where they are, understand their needs, and also reach them and measure

their advertising where they've reached them. It's really, you know, identity has always been fundamental in marketing. So I want to call out the identify portion of, you know, the job for marketers to do. It's a fundamental in the work that they do every single day. So at Experian, we've always helped them through the years identify their customers. And it's only becoming more and more important as there are more digital identifiers for marketers to keep track of. And let's talk about that. Why is reaching the in-market shopper, though, so important? Yeah, so to put it into context, let's think about a single consumer can be represented

by literally dozens of identities, right, through different devices and different locations. But we want to make sure we get a complete view of the customer so we understand where they are in their buying journey. So we understand where they are in their buying journey. So, you know, reaching a person when they're in market is really important right now because of inventory shortages. And it's a good as inventory starts coming back online. We want to be sure that marketers are able to capture that demand. And first understanding and identifying your customer and then identifying when they are in market is so important to be able to capture that opportunity and find them the right time and the right place to capture their attention. Excellent. Again, and you're watching, listening

to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show. Make sure you go to eliancer.com, that's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-R.com, and click on Experian, where you can also listen and watch past interviews, because we have with us again, Laurel Malhotra, Experian Senior Director of Automotive Client and Solution Development. You know the place to go, experian.com, E-X-P-E-R-I-A-N.com. So Laurel, with that, what are some of the biggest challenges, though, now with automotive professionals are facing when it comes to reaching the in-market car shoppers? Like I mentioned, it's a fundamental in the work marketers do, but bringing these data points together, all of the digital data points with all of the known data points that a customer has are really important. As we start to think about reaching in-mark consumers, we want to make sure that our data

is accurate and fresh and up-to to date and unifies the offline signals with the online signals. So, and we want to do it in an anonymous way. Private consumer privacy is of utmost importance. So, you know, experience able to bring that expertise and consumer privacy and unify the offline data and the online data for our customers, and then help them understand the consumer. So we have data points that also help them identify what a customer's lifestyle or other demographic data points, but also when they're in market, potentially when they're likely to come off loan or off lease. These are all factors that help the customer, help the marketer understand the consumer. And once they

understand more about the consumer, they're able to reach them through their advertising and then measure that advertising back to KPIs that they were looking for in their marketing planning. And talk to me about how Experian helps the manufacturers and retailers tackle these challenges. Yeah, so let's take, for instance, like a dealer or a manufacturer who wants to understand in real time who their customers are and what they're doing across their websites and even their retailers. What we're able to do is with identity and data about consumers and their behavior, we're able to, in a compliant and private manner, help them understand and capture the in-market signal. We also can help

them understand their advertising effectiveness and help them define consumer messaging by bringing the real-time identity to the table along with the consumer attribute and behavior data. We're really helping them maximize their advertising effectiveness. And through that, helping them enhance their customer experience, which we know drives long, you know, the long term, like longer, sorry, the high value, lifetime value of the customer. I got a second. Sorry. Got it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Laurel, thank you again for being here. The Experian Identity Report on the Alliance's Hero Show. Be sure to check out Experian.com. That's E-X-P-E-R-I-A-N.com for more information. And remember, you can listen to past

interviews by going to Eliancer.com, E-L-I-A-N-C-E-R.com and click on Experian. Thank you again, Laurel, for being here today. Thank you so much.