The challenges
Speaking of Pon's ongoing personalization strategy, Thije explained what life was like for the company before DESelect. "In 2018, we began using Salesforce for our CRM. Nowadays, we engage in many initiatives using Salesforce, which continues to become more sophisticated." He added, "With this comes more complex selection tasks for personalized one-to-one communication with our customers. We recognized that DESelect had the potential to simplify this process. With DESelect, the segmentation of our list management became much easier and faster. Also, the onboarding process in creating new customer selections went much smoother."
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![History of the company]()
History of the companyPon Automotive started as a small-scale family business in 1895, becoming a market-leading trading firm and automotive retailer.
Now operating globally, the company is the number one car importer in the Netherlands, with a significant market position in the US, representing Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Škoda, and CUPRA, and luxury automotive brands such as Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini. Pon is also a strong player in bicycles, marine solutions, excavation, energy supply, flow control, and industry services.
"It will be easier to onboard new colleagues in database marketing because SQL knowledge is not necessary with DESelect."
The results
We were keen to learn why Pon chose to work with DESelect; Thije explained: "Mainly it came down to time savings and thus overall efficiency. Additionally, we can make fewer mistakes by making good use of the inbuilt templates. It will also be easier to onboard new colleagues in database marketing because SQL knowledge is not necessary with DESelect."
We asked Thije what he thought of our onboarding process, to which he answered: "In our opinion, this went very well! We received well-articulated instructions and two more training sessions to master the tool. The nice thing was that the DESelect specialist could see how and for what we used the tool, enabling him to focus on specific examples."
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![How Pon Automotive uses DESelect]()
How Pon Automotive uses DESelectThije went on to tell us how using DESelect evolved how the company handles data management. "As we used the tool more and looked closely, we used specific templates to pick up subsequent selections faster and more accurately." And was the tool easy for newcomers to adopt? "We recently onboarded a new colleague," explained Thije, "and the tool was immediately straightforward to them, resulting in quick adaptation."
Thije went on to tell us how using DESelect evolved how the company handles data management. "As we used the tool more and looked closely, we used specific templates to pick up subsequent selections faster and more accurately." And was the tool easy for newcomers to adopt? "We recently onboarded a new colleague," explained Thije, "and the tool was immediately straightforward to them, resulting in quick adaptation."
When we asked Thije whether he could quantify the positive impact of working with DESelect, he said:
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"We have been using the tool for several months. Hypothetically speaking, if we received a weekly request for a specific data selection, it would take about 3 hours. We are now ready in less than 30 min, where we can provide marketers with different counts/selections and easily adjustable fields."
"Because we've created several templates we can reuse, we save a lot of time to spend on other essential matters."
The next steps
"So what's next?" we asked Thije. "Adding new data can also ensure that we use DESelect differently. For now, we are delighted with the efficiency and workability of the tool. I think every Marketing Cloud user will benefit from the DESelect segmentation tool. It is almost a must-have for database marketing." Wow, thanks to Thije for the great feedback. We're excited to work with this market-leading company, helping them streamline their data personalization, saving time and significant marketing spend.
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What was it like before the partnership with DESelect?
In 2018, Pon’s Automobielhandel started to partner up with Salesforce as their CRM-platform. Nowadays more and more initiatives are taken, and the Salesforce platform is more and more sophisticated. That also comes with more complex selection tasks for personalized 1-1
communication with our customer. -
What problem(s) were you trying to solve with DESelect?
With DESelect, the segmentation of our list management became much easier and faster. Also
the onboarding process in creating new customer selections went much smoother. -
What about DESelect surprised you the most?
Of course the usage of this straight-forward tool, but also the commitment of the team to help their customers in the process of using the DESelect segmentation tool with great support.
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What is the impact of using DESelect and can you quantify it?
We have been using the tool for several months now. If we hypothetically receive a
request every week for a specific data selection, this used to take about 3 hours (incl. creating data extensions, adding fields, writing a script, discussing which selection criteria are most valuable, in terms of numbers and relevance). We are now ready in less than half an hour, where we can provide the marketers with different counts/selections and can easily add or adjust fields. -
In what area did you get the most value? Why do you think that is?
That would be time. Because we’ve created several templates that we can reuse, we save a lot of time to spend on other important matters.
