CUPRA’s Digital Marketing Manager David Quick, and Digital Manager Lisa Beaton tell us why they regard StoryStream as “a true partner, yielding results.”
Building on the launch of the brand in 2018, the team at CUPRA UK knew that getting attention in the crowded automotive space would be key to their long term success. And so StoryStream’s ability to find and curate content and stream it directly to CUPRA’s own website ensures a continuous – and differentiating – cycle of news, reviews and views.
The Formentor was CUPRA’s first ‘thoroughbred’ – and the first car to be developed and launched entirely under the new brand – and so it was particularly important to ensure there was third-party opinion amongst the mix of information so as to generate trust amongst browsers and potential buyers.
CUPRA counts itself amongst a number of VW Group brands proving value through the StoryStream platform, and have led the way in integrating editorial and user-generated content into their communications and marketing activities. CUPRA’s official website carries two streams: ‘More reasons to choose a CUPRA Formentor’ – which curates PR-generated editorial reviews from media, and a curated social media stream, feeding user-generated and client-activated content.
We’re geared up to drive the CUPRA Formentor forward
CUPRA’s David Quick, “In the automotive industry, there’s so many brands, so many disruptors coming in. A big focus for us is making sure that CUPRA has a voice within the industry, and StoryStream is a perfect partner in that sense, helping us to surface all of the media coverage, reviews and owner conversations that are out there, as well as bringing in all of the Retailer generated content.”
CUPRA’s Lisa Beaton, “StoryStream brings the content to us, and we can decide whether we want to push that through, so it’s acting as a ‘curator’ and saving us a huge amount of time. That really takes the strain off our immediate team. We can thread in our own tactical and promotional panels with bespoke calls-to-action to complement the third-party content. And the content speaks for itself. It started with press reviews, but now we’ve got influencer partnership content, and we’ve found a way to make tactical offers work really work.”
Enjoying the journey
To date, the Formentor galleries are working hard. 45% of all website actions (e.g., a car configuration, finance calculation, Retailer search or test-drive request) are by users who have had some level of engagement with Storystream content as part of their journey*. We also know that, if someone engages with a CUPRA StoryStream gallery, more than one in five of them will respond to a further call-to-action: they will either request a test drive, complete a car configuration, or click to see one of the cars in their virtual showroom (through which users can chat online with a CUPRA expert).
These successes stem from the fact that such a high proportion of site visitors who see the gallery – more than eight in ten – actually engage with it, and 15% of people then interact further by clicking through to the content.
CUPRA’s Lisa Beaton, “Our KPIs – or ‘smart goals’ as StoryStream call them – are conversions from content engagement to use of the car configurator, use of the finance calculator, through to test drives. So we get accurate feedback on the effectiveness of any piece of content, where it’s placed on the website, and what works best.”
David Quick, “As a brand, we’re trying to be fully insight- and data-driven in our marketing and operations. That means bringing all of our channels together, serving our customers with personalised messages and surfacing their experiences and testimonials on our stream. That’s a big part of what we’re working on with StoryStream now, and it’s probably the project that we’re most excited about progressing in 2022. We feel like we’re just starting to scratch the surface of user-generated content, but this personalised approach feels really powerful and credible from our perspective.”
Authenticity, authority and objectivity
CUPRA is also using StoryStream to synergise its other marketing activities. So, media coverage and reviews of CUPRA cars are fed into a separate StoryStream module bringing the reassurance of third-party endorsement to CUPRA website visitors’ overall experience.
And content arising from CUPRA’s ambassador arrangement with, for example, Tokyo Olympics gold-medal swimmer Adam Peaty, or FC Barcelona footballers Ansu Fati and Marc ter Stegen, feeds direct to StoryStream, ensuring an engaging mix of authenticity, authority, objective opinion across all of the content – whether it is generated by a user, an influencer, an ambassador, journalist, or a CUPRA Retailer – to inform and persuade anyone on their journey to buying a new car.
David Quick, “So Adam Peaty – who we have a relationship with – is a great example, where StoryStream identifies and surfaces any content relating to Adam and our car wherever it appears. Adam was interviewed at the Olympics on BBC, for example, and they were standing either side of his CUPRA Formentor. So that was brilliant for awareness, generating loads of people searching ‘Adam Peaty’s car’, and we then see the visits on the website.”
Next steps
David Quick, “Following the initial success of the StoryStream module, they will be helping us to personalise our email campaigns, by dynamically pulling in bespoke content via an API. The next big event for the CUPRA brand is our Born electric vehicle launch, and we see user-generated content playing a big part in telling that particular story.”
“We’re really pleased with everything we’ve been able to deliver using StoryStream. I’m really excited to see what’s next with things like customer testimonials, personalised email campaigns, and the whole connection with our CRM activities going forward. So there’s much more to come.”
Lisa Beaton, “From our perspective, StoryStream is a true partner of our brand. They take away a lot of the strain from our marketing team and enable us to be more proactive in thinking about new ideas and opportunities. And, of course, it’s also yielded really good, measurable results for us, and the analytics capabilities allow us to be in sync with our data team.”
* “Storystream engagement” constitutes an aggregation of engaged views, content opens, content hovers, and Smart Goal clicks.
