The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has responsibility for the sale of registration numbers through its DVLA Personalised Registrations sales service. Registrations are sold direct online and through its auction programme.
This service, managed in-house by a small team, sells millions of registration numbers and last year returned in excess of £175m to HM Treasury which in turn supports funding for public services in the UK.
2021 was a record-breaking year for the service, with a huge demand from customers, and as a result DVLA sold more registrations than ever before.
SITUATION
All registrations that are offered for sale have never been sold or issued to vehicles before. The uniqueness of a registration number creates demand for specific combinations from the public.
To help meet these demands, DVLA Personalised Registrations using the Granicus govDelivery platform to communicate with customers, providing information on upcoming registrations. The platform is also used to promote sales campaigns and generate awareness of new products and services. Members of the public can opt into a reminder email service to keep up to date with the latest news from the service.
This is a highly secure system and meets all the safeguards in place required by GDPR legislation to protect personal information.
This year, the Personalised Registration team hit a record one million enquiries from customers who wanted to be notified on specific registrations.
SOLUTION
In 2014 DVLA implemented Granicus’ govDelivery email communication platform which can manage customer information whilst keeping data completely secure. It can also distribute information quickly and efficiently via email and other digital notifications. In 2018, when GDPR laws came into effect, the Personalised Registration team within the DVLA began utilising this platform as well.
govDelivery can keep track of the interested parties by allowing the Personalised Registrations team to keep a database of all customers, so that if a customer’s desired plate becomes available, the team can notify them as soon as possible via email.
RESULTS
Today there are over 250,000 customers signed up to alerts for personalised registrations on govDelivery.
Customisation is also a key benefit of the platform for the team. Using govDelivery, the team can create email templates based on the needs of its customers. It’s also able to tweak templates quickly and easily without extra cost, and customers are now able to have up to date information on the topics they’re interested in.
Jody Davies of DVLA Personalised Registrations said, “govDelivery helps us to meet the objectives of getting information out to customers and selling our brand and product. It’s a useful tool which has improved efficiencies and makes our life easier as we’re able to fulfil our obligations around data processing. It gives us options in terms of how we customise our content. It allows us to ensure that we communicate the right message at the right time, sending out targeted emails to customers based on what they’re interested in.”
The Personalised Registrations team is looking at ways it can further utilise the platform by using the govDelivery topics function, which allows customers to choose even more specific areas of interest they would like to be notified on, meaning an even more customisable and targeted service. Ian Roberts, Managing Director at Granicus UK says. “The DVLA’s use of our govDelivery platform is a really interesting use case, it’s encouraging to see so many of their stakeholders engaging with their content in such a proactive way, and it really highlights how a secure communications platform can bring content to life for customers. We’re really pleased that we can help the Personalised Registrations Team support their customers and create more efficient workstreams at the same time.”
