From Enterprise Technology to Automotive: The Whisp Drive Mazda Pilot

In 2025, Whisp Drive entered a nine-month pilot with Mazda.

For us, this was an important moment.

We had already seen the underlying Whisp technology produce impressive lead-generation results at enterprise scale in other industries. We believed those same principles would translate extremely well to automotive.

But believing something and proving it are two different things.

So we made a decision.

We would hold off on actively marketing Whisp Drive to dealerships until the Mazda pilot was complete and we had automotive-specific results.

The pilot included 11 Mazda dealerships and gave us the opportunity to see how Whisp Drive would perform in real dealership environments.

The results validated what we believed from the beginning.

50% Click-to-Lead Capture

One of the biggest problems with traditional website lead forms is friction.

A shopper clicks a CTA and is presented with a form asking them to enter their information. Every field creates another opportunity for that shopper to abandon the process.

Whisp Drive approaches lead capture differently.

Our two-tap process uses SMS to help capture and verify the customer instead of asking them to complete a traditional form.

During the Mazda pilot, we saw click-to-lead capture rates as high as 50%.

In other words, as many as half of the shoppers who engaged with Whisp Drive’s CTA became captured leads.

That’s what can happen when you make it easier for customers to raise their hand.

Approximately 30% Higher Contact Rates

Capturing the lead is only the beginning.

The dealership still needs to reach the customer.

Traditional forms depend on shoppers manually entering their phone numbers. Whether incorrect information is entered intentionally or accidentally, the result for the dealership is the same:

The sales team can’t connect.

Whisp Drive verifies the customer’s mobile number as part of the lead-capture process.

That contributed to approximately 30% higher contact rates.

But accurate information is only part of the advantage.

Whisp Drive leads arrive in real time while the customer’s phone is still in their hand.

The shopper was just looking at a vehicle. They just interacted with the dealership. Their interest is happening right now.

That creates an opportunity for the dealership to engage at exactly the right moment.

27% Increase in Sales

Ultimately, lead technology shouldn’t be judged by how many names it puts into a CRM.

It should be judged by whether it helps dealerships sell more vehicles.

Across the Mazda pilot, Whisp Drive produced a 27% increase in sales.

What made that result particularly interesting to us was how little changed operationally at many of the participating dealerships.

In fact, some dealership sales teams weren’t even aware that a pilot was underway.

There was no major retraining initiative or complete change in sales process driving the result.

We added the technology and measured what happened.

That meant we also saw another opportunity.

What happens when a dealership doesn’t just install Whisp Drive, but actually optimizes around it?

Technology is Only part of the Opportunity

Since the pilot, we’ve learned a lot about how dealerships can get even more from Whisp Drive.

Dealerships following our best practices have seen significantly stronger results, including up to twice as many leads, substantially higher connection rates and, in some cases, up to twice as many sales from Whisp-generated opportunities.

Some of those best practices are remarkably simple.

Respond quickly.

Don’t lead the conversation by immediately using the customer’s name.

Use multiple enhanced CTAs where appropriate.

Put Whisp Drive in places where customers are already demonstrating buying intent.

The technology creates the opportunity.

The dealership’s process determines how much of that opportunity it captures.

Whisp Drive Joins the Mazda Digital Certified Program

At the end of 2025, following the pilot, Whisp Drive was added to the Mazda Digital Certified Program in its own category:

Tap To Text.

The name describes part of the customer experience, but it can also be a little misleading.

Whisp Drive isn’t a texting platform.

We are a lead-capture technology that uses SMS instead of a traditional form to help turn website shoppers into verified leads.

To our knowledge, we were the first to bring this approach to automotive lead capture.

That’s an important distinction.

The goal isn’t to give dealerships another way to text customers after they become leads.

The goal is to fundamentally improve how they become leads in the first place.

The Mazda pilot gave us the automotive proof we were waiting for. It demonstrated that reducing friction could dramatically increase lead capture, verified mobile numbers could improve contact rates, and those improvements could ultimately translate into more vehicle sales.

After nine months, we didn’t just have a theory anymore.

We had the proof.