Škoda Etupenkki loyalty app: elevating the owner experience with a unified digital loyalty platform

Helkama‑Auto and Columbia Road have worked together for several years to build the digital foundations for long‑term customer growth. Škoda Etupenkki is a flagship outcome of this partnership, a secure, cloud‑native loyalty experience that unifies customer, vehicle and service data into one growth engine. We moved from concepting to production in just six months, while helping expand the marketing‑consented customer base from 15,000 to 50,000, laying the foundations for scalable, data‑driven growth.

Starting point: Modernising Škoda's owner experience and loyalty

Helkama‑Auto set an ambitious target: the most satisfied owners in the market, the highest brand loyalty and profitable growth, driven by higher customer lifetime value, repeat purchases and service loyalty. Achieving this required a unified digital experience where information, services and personalised benefits could be accessed easily in one place, supporting both convenience for drivers and long‑term commercial value.

At the same time, Helkama‑Auto was entering a new phase of its digital customer strategy. Our long‑term partnership had already laid much of the groundwork, building CRM capability, improving consent collection and strengthening lifecycle communications, creating the conditions for a modern loyalty service to succeed.

Our approach: Fixing fragmented data and consent to unlock loyalty at scale

Before Škoda Etupenkki, Helkama‑Auto needed a more coordinated way to engage customers across marketing, sales and customer service. We focused on building shared processes, establishing clear ownership and introducing consistent growth practices across teams. By implementing HubSpot CRM and marketing automation, we enabled smoother collaboration and set up an operating model where experiments, insights and customer learnings are openly shared. The result was a cross‑functional growth team with consent as a key metric and a unified approach to measurable digital engagement.

Key enablers put in place

We built the foundations needed for sustained, data‑driven growth by unifying customer information, automating key lifecycle communications and enabling measurable commercial impact.

• Integrated core customer, vehicle and service data into HubSpot to create a single, reliable source of truth.
• Implemented lifecycle automation, personalised email journeys, segmentation and optimised lead capture.
• Introduced A/B testing and performance analytics to support continuous experimentation and improvement.
• Equipped sales and customer service with modern pipeline and ticketing tools to create a seamless end‑to‑end experience.

Solution: Comprehensive, scalable loyalty service built for long-term growth

We delivered a fully custom‑built, cloud‑native web application that brought together every Columbia Road competence in a single, seamless workflow, from concepting and service design to architecture, engineering and growth marketing, ensuring the entire experience was envisioned, built and taken to market by one unified team.

We moved from an initial sales conversation to a fully launched loyalty programme in just half a year, covering concept design, UX/UI, architecture, development, martech and go-to-market execution.

Design: User-centred service and interface design

Our design work moved from initial discovery to a fully validated service concept through a structured, user‑centred approach. We began by strengthening the understanding of both the current state and the target vision for Škoda's owner experience, ensuring the loyalty programme would create genuine value for drivers and the business.

We facilitated a three‑week design sprint for a loyalty program to accelerate decision‑making while reducing risk. This allowed us to rapidly ideate customer value propositions, explore multiple concept directions and select the most promising idea before a significant investment. The sprint also ensured complete alignment on next steps by producing a concrete, testable prototype.

Throughout the sprint and subsequent design phases, we:

• Explored the loyalty program's customer value proposition and defined the core features for the MVP, while keeping future needs in mind.
• Mapped the end‑to‑end customer journey for the loyalty program, including the service blueprint for how the program is run and which teams and processes are involved.
• Created iterative prototypes, from early low‑fidelity flows to refined, interactive screens, to test usability, clarity, appeal and value creation for the customers.

We validated the concept through a series of customer discussions that confirmed the loyalty programme would deliver genuine value for drivers and support the commercial goals defined at the outset. Beyond validating the direction, the feedback also helped us refine the concept and strengthen the MVP feature set, ensuring the solution would be both relevant and intuitive for real users.

These insights shaped the core concept, guiding principles and the final MVP feature set. Prototype refinements were made based on direct customer feedback to ensure the solution was intuitive, relevant and desirable for real drivers.

Development: Modern architecture and secure, scalable engineering

Our engineering work brought the validated concept to life through a robust architecture designed for security, speed and long-term scalability. The development phase focused on building a production-grade service that integrates seamlessly with Helkama-Auto’s existing systems while enabling future expansion.

• Built on a modern, high-performance stack: Next.js, React and TypeScript, styled with Tailwind CSS and hosted on Vercel for fast deployment and global edge performance.
• Implemented secure, scalable data architecture using MariaDB on AWS RDS, paired with Supabase for user management to ensure reliability and smooth session handling.
• Developed the service as an installable Progressive Web App (PWA), enabling app-like behaviour on mobile without requiring App Store or Google Play distribution.
• Added strong authentication with eID methods and ensured full GDPR compliance through encrypted data flows, secure access handling and cloud-native safeguards.
• Set up CI/CD with GitHub pipelines, automated testing suites and controlled release workflows to ensure continuous, safe and rapid improvements.
• Integrated multiple data sources and systems: HubSpot (users, cars, leads), Netwheels/Traficom, Semarchy and Škoda APIs for manuals and imagery, ensuring real-time accuracy and a unified data experience.
• Developed a flexible, extensible loyalty logic engine supporting single-use, continuous and annual benefits with automated tracking, redemption and renewal handling.
• Built a scalable architecture that supports future service expansions, additional brands and evolving customer value propositions without architectural rework.

Martech: Growth marketing, activation and rollout

We executed a phased launch using targeted growth marketing tactics and HubSpot, beginning with a pilot in one Helkama-Auto store to validate the customer journey and operational flow before expanding to additional locations. This approach allowed us to test messaging, benefit activation, onboarding performance and store-level engagement in a controlled way, ensuring each next phase was informed by real user behaviour.

We also built HubSpot-based admin capabilities that gave Helkama-Auto complete control over offers, events and car approvals. This meant teams could update benefits, refine eligibility rules, and test new campaign ideas without involving development, significantly speeding up iteration and enabling continuous optimisation.

As a unified growth team, Columbia Road and Helkama-Auto collaborated to refine lifecycle communications, improve activation flows, and enhance in-app engagement. Together, we analysed user behaviour, adjusted messaging and identified high-impact opportunities to strengthen both customer experience and commercial results.

Impact: Data‑driven customer growth and a platform for loyalty

Thanks to our collaboration, Helkama-Auto has evolved into a genuinely customer‑centric business. Tracking key customer metrics, including the size and engagement of the marketing‑consented audience, is now a core part of how they operate, and this focus has helped grow their customer base from 15,000 to 50,000 in just two years.

Across marketing, customer service and sales, ongoing growth experiments are continuously designed, tested and evaluated. Results are openly shared across the organisation, building a culture of learning and measurable progress. Together with Columbia Road, Helkama‑Auto has established a dedicated growth team, where our role is to strengthen digital sales capabilities, guide experimentation and drive meaningful, data‑driven outcomes.

Project highlights:

• Marketing reach scaled: The marketing‑consented customer base grew from 15,000 to 50,000 in two years, making consent a key metric and enabling more effective, targeted lifecycle communications.
• Operational alignment: Shared data and unified tooling now connect marketing, sales and customer service, improving collaboration, efficiency and customer experience.
• Speed and safety: Strong authentication, GDPR‑compliant infrastructure and automated CI/CD pipelines ensure secure, reliable and fast releases.
• Scalable footprint: The service launched first in the capital region and is designed to scale smoothly across the entire country.
• End‑to‑end capability: A single, integrated Columbia Road team across strategy, design, engineering, martech and growth delivered measurable business impact without hand‑offs.

Let’s build your next growth story

If you’re looking to turn a complex idea into a live service that delivers measurable results, get in touch. We bring design, data, engineering and growth together as one accountable team, making it easier to move from vision to tangible business impact.