Value City Furniture Case Study: Value City Furniture Drives In-Store Sales With Yahoo! My Display AdsPublished: February 2010 | By Yahoo!
Value
City Furniture was used to reaching its consumers in a traditional way,
through weekly print ad circulars and television. But when it used
Yahoo! My Display Ads with retargeting, the company was surprised by the
success it found in using online advertising to drive customer
conversions and in-store sales.
The Challenge
Value
City Furniture, owned by parent company American Signature, Inc. is one
of the largest furniture retailers in the U.S. with annual sales of $1
billion and 128 stores. The brand wanted to make it easier for prospects
to peruse its offerings, register with its website and apply for credit
through its online channel. Most of all, it wanted its online
activities to drive in-store sales. “Traffic to our website is critical
to the success of our business, but what matters most is converting that
online customer into an in-store customer,” says Brandon McInnis, Value
City Furniture’s Director of Internet Marketing.
The Solution
To
attract customers, Value City Furniture developed a promotional
sweepstake that offered prospects a chance to win one of six $2,500
shopping sprees. To help promote this effective yet traditional
marketing approach online, McInnis turned to Yahoo!
Working
closely with Gabriel Elliott, one of Yahoo!’s search account executives,
Value City Furniture crafted a comprehensive online campaign across the
Yahoo! Network using Yahoo! My Display Ads with retargeting. Elliot
used the display ad templates of Yahoo! My Display Ads to help Value
City Furniture develop display creative at no creative development cost.
“At first I was skeptical of the value of display,” says McInnis. “But I
think a visual representation of our product in an ad is essential to
getting people to click on it.”
When customers responded to the
promotion, Value City Furniture captured data that allowed the company
to prescreen applicants for its private-label credit card offering. It
also used the data to retarget visitors (who engaged with the ad but
hadn’t yet converted) with additional ads.
Value City Furniture Case Study
The Results
Value
City Furniture wanted to increase registrations, pre-approved credit
applications and in-store sales through its online channel. Using Yahoo!
My Display Ads with retargeting, combined with a Sponsored Search
campaign, Value City Furniture dramatically exceeded all three of its
goals. The company saw its site/sweepstakes registrations increase by
650%! Though the campaign focused on Yahoo! My Display Ads with
retargeting, it also included a branded search terms component via
Sponsored Search that was vital to its success. Here’s the breakdown:
Yahoo! My Display Ads:
When the campaign launched, cost per acquisition (CPA) was $168 with a
conversion rate of .93%. Over the period of a month, CPA fell to $29 and
conversions leapt to 6.93% through continual optimization.
Retargeting:
When the campaign started, Value City was getting a 5% conversion rate,
with a CPA of $32. After one month, Value City was getting a 14.5%
conversion rate and a CPA of just $12.
Yahoo! Sponsored Search:
Yahoo! and Value City Furniture developed a Sponsored Search campaign
that included some 200 branded keywords to help promote the sweepstakes
and its overall business. It found that display drove search activity
with a 168% increase in branded term searches. As a result, the company
increased its display budget by 30%.
“From my perspective,” says
McInnis, “Yahoo! was instrumental in making this happen. They were
always there to help and provide positive suggestions for improving our
results. The competition doesn’t do that.”
About Value City Furniture: American
Signature, Inc., Value City Furniture’s parent company is one of the
largest furniture retailers in the U.S, with 128 stores and 5,000
employees throughout the East, Midwest and Southeast. The company was
founded in the 1930s.
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