How CompactAppliance.com increased revenue through proactive marketing

With its combined web site analysis and e-marketing application, CompactAppliance.com has eliminated unproductive marketing campaigns that had absorbed up to 10% of its marketing budget, Jason Roussos, vice president of strategic development, tells Internet Retailer. Installed a year ago, the Virtual Commerce Master system from Manticore Technology more than paid for itself within the first nine months, he adds.

CompactAppliance does more than $20 million in annual sales and has experienced an annual growth rate in recent years of 40% or more, Roussos says. The retailer, which conducts virtually all of its business online, focuses on sales of appliances ranging from trash compactors to refrigerators that are sized for apartments, basement recreation rooms, offices and other places where space is tight.

It relies on multiple e-marketing efforts to fuel its growth, but until it moved to its current system much of its marketing wasn’t targeted enough to the specific needs of its niche customers, Roussos says. After testing other web site analytics tools, it chose to implement Manticore’s Virtual Commerce Master application for an ease of use and flexibility that let it proactively market to customers based on analysis of their online shopping activity, he adds.

“We weren’t doing e-mail marketing before VCM, but now we can set up a rule that says, if a customer buys a trash compactor, we automatically send them an e-mail 60 days later offering a promotion on compactor trash bags.”

The Virtual Commerce Master application also has made it easier for CompactAppliance to monitor and analyze multiple marketing campaigns, including Internet search keyword campaigns, online banner ads and e-mailed promotions, through a single software application. “We’re able to see the success or failure of all of our marketing campaigns through VCM,” he says. “If I had to log into more than one application it would be more cumbersome and time-consuming.”

Roussos says he uses the time saved to perfect marketing efforts. “The system allows me to quickly tests different things,” he says. “If I see a lot of shoppers looking at a product but few buying it, I’ll change the price, the shipping offer or maybe try different keywords to attract different customers. For example, if I cut the price 10% and the view-to-buy ratio jumps from 1% to 10%, I know my customers are more price sensitive to that particular product.”

Roussos says Manticore is offering to small and mid-size retailers an off-the-shelf application of technology that has been more common as custom applications built in-house by large retailers with extensive IT resources. This week, Manticore released version 4.0 of Virtual Commerce Master, which provides for increased flexibility and ease of use in setting automated triggers of promotional offers based on online customer activity, says Christopher Doran, vice president of marketing for Manticore.

He notes that the cost of the Virtual Commerce Master application, which is served on a hosted basis, starts at about $2,000 per month, covering 250,000 page views and 50,000 e-mails for combined analysis and marketing efforts.