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Overview
Ashley Furniture, a nationwide furniture retailer valued at more than $6 billion, wanted to target new customer groups and increase conversions through a more modern marketing approach—programmatic. Ashley Furniture works directly with their retailers to not only place products in brick-and-mortar stores, but to also market those products and build a better brand. The Ashley Furniture brand encapsulates multiple brands, including Signature Design by Ashley, Sierra Sleep, Benchcraft, and more. Ashley Furniture represents an array of retailers, ranging from small mom-and-pop shops to Top 100 furniture stores, including Ashley Home stores. They wanted to modernize their digital marketing strategy and show their retailers how powerful programmatic advertising could be. That’s when they discovered Genius Monkey.
The Challenge
The furniture industry in general faces many challenges, including getting their message in front of the right customer. Many furniture retailers have a traditional marketing mindset—direct mail, broad audiences, and old-school reporting. One challenge Ashley Furniture faced was needing to educate retailers on the efficiency and cost effectiveness of programmatic. Ashley Furniture needed to bring their marketing into the future and identify ideal audiences for not only their own stores but for their hundreds of retailer’s stores as well.
Another challenge was moving away from event-based marketing. For example, most furniture companies rely on specific events to market sales, like the 4th of July or Memorial Day. They typically market 5-10 days before the event takes place. By doing this, they limit their marketing efforts to a shorter period of time, ignoring customers who may have already been on the path to purchasing an item. Rex Debord, Ashley Furniture’s Senior Marketing Specialist, said that more than 40% of their customers take 90 days before they convert, so a 5-10 day plan just didn’t make sense. Ashley Furniture wanted to use a more intelligent marketing approach that included the entire calendar year instead of relying on specific holidays or events.
Ashley Furniture focused on these primary goals with their programmatic vendor:
Targeting Ideal Audiences
Move Retailers to Programmatic
Marketing for a Longer Sales Cycle
Our Solution
Genius Monkey brought a diverse media approach to Ashley Furniture, who had become accustomed to only retargeting the same customer over and over. Genius Monkey created new campaigns for shoppers on a budget, first-time homeowners, and more. Pursuing new customers was a “game changer” for them, said Senior Marketing Specialist Rex Debord.
Another solution was updating and improving the overall reporting. Genius Monkey was able to show retailers exactly what was happening with their ad spend, conversions, and potential customers. Debord said, “The Genius Monkey Dashboard is second to none—it’s crisp, clean, and retailers can easily see dollar for dollar what’s happening to ad spend.” Through the updated dashboard, retailers were able to set new KPIs and track them easily.
Genius Monkey brought a programmatic model to Ashley Furniture that helped them dial in to their ideal customer base. Genius Monkey helped uncover details about the ideal Ashley Furniture customer—who she is, what money she makes, her credit score, hobbies, etc. Then they brought the right message in front of that customer.
The Results
Ashley Furniture Senior Marketing Specialist Rex Debord said that “Our relationship with Genius Monkey has been a breath of fresh air in an industry that was tarnished. The success is contagious and we’re starting to see it grow at all levels.”
E-commerce in the furniture industry only accounts for 1-3%, so it was important for Ashley Furniture to see in-store activity. Since working with Genius Monkey in 2016, Ashley Furniture and their retailers nationwide have seen a direct correlation between traffic to the website followed by traffic to the stores.
Not only did Ashley Furniture see an increase in their own conversions, but they also saw huge success with their retailers nationwide. One success story happened for a campaign Genius Monkey had been running specifically in Panama City Beach, FL, for a store called Lindsey’s Furniture.
Lindsey’s Furniture loved the idea of programmatic marketing. They jumped on board with Debord and Genius Monkey to improve their overall website and in-store conversions. Here are some of their amazing results:
- Since 2017, they’ve seen a 130% increase in monthly website sessions, using the same budget month to month.
- Comparing 2018 to 2021, they’ve seen a 1,824% increase in conversions and a 98% reduction in cost per conversions.
- 50% of total conversions on the website were influenced by Genius Monkey.
"Our relationship with Genius Monkey has been a breath of fresh air in an industry that was tarnished. The success is contagious and we’re starting to see it grow at all levels."
- Rex Debord, Ashley Furniture Senior Marketing SpecialistSummary
Working with both Ashley Furniture and their individual retailers, Genius Monkey brought these marketers into the 21st century, moving away from traditional methods and introducing them to the power of programmatic advertising. Genius Monkey helped Ashley Furniture focus on a year-round strategy as opposed to event-based marketing, as well as dialing in on the ideal customer and targeting in a more efficient way. Ashley Furniture has chosen Genius Monkey as their programmatic partner for more than 5 years, and the results keep coming, month after month.
