VerticalResponse Drives Repeat Customer Revenue for ValuePetSupplies.com

Background

As part of their family pet business, the Piech family started ValuePetSupplies.com. Their goal is to offer pet-related products for the pet owner’s everyday needs at the most competitive prices possible. ValuePetSupples.com is 100 percent online–and ships from a 35,000 square foot warehouse in Livingston, TN.

Problem

ValuePetSupplies.com uses search engine marketing and social media to generate sales. Though successful in adding over one hundred new customers per day, as of January 2009 ValuePetSupplies.com wasn’t running any customer retention programs. Zachary Piech, Owner of ValuePetSupplies.com, could see this was a problem based on the company’s repeat customer sales of less than 20 percent.

Discovery

Piech shared his problem with a friend and former business associate, and was strongly encouraged to launch a VerticalResponse campaign! Though Piech had vast experience with Vertical Response, day-to-day business priorities had prevented him from investing time in email marketing for his growing company.

After sending out a few successful campaigns in January and February, Piech was so impressed with his return on investment that he hired a marketing and sales manager to drive ValuePetSupplies.com marketing and retention programs.

Solution

ValuePetSupplies.com now sends out an average of 30 email campaigns a month with VerticalResponse to a customer base of just over 100,000. “We start our campaigns the first of every month and probably have five or six campaigns going at a time, each targeted to specific types of buyers,” said Nick Carter, Marketing and Sales Manager for ValuePetSupplies.com.

These campaigns have provided insight to ValuePetSupplies.com on which products work well in emails, and which type of customer will respond to different offers. They use this information to segment lists and send very targeted messages.

"ValuePetSupplies generates over 10% of it's revenue with VerticalResponse email campaigns. Every $1 spent on VR email generates $8 gross profit. That's 400% better than our Google, Bing and Yahoo search marketing campaign results, making VerticalResponse #1 in marketing ROI at over 2000%." Nick Carter, Marketing Sales Manager, ValuePetSupplies.com

Results

Before ValuePetSupplies.com was sending emails campaigns on a regular basis, repeat customers created 20% of the monthly revenue. With the help of VerticalResponse, the company has increased this to 30% within three months. "The ROI on Vertical Response campaigns are mind-boggling. 10% of company revenue comes from these campaigns, and it is not unusual to see over 7000% return on investment," said Carter. "Vertical Response is our mostmarketing tool, and a crucial growth driver for ValuePetSupplies!"

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