Platform Enables Online Retailers to Direct Consumers’ Behavior as They Shop; New ‘Real Time Offer’ Product that Takes Full Advantage of Real Time Marketing Technology; Mrs. Fields Credits Real Time Technology with Incremental Lift
BOSTON – SteelHouse (www.SteelHouse.com) unveiled a ground-breaking Real Time Marketing platform for eCommerce companies – its first step in a series of advancements enabling online retailers to get their brand and message in front of shoppers in real time. The result: retailers will be able to reach the greatest number of qualified shoppers at the moment when they are most receptive and able to act. SteelHouse made the announcement at the 2011 Shop.org Annual Summit, which kicks off today.
SteelHouse unveiled a new product – Real Time Offers – which takes full advantage of the immediacy of its Real Time Marketing platform.
Mrs. Fields, eCampus and other online retailers already are seeing click-through rates up to 11.2 percent – which is approximately 100 times greater than general display ads. They are achieving click-to-conversion rates of up to 50 percent, meaning roughly 1 in 2 clicks results in a sale. Clients have attributed significant incremental revenue lift to Real Time Offers.
“Real Time Marketing is the next disruptive technology for eCommerce,” said Mark Douglas, SteelHouse CEO. “Retailers must reach shoppers in the moment, before they move on and are exposed to competing offers. With Real Time Offers, retailers no longer miss sale opportunities because they couldn’t get their campaign out the door fast enough. We’ve designed this product to be effective and easy – it doesn’t require any of the retailer’s own creative or IT resources. It provides them with so much opportunity, and we’ve only just begun.”
“SteelHouse’s new platform and Real Time Offers give us the best opportunities to reach our shoppers in real time while they’re still shopping on Mrs.Fields.com,” said John Brinkerhoff, Online Marketing Manager for Mrs. Fields. “We’ve been impressed with the results to date. SteelHouse makes it easy for us to get the right behaviorally driven offer in front of certain consumers while they’re still shopping. That increases our conversion and ultimately our revenue, while preserving our margin on other shoppers.”
Using SteelHouse Real Time Offers, marketers can deliver, in real time:
Product recommendations
Secret sales/Flash sales
Discount offers (percent or dollar amount)
New product/Hot product announcement
Location-based offers
Running-out-of-stock offers
Overstock goods
Time based/Seasonal offers
And more
These capabilities create more up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, increase visitor-to-purchase conversion rates, and more effectively manage inventory by enabling the retailer to push overstocked items or create urgency around offers – with the ability to be nimble in the moment. With most retailers seeing 95 percent+ of their site visitors not converting to purchasers, Real Time Offers provides a new channel to help turn more of those site visitors into buyers before they leave.
Real Time Offers also supports multi-channel integration. With time-based controls, marketers can schedule when a Real Time Offer is displayed. It can play a leading or supporting role to other marketing channels. For example, if a retailer sends an email campaign, the company can schedule a Real Time Offer to appear to those shoppers for a pre-determined amount of time when they visit their site. The campaigns mutually reinforce each other.
About SteelHouse
SteelHouse™ (www.SteelHouse.com) is enabling Real Time Marketing by giving online retailers the ability to deliver offers to their shoppers in real time – anywhere on the web and through any device. Combined with SteelHouse’s award-winning and patent-pending Behavioral Commerce technology, which powers its Real Time Offers and Retargeting products, offers are generated based on shoppers’ distinct shopping personalities and buying behaviors. With SteelHouse, marketers can for the first time, truly understand who their shoppers are by their shopping personalities and buying behaviors and – just as important – act on that intelligence right away with Real Time Offers and Retargeting that will increase their conversions, sales and revenue.
SteelHouse is showcasing its technology at ad:tech New York 2011 in November, and is a finalist for the ad:tech Innovation Award. SteelHouse was selected by TiE Silicon Valley as one of the Top 10 Emerging Internet Technologies in the world, and won the top award at the prestigious Launch: Silicon Valley 2011 showcase event in the Next-Generation Internet category. Investors include Silicon Valley legend Ron Conway and venture capital firm Baroda Ventures. The SteelHouse team includes veteran direct marketers and engineers from eHarmony, E*TRADE, Oracle and the Rubicon Project. SteelHouse is based in Los Angeles, Calif.
