FurnitureDealer.Net Upgrades Laurentide, Shopper Engagement Platform

July 30, 2019  by Laurie Northington in Business Strategy, Industry   

The enhancements are designed to convert more website visitors into qualified leads, help retailer salespeople close those leads, and enable retailers to measure Laurentide’s impact on sales.

Laurentide is a set of customer-centric tools that integrates with a retailer’s website to engage visitors and get them the assistance they need.

“We believe that in the age of ecommerce giants, local stores will succeed by winning one customer at a time. Relationships are key. Laurentide is designed to be helpful, assisting customers while they’re shopping online and connecting them to knowledgeable salespeople in the store,” said Alex Kirsch, vice president of client solutions.

The first phase of Laurentide, which retailers have been using over the past year, includes the Lead Generation module, a suite of interactive smart experiences that site visitors interact with in order to get inspired, receive assistance, and engage with the retailer's brand on a deeper level. Experiences are customizable and trigger at the right time based on each visitor’s behavior.

The first phase of Laurentide significantly increased leads for retailers, on average doubling the number of sales-qualified leads, and increasing the voluntary email capture rate by five times.

“We were able to quadruple the number of conversions on our website using Laurentide,” said Jon Gadbois, vice president, marketing at Top 100 retailer Furniture and ApplianceMart in Wisconsin.

According to Susan Childs, director of marketing at Virginia Furniture Market in Virginia, “Since adding Laurentide in 2018, our web engagement has grown exponentially, time on site and page views have increased, and revenue that these experiences have generated exceeds 1.2 million dollars to date. Our goal is always for customers to visit our brick and mortar stores, but having Laurentide on our website enables those who either cannot be here or choose to browse before coming into the store, to have a more robust experience.”

According to Kirsch, “Retailers told us the first phase of Laurentide generated more leads than they expected, but they weren’t maximizing their close rate or average ticket. Their sales teams needed a better system to manage their customer communications.”

FurnitureDealer.Net decided to accelerate development and rollout of the second phase of Laurentide—the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module—to help retailers manage and close website-generated leads. The Laurentide CRM module is a centralized place for all online communication with website-generated leads. It aligns with each retailer’s selling process, intelligently routing behavioral information about each lead to the appropriate sales team. Customizable alerts, reminders and response templates make it easier to view, manage and follow up with leads quickly.

Laurentide also includes extensive sales training and onboarding including best practices and processes to manage leads and ongoing optimization of experiences to continuously improve results. Retailers have access to dashboards with in-depth analytics and performance reporting on the status and outcomes of leads.

“Furniture retailers are increasingly shifting their ad dollars online to drive shoppers to their website,” said Kirsch. “With Laurentide we’re able to close the gap between online activity and in-store sales. For the first time, retailers are able to measure how their digital investments impact sales in the store.”