How Nationwide Digital Rewards dramatically improved King and Bunny’s store performance
ABOUT KING and BUNNY’S APPLIANCES —
A mainstay for nearly four decades in the community of Renton, Washington — home of the Boeing 737 factory — King and Bunny’s Appliances has remained a family-owned business since opening its doors in July of 1982 in a small 600 square foot portable building.
“My parents (King and Bunny) sold everything in their house to make the $600 monthly rent,” remembers son and second-generation owner, Jason Parker.
Their beginnings were very sparse with only six basic white, low end appliances placed on the showroom floor, a few catalog books, a hand truck and a beat-up delivery truck. When an appliance was sold, founder King Parker would deliver it to the buyer’s home and then replenish it with just one more.
Today, King and Bunny’s is a $4.2 million business housed in a 3,200 square foot showroom featuring more than 200 major home appliances, all available for immediate delivery.
Jason attributes it all to his dad, who passed away in 2017, and the success they attained as a family. His mom passed away in 2015. “The outpouring of our community with my parents’ passing was incredible,” said Parker. “A testament to the way we’ve always done business, our community involvement, sponsoring events and our ability to get our presence out there.
“We’re still making people happy and it’s still fun to come to work everyday. Our staff is like family and such an important part of our business.”
THE CHALLENGE –
For years, King and Bunny’s struggled with an outdated website. According to King and Bunny’s operations manager, Denise Richards, the company’s old website was seriously lacking in features and didn’t allow them to track the results of their online advertising. Plus, the fees charged by their previous digital provider of nearly three years made it difficult to quantify a return on investment.
THE SOLUTION –
Nationwide Digital Rewards
In February 2019 at PrimeTime in Las Vegas, Nationwide Marketing Group and Retailer Web Services (RWS) presented an integrated suite of all the technology independent retailers of appliances, furniture and mattresses need to execute a complete digital marketing strategy. For the first time, Webfronts® Level 4, Webfronts® Review™, RetailDeck® and AdRocket™ had been bundled into one smart and affordable package: Nationwide Digital Rewards.
Even better, Nationwide Marketing Group Members that already had one or more of RWS’ digital products can take advantage of the Nationwide-funded bundle rebates by adding to and completing the suite for their business, receiving up to $548 a month in rebates.
Prior to signing up for Nationwide Digital Rewards, King and Bunny’s hadn’t been using any of the RWS software products. Denise shared candidly, “The Webfronts® Level 4 features alone are what sold us.”
Jason added, “When we found out we could centralize our website, coupling all of our digital marketing and digital presence it was a no brainer. Not to mention, tapping into the national programs (Whirlpool) with AdRocket and maximizing our coop spend, the digital rewards program made dollars — and sense.”
THE RESULTS –
Soon after King and Bunny’s signed up for the Nationwide Digital Rewards program at PrimeTime, an RWS representative reached out to her with a warm welcome that led to a productive discussion around creating the store’s new WebFronts Level 4 site.
As Denise recalls, “There was a lot of back and forth on how we wanted to stand out, not have a cookie cutter site. RWS worked with us 100 percent of the way, and I was highly impressed. They were very collaborative, and they always got back to me in a timely manner. RWS is exceptional—better than any other website provider I’ve worked with.”
Within a month, the new, Level 4 kingandbunnys.com was live, complete with WebFronts Review.
Within the first three months of going live, WebFronts Review generated 26 new reviews, averaging an impressive 4.935 stars.
“Level 4 features like WebFronts Review are phenomenal,” said Denise. “Being able to see customer reviews on Google, Yelp and Facebook—all on one page—is great. And the way WebFronts Review is set up, ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ are directed to different areas, public and private, just where we’d want them to be when customers are happy or dissatisfied.”
According to Jason, the integration of features such as WebFronts Review on kingandbunnys.com helps to strengthen the way the store has always treated customers.
“My dad spent many years building the store’s brand and the level of service it stands for. I’ve always taken customer reviews of the store seriously, addressing both favorable and unfavorable comments. I can’t help you if I don’t know about it—WebFronts Review makes it easy, alerting me so I can stay on top of and respond to any and all reviews.”
Denise uses WebFronts marketing activity analytics to track site performance and has created a process to maximize the Hot Prospects emails she receives via WebFronts. These de-anonymized Hot Prospects emails tell her:
- who’s on kingandbunnys.com,
- how to contact them,
- and the products they’re viewing
Meanwhile, Jason cross-references the Hot Prospects emails with Price Quotes generated through RetailDeck—of which he’s seen a significant increase since launching their WebFronts Level 4 site.
In fact, there were 56 new Price Quotes generated by RetailDeck during the first 90 days; and 37 Hot Prospects emails were generated by Level 4.
“These tools allow us to know which products customers are looking at, so if they haven’t already requested an item quote, it’s an opportunity for me to reach out and ask them if they would like one,” said Jason.“The best part of Price Quotes and Hot Prospects—our website is pre-qualifying the customer for me. That’s awesome!”
As for AdRocket Base, which began running automated promotional banners on the site, leveraging 11 free Whirlpool campaigns, online advertising has been particularly effective for the store with nearly 1,200 clicks on homepage banners.
“Our monthly performance reports show more people drawn to the website and more quote requests which in turn, has drawn more people into the store — it’s a chain effect,” said Richards.
The “chain effect” has also spilled over to the store’s Facebook page, which has seen hundreds more Likes since AdRocket began running. AdRocket Boost alone has generated 5,000-plus clicks on Facebook and Google ads. Jason explained they engage the “new eyeballs” on their Facebook page through special events such as a New Year’s “Spin the Wheel” sales event, seasonal parking lot sales events and in-store cooking classes, held throughout the year with a local caterer who is also the chef of the Seattle Mariners.
With robust marketing activity analytics at their fingertips, Jason and Denise can now:
- follow up with customers who have abandoned their shopping carts
- see how many times an email has been opened
- and the number of rebate forms that are downloaded
“Having an integrated, complete digital product suite sets our store apart from the competition and gives us a strong advantage,” said Denise.
She continued, “It has enhanced our marketing strategy by having everything under one umbrella with one person at RWS to contact. The Digital Rewards program saves us money on the software—and the money we are spending is a smart investment in our marketing strategy.”
