The Container Store taps into AI-based predictive marketing models

The Container Store is optimizing online marketing campaigns with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Seeking to find new potential customers by extending its audience reach, the Texas-based home storage and home goods retailer utilized the Quantcast Ara proprietary AI and ML engine in a campaign that ran throughout fiscal year 2022 to process real-time anonymized data from 100 million online destinations.

Using Quantcast’s lookalike audience modeling capability, The Container Store discovered consumers similar to users already visiting its website. Utilizing Ara’s real-time data, the retailer gained insights into its converting audience, learning that consumers interested in home and garden tend to buy home organization products almost twice as often as the average customer.

The retailer then ran online marketing campaigns in both cookie-based and cookieless environments, so it could reach the 50% of online shoppers not addressable with third-party cookies. Working with its digital partner PMG, The Container Store ran two campaigns consecutively, one optimized to site traffic and the other to conversions, to evaluate their respective effectiveness.

The cookieless campaign provided the retailer with the opportunity to reach previously untapped audiences, resulting in 37% more purchases, a 1.43x higher ROI, and 4.2x more efficient cost per site visit (CPSV).

As a result of being optimized to specific audiences, these campaigns drove incremental customers to The Container Store at a significantly lower cost. The results have resulted in The Container Store’s continued investment in Quantcast technology as part of its key prospecting initiatives.

“With these campaigns, the ability to find net new customers efficiently and cost-effectively exceeded our expectations,” said Mariana Andersen Diaz, client strategy director, PMG.

The Container Store targets college shoppers

In other efforts to reach a specialized customer group, The Container Store expanded its college offering in May 2023 by opening a centralized online shopping space for students heading to college. The assortment included coffee makers, water pitchers, fans, irons, table lamps, sleep machines, diffusers, blenders, bedding, and travel bags and luggage.

Customers could sign up for special college shop savings throughout the summer via text or online. In addition, for a limited time collegiate customers were able to schedule a future store pickup at a brick-and-mortar location near their college or university via in-store visit or phone call.

[Read more: Container Store launches new app, loyalty program]