EXCLUSIVE: American Furniture Warehouse helps build ML marketing tool

A Southwestern furniture retailer is leveraging a machine learning (ML)-based customer data marketing platform (CDMP).

Nikki Vaughn, marketing director at American Furniture Warehouse, recently spoke with Chain Store Age about how the retailer unifies, enriches and activates its disparate marketing data in a secure and compliant environment utilizing the Vericast NXTDRIVE CDMP.

Leveraging the NXTDRIVE ML and natural language processing-equipped engine, American Furniture Warehouse processes its unified customer profile dataset, customer transaction data, business location data, product information, and collected campaign response data to produce propensity and response models tailored for its customer base and products.

In addition, the retailer had the opportunity to advise Vericast on the development of the solution, ensuring the technology would be responsive to its specific marketing needs. 

What challenges was American Furniture Warehouse facing with its marketing?

We run lean and mean with limited resources within our marketing and IT teams and we lack the bandwidth to take on more. American Furniture Warehouse was looking for a solution that would help us better understand our first-party data with the analytic insight to help us make better marketing decisions. 

In addition, we were looking for more of a holistic view of our customers and better understanding of the customer journey. 

Why did you select the Vericast NxtDrive solution?

We have been a long-term partner of Vericast for more than eight years. Vericast wanted to understand our KPIs and how its solution could help meet our business objectives. This was a unique opportunity for us to advise the development of an industry-changing solution that would also help inform our market expansion efforts, while obtaining a tailored solution for our needs specifically.

What benefits do you obtain from utilizing NxtDrive?

The integrated NXTDRIVE technology stack enriches our first-party customer data with information from proprietary audience modeling and targeting technology. We were able to identify an opportunity for geographic expansion that pinpointed and engaged look-a-like audiences within a 40-mile radius, resulting in a 50% customer lift across segments.

In addition, NXTDRIVE has helped us obtain a nearly 55% boost in sales, a more than $350,000 revenue increase, and nearly a seven to one return on ad spend. The impact of NXTDRIVE has shaped our media recommendations and strategies while also shifting budget to favor high-performing media types for our audiences.

[Read more: American Furniture Warehouse brings rooms to life – in 3D]

Headquartered in Englewood, Colo., American Furniture Warehouse operates 15 locations throughout Colorado, Arizona and Texas.