Segment Name: Home Value (then select a price range)
Why You Should Use This: A lot of people don’t want to lug a mattress across town, and will instead buy a new one when they’re moving. You’ll know the demographic that typically purchases from your brand, so pick a range of home value that aligns with your offering. If you’re a premium, high end brand, it’s a good idea to correlate this with a higher value.
7. The majority of Purple’s spending continues to be focused on desktop video. Interestingly, three quarters of Purple’s ads (77%) were ad network purchases. By contrast, the other mattress brands we looked at preferred to buy impressions directly from publishers. I'm curious why they are focused on this...
8. Not only has there been a shift in consumers making larger purchases online, but consumers are also even more selective about their purchases from an environmental point of view, and MattressNextDay shares those same convictions. They recently partnered with the environmental organisation Ecologi and have pledged to plant 1 million trees by 2030. (Martin Seeley - CEO at
MattressNextDay)
9. Keep it Simple: Companies tend to limit the number of mattress types they want to sell via bed-in-a-box. This is so they don't have endless product variation, They tend to build up a mattress of different layers.
10.
Nest Bedding chose not to engage in aggressive online customer acquisition through overheated (and expensive) marketing channels. Instead, they stuck with their core strength — building intimate relationships with a
selected cohort of target audiences.
11. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly important part of many brands’ marketing strategies. CSR appeals to younger shoppers, who tend to prefer outspoken brands, and the right partnership can offer increased brand recognition and loyalty. Casper has made more than 70,000 donations of sleep products to charities including International Rescue Committee and Sense of Home, while Avocado Green Mattresses and Bear
mattress give 1% of all sales to charities in line with their brand missions, including the environment and supporting young athletes. And, following a strategy similar to buy one gift one, Leesa mattress donates one mattress of every 10 sold to a child or family in need, working with charities that provide safe places to sleep for struggling families.
12. Ready for a shocker? More than half of people who bought a mattress from a furniture store or sleep shop said next time they buy a bed they don’t feel the need to try it first 😱 No really.
13. Reminder that millennials are just as experimental as they’re price-conscious. So, Casper shouldn’t expect loyalty if Purple or Leesa undercuts it in price. Besides, it’s not like every mattress brand has a different manufacturer either. Again, as I mentioned now several times, most of them source from the same manufacturer and customers don’t pay attention to differences in foam formulations so long as they can sleep well, and that’s not
something only Casper can provide! In fact, Purple - Casper’s nearest competitor - sees just as much revenue growth as Casper (45% vs 43%) and even turns a little profit.
14. Purple ranks the highest for earned media value. The direct-to-consumer mattress company has made these big gains by focusing on a channel most others have paid little-to-no attention to: YouTube. For Purple, the average earned media value on YouTube posts is $2,090; the brand also produces quite a bit of review-based influencer content on the platform.
Beyond creating engaging content, Purple also succeeded in getting the highest earned media value for followers on any platform, worth an astonishing $2,300,517.18 in EMV for just a 30-day period.
15. Although Casper began as a one-product company looking to fill a hole in the market, the company is now embracing the future by shaping a brand platform that looks at sleep as a consumer category not unlike travel or cooking. “If I wake up in the morning and say, ‘I want to sleep a little bit better,’ I have to go and get a mattress from a furniture store, sheets from Bed Bath & Beyond—you end
up having to get things from all these different places,” says Parikh. “But if you wake up in the morning and say…‘I want to eat healthier,’ great, go to Whole Foods. There’s nothing like that for sleep.” Casper aims to change that. With its “cheaper-than-the-leading-brands” image secure, the company now sells three mattress lines, sheets, duvets, pillows, and a high-tech sleep light. It even has a line of dog beds. And with its products now being sold in the real world through Target stores and
in its own growing chain of Casper Sleep Shops, Casper looks unstoppable.
16. A little over half of US consumers have bought their last mattress in the last 3 years, with the majority of buyers going in store to purchase. Compared to 45% in the last wave, only 18% of consumers are looking to purchase their next mattress in the next year. Consumers are far more likely, both online and offline, to purchase their mattress through a large retailer,than at a specific brand store.
17. According to SEMrush, 76.93% of Casper’s organic traffic comes from branded search queries. That means the majority of Casper’s search traffic is a result of people Googling terms like “Casper” or “Casper mattress.” There were about 110,000 monthly Google searches for simply “Casper” in 2017—and Casper.com is the #1 result.
18. While the concept of "disruption" has become somewhat trite in today's tech world, it may just be that mattress upstarts are truly shaking up the business. However, rather than the typical narrative of shiny, nimble operations displacing older ones, perhaps there's room for collaboration and innovation. There are lessons for investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate moguls alike.
19. Despite offering free returns, mattress companies make a bet that unsatisfied customers will not actually opt to return the mattresses. It’s no surprise or secret that returns are a pain point for any eCommerce business, but they are especially difficult for large physical items like beds—especially since it’s difficult to resell these items. Historically, furniture return rates are often the lowest due to the sheer hassle involved. In a
recent survey conducted by post-purchase experience platform Narvar, three in five millennials conceded that they had kept items they disliked because they were too lazy to return it.
