About the company
CDON is one of the largest e-tailers of music, films and games in Scandinavia with operations in five countries. CDON is part of Modern Times Group (MTG), which is a leading media group in the Nordic countries and the Baltic States, operating within TV, radio, newspapers, electronic retailing and other media related services. In May 2002, they also successfully launched DVDON, a site totally devoted to DVD and VHS films.
The Challenge
In a razor sharp competition such as the business of selling CDs, films and games on the Internet it is crucial to always try to stay ahead of Your competitors. One way is to find new ways to attract new customers as well as being able to retain Your existing ones through increased customer gratification.
MTG Internet retailing wanted to explore the possibility to find an efficient way to help the customers find the music they would be interested in buying. An idea that kept on coming back was to look at how a traditional CD store works. One treat of a successful CD store is knowledgeable sales representatives who know what to offer their customers based on their experience of the customers. The problem was to find a way to transfer this approach into the Internet and MTG Internet Retailing's sites www.cdon.com and www.dvdon.com.
Strategy & Approach
MTG wanted to use an approach where they front the products most likely to appeal to each specific visitor and customer. Taking advantage of the knowledge and experience they already had about the business and their customers was very appealing to them and by using the Product Predictor to recommend the right products this could now be a reality, and on top of that without any administration.
Avail and MTG Internet Retailing sat down on several occasions together with NoName4Us, MTG's solution provider, to best see how MTG could benefit the most from the use of Avail's software components.
Solution
| Customer |
MTG / CDON |
| Software |
Product Predictor |
| Area of Use |
Webshop/E-Mail
www.cdon.com |
| Platform |
Linux |
| Database |
My SQL |
| Time for integration |
8 days |
| Results |
59% increase in sales after six months as well as an average raise in order value of 10%. |
After finalizing and agreeing on the ideas and approach, NoName4Us with support from Avail Intelligence started the implementation. Within 2 weeks, CDON's customers were able to get personalized recommendations on www.cdon.com.
So far everything has gone as planned and in April 2002 when MTG Internet Retailing launched the site www.dvdon.com they again contacted Avail to expand the cooperation;
"After experiencing the very positive impact on CDON we never hesitated to acquire one more license for DVDON", Mikael Olander, CEO at MTG Internet Retailing says.
"The next step we took was to use this, by now, proven efficient functionality in our e-mail newsletters. After all, why send exactly the same newsletter to over 200,000 customers when You can send each and every one of them individual recommendations of the CDs, films and games most likely to appeal to them?".
"From January to June 2002 our sales increased by 59% compared to last year. The Predictor certainly has been one of the reasons behind this great development, Mikael Olander says. At the same time we have experienced an average raise in the order value of 10%, so needless to say, I'm satisfied with our investment in the Product Predictor."
