Do you know the US based mattress brand “Casper”? Casper was founded in New York in 2014. With Serta, Sealy and other brands firmly occupying the market of offline channel, Casper invented the e-commerce model of “mattress in the box”, quickly grabbing market share. In 2017, Casper’s fourth year in existence, Casper ranked fifth in mattress sales in the U.S., surpassing IKEA mattress sales.
How are Casper mattresses different?
Although most of the company’s mattresses have many SKUs, they lack differentiation, and the appearance and touch feeling are similar. The difference just in materials, layers, concepts, thicknesses makes the price difference of 200-2000 US dollars, which makes it difficult for consumers to choose.
Faced with this situation, Casper adhere to the principle of simple and ultimate single mattress, and committed to using only one style to meet the needs of 99% of consumers.
Casper has selected the most popular materials combined with user satisfaction surveys, and constantly trial-and-error research and development with different formula and ratios. Casper launched a mattress style (The Casper Mattress) in 2014: It adopts the design of four layers of sponge superimposed: the top layer is breathable sponge layer, the second layer is memory foam, the third layer is transition sponge layer, and the fourth layer is support foam.
Casper breaks the industry chain convention and realizes direct connection with manufacturers. The online direct sales model bypasses many middle men (such as retailers, warehousing, etc.), Save 2/3 of the cost, is high cost-effective mattress.
How does the Casper solve the problem of large volume, high logistics cost, and long service?
Mattress shipping has always been a pain point to online resellers. The problem of mattress logistics is not heavy weight, but large volume. And usually the mattress size does not meet the three-party logistics packaging standards, and the transportation cost is significantly higher than the standard package. According to the features of mattress transportation, Casper solved this problem with the idea of a compressed mattress. The Casper mattress is a pure foam structure, without traditional springs and other parts that are not easy to compress and fold. It can be folded and stuffed in a box after being compressed. The box is only the size of a mini refrigerator. The volume of the compressed box can meet the transportation standard, which greatly saves the logistics cost.
At the same time, the box also solves the problem of entry the door caused by the large volume. It is very difficult to carry traditional mattresses up the stairs and professional carrying service is required. After moving to the bedroom in the form of a box and unfolding, the mattress will return to its original shape within 60 minutes, which is very convenient, and users can DIY it.
The second problem is that people doesn’t experience the mattress, if I don’t like it, it’s difficult to return back after purchase.
The average service life of a mattress in the United States is 8-10 years. Buying a mattress is a long-term decision, so consumers are more cautious about the appearance, texture and touch feeling.
The traditional way of purchasing mattresses is usually that customers make a choice after lying down on several mattresses for a few minutes to try to sleep. However, after lying down for four or five minutes, consumers cannot find out whether the mattress is suitable for them. At the same time, the rental cost of commercial real estate is high. Once you choose to open offline stores, the cost advantage of e-commerce operations may disappear.
To allay consumers’ concerns about the low expected risks of online shopping, Casper is offering a 100-night free sleep trial. The mattress is shipped free of charge. If consumers are not satisfied with the mattress after sleeping, they can return it directly. Casper’s employees will pick up the mattress directly at the door, and the service is free.
The free return service is a bet the company has placed on its products. Because once a return occurs, the cost is very high. (Matters taken out of the box cannot be recompressed back into the box without being machined, so reverse logistics costs are extremely high. The majority of mattresses returned by Casper are donated directly to local charities.) Only a low return rate can be guaranteed profit under this model. And also it becomes a signal to consumers: Casper has confidence in the satisfaction of the mattress.
In addition, Casper also provides experience opportunities through the Casper Nap Tour: the RV is converted into a comfortable and closed test room, and the tour provides test sleep in various cities across the United States. Consumers can make an appointment online to participate in a sleep trial at any time, and the time is not limited. The single room is designed to be very private and comfortable. Sleep trial uses a good experience to eliminate consumers’ concerns about the product.
How does an online seller get traffic? We can learn from Casper.
Getting traffic is very important for E-commerce. In addition to good products, Casper traffic operation and content marketing are a good example.
Lesson 1: Spend money to buy initial traffic.
Casper’s main sales website is the self-operated website casper.com. In the early days, the company invested a lot of money to attract traffice. According to spyfu data, Casper’s monthly PPC pay-per-click budget is as high as $40,000 to $120,000 per month. The US$240 million brought by the two rounds of financing has brought Casper a strong buying capacity.
Google is the main channel for Casper attracting traffic.
By laying out a large number of keyword ads and Backlinks, Casper has improved the Google PageRank of the website. When searching for terms related to mattress purchase, Casper always ranks very high. According to the Google PageRank ranking simulated by the three-party company Ahrefs, Casper has a PR score of 81. The search keywords set by Casper are broader and narrower than those competitors, and they have set up traffic pages for almost all the questions that consumers will search for when purchasing mattresses.
Lesson 2: Content marketing attracts traffic.
According to SEMrush data, search engines are the largest source of traffic for Casper.com, with 44.70% of traffic coming from search engines. If buying volume is excluded, 76.93% of the self-directed traffic comes from the search engine for the word “Casper” by users. In 2017, the average monthly search volume for the Google keyword “Casper” was 110,000. This is not only the traffic of Casper, Casper is also the name of the animated live-action movie released in 1995, and it is also the name of a city in the northern United States. But all users who search for Casper will see Casper.com first.
Content Marketing: The official blog writes about sleep topics that everyone cares about to get clicks.
Casper has a total of three content marketing sites, which share sleep-related articles to attract customers to click and drive to the main site Casper.com. The three marketing sites are:
Pillow Talk: Official Blog
Woolly: print and electronic magazines on the theme of comfortable, modern and comfortable lifestyle.
Sleepolis: A three-party website, the public comment in the mattress industry, with a large number of user evaluation articles of different brands, acquired by Casper in June 2017.
So if you are looking for a mattress supplier who can not only provide you good quality compressed mattress, and also teach you how to promote your brand and improve sales as Casper did, we are your prefered choice.
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