The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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SmartClick Q&A Does This Click Make Sense? Fuel Oil News takes a look at a company that promises to add incremental business with no overhead for the dealer B y Ke i t h Re i d A which they use their online resources to link customers with a network of independent oil dealers. The goal is to provide additional volume with a low acquisition cost. Fuel Oil News interviewed Andy Scirri, COO of SmartClick Energy���a company notable in this space���to discuss their business model and how it can benefit an oil marketer or dealer. SmartClick Energy does business in some 3,000 counties in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The play is to offer the online customer an effective pricing and reliable delivery proposition while offering the oil dealer an incremental increase in business. SmartClick Energy ���owns��� the customer in this relationship. variety of companies offer an arrangement in FON: There are several sites out there that promise to do something similar. What is your specific value proposition? Scirri: We distinguish ourselves compared to some of the sites out there, which are strictly lead generation sites. We have a network of heating oil dealers throughout the Northeast down into the Mid-Atlantic, and the customer can order heating oil online through us 24/7. We generate the customer acquisition, we handle the entire payment process and customer service. The dealer, through our portal, receives an order for delivery with the dealer having no out-of-pocket cost. There is no registration fee or anything of that sort. When the dealer receives an order, it is typically an ad-on to the orders they are currently delivering. So a dealer might be making 40 to 50 drops, or north of 100 depending upon their scale, and we will incrementally add several drops to that total. So basically we���re just handing them an extra order. FON: How do you negotiate the price component of your offer with your dealers? 14 March 2013 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com Scirri: We negotiate fees with the dealers for those deliveries and we reimburse them for the fuel and other incentives and the standard delivery fees that we have developed over time. With the number of dealers that we work with, we have to make sure they are pleased with the arrangement on the payment side. Their payments are independent of pricing, meaning when we set the price, they are essentially paid a delivery fee for making that delivery. So if we choose to price more aggressively in one area that does not change the reimbursement rate for the dealers. They are reimbursed on a routine schedule and we provide summaries of all the information through our portal. So it���s a pretty clean, neat way to add incremental volume. We have really great dealers of the network. We are very much interested in them being happy with the arrangement that we have, and we have received great suggestions from our dealers to help improve our operations. That���s been one of the gratifying things about our model is that we get to work with some really great dealers. I absolutely mean that. And we work very hard to help make them successful. FON: How do you promote your business on both the dealer and customer sides? Scirri: On the dealer side, we���ve done a combination of things, but the most successful has been to reach out through our industry contacts to make introductions. We���ve also attended various shows and made contacts and connections there. And another interesting thing that is happening is that as we are looking to expand, we get recommendations from dealers that are in our network who do not cover those areas. With respect to customers, we���ve done both traditional and online. We���ve used FaceBook promotions and mailings and newspaper ads; things of that nature. We���ve tried a number of