“We want to meet the consumer where they are, and they prefer digital experiences — but it’s also really good for our business,” Glaser says. “We get so much more data to inform our future plans and marketing choices from a performance marketing perspective.”

General Mills can be more flexible by offering digital promotions, Glaser says. This includes incentivizing the consumer to take action when they’re most likely to convert.

“How do we build those relationships with consumers?” asks Glaser.

One way General Mills is building incentives for customers is through the Fetch rewards mobile app. Consumers download the Fetch app and create an account. They take photos of their grocery shopping receipts from in-store or online shopping and upload them to the app.

Consumers earn points they can redeem for gift cards. Eligible receipts that have at least one participating brand may receive at least 35 points. Each dollar is worth one point. 1,000 Fetch rewards points are worth $1, for example, and consumers need to reach 3,000 points in order to redeem for gift cards at stores including Starbucks, Macy’s, Amazon, Nordstrom Rack and Home Depot as well as for Visa cards. Fetch charges participating retailers like General Mills a referral fee.

Brand loyalty: What it is and how to build it

There is a lot of data exchanged between Fetch and General Mills, Glaser says.

“We get a ton of data from the Fetch partnership — about 62 million lines of data per day,” he says.

That data feeds into the brand’s customer data platform (CDP), which is a software platform that collects first-party data from multiple sources to help brands create targeted and personalized marketing campaigns.

“Loyalty programs are something that the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space isn’t necessarily ubiquitous — it’s something not all CPGs have nailed,” Glaser says. “We wanted to be intentional. What does that look like? How does it come to life?”

In March 2023, General Mills said it had added 2 million customers to its Good Rewards loyalty program with Fetch within the first six months of launch.

Consumer engagement experience

Fetch has about 18 million monthly active users, with 6 million of those using the app every day, says Robin Wheeler, the chief revenue officer at Fetch. In April 2023, the rewards app said it had surpassed $152 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV) across U.S. in-store and online retail sales.

“Fetch isn’t your traditional kind of shopping app,” Wheeler says. “It’s a consumer engagement experience.”

A larger portion of consumers are Millennials and Gen Z, Wheeler says.

“The younger generation is definitely coming to Fetch and I think a lot of that is tied to the experiences they’re seeing on social media,” Wheeler says.

Fetch rewards: adding brands

Fetch shares its general merchandise value scanned daily, Wheeler says. Fetch employees also track potential opportunities.

“We’re reading the trades and keeping up to speed on industries,” she says. “If we’re seeing national brands start to compete with a certain brand of deodorant, for example, our primary goal is to focus on where we’re seeing a lot of activity where we’re not currently rewarding consumers. Because that’s low hanging fruit.”

The company uses this information as it attempts to build relationships with other brands.

“There are plenty of big companies we haven’t started working with, and we need to be there,” she says.

This includes providing carousel information displayed at the top of the app that consumers see when they open it. Whether the promotion is about back to school or another busy shopping period, brands also want to include their offers and create more consumer awareness.

Fetch also has daily spin feature where consumers can obtain a daily reward.

Brands use influencers to reach new customers

This includes learning about the app from social media influencers, Wheeler says.

Fetch can share with brands what consumers are spending based on the receipts they upload to the app. Brands can target consumers, whether they’re loyal customers or “competitive buyers, which you have a to work a little bit harder for,” Wheeler says.

Fetch works with influencer agencies to source talent, Wheeler says. The company monitors influencer content and when it finds the right fit, it reaches out with affiliate links.

While the majority of Fetch receipts are in-store, Wheeler says online receipt uploads are growing.

“We have integrations with Amazon and Walmart,” Wheeler says. “We also have emailed receipts. If we have your email integrated and you order from DoorDash, we’re able to scan and pick up that receipt. So emailed receipts are definitely growing.”

Consumers can connect their Fetch account to their email, Amazon and Walmart accounts to earn Fetch rewards.

Fetch social

• 61% of Fetch monthly active users engaged with social features during July, up from 24% in January.
• Daily Reward launched in December 2022. Consumers have played daily rewards over 222 million plays since then.
• People who engage with social features/in-app games are more likely to scan receipts every day and have retention rates around 4-5 points higher than cohorts that don’t engage with these features.

Fetch eReceipts

• On average in 2023, about 10% of all receipts submitted to Fetch were eReceipts.
• About 29% of Fetch users who scan receipts also submit eReceipts.
• Top retailers include Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Walgreens, McDonald’s, Starbucks.

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The retailer continues to adjust how it engages with subscribers, says Sydney Hamilton, senior director of digital marketing.

“When we started this program back in 2021, it was about ‘how do we just get out there and make a name for ourselves in the college space?’” Hamilton says.

Shoppers can opt out. But, once subscribed, the retailer can re-engage with shoppers during other busy shopping periods.

This year, college-related sales exceeded expectations, Hamilton says, without revealing more. The retailer shared sign up details through signage in-store, online, email and through the header of the retailer’s website. The retailer’s back-to-school messaging campaign is growing in popularity. In 2022, The Container Store enrolled more than 121,000 subscribers, which was 61% higher year over year compared with 2021.

The Container Store shared sign up details through signage in-store, online, email and through the header of the retailer’s website for its college back-to-school messaging campaign.

Back to school SMS text campaign

The Container Store began texting college-bound shoppers last spring — well before school started, Hamilton says.

“We understand this isn’t necessarily the time when people start purchasing,” Hamilton says. “But we looked at when college-bound high school graduates start getting gifts at graduation parties. So we started engaging in April and May about e-gift cards.”

The retailer uses mobile marketing vendor Vibes to reach customers. It’s not always about a sale, Hamilton says. The engagement rate for SMS, MMS and in-app push messages around types of products have increased, she says. The software looks at the list of recipients and their engagement history to determine who is likely to convert at one of three send times a day, Hamilton says. Vibes then sends messages out during their respective engagement times.

“We’ll share the types of products we have and show items they could potentially be using,” Hamilton says. “It’s been a great way to keep people engaged outside of those prime shopping moments.”

Click through rates and promotions

The click through rate (CTR) varies. This year, the retailer sent a text featuring a $20-off promo code for coffee machine and accessories manufacturer Keurig that resulted in 9% CTR. The retailer’s benchmark is 5%. Click through time is best at about 10 a.m., Hamilton says. The text was optimized for send times, meaning that they sent the message on a single day but split it to send in the morning only to SMS subscribers who had shown to engage more with text messages in the mornings. The same logic was applied to texts sent in the afternoon. This resulted in higher engagement versus sending it to all college SMS subscribers at the same time, according to the retailer.

Click through rate is a metric that measures how effective an ad is by calculating the percentage of people who view an ad and then click on it. A benchmark is the typical percentage of consumers who click on a retailer’s content.

The Container Store also sent an SMS text with a 20% discount on 3-tier storage carts, stacking drawers and other storage items. These also saw strong engagement, particularly because the promotion was targeted to only subscribers that previously purchased storage products.

Filling in the Bed Bath & Beyond gap

In addition to targeting text subscribers to maximize engagement, the retailer also noticed an opportunity in 2023 after Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy. Online-only home goods retailer Overstock.com purchased it and has rebranded as Bed Bath & Beyond in June 2023. The website went live in August 2023. The retailer was a go-to shopping destination for many back-to-school college students.

“With Bed Bath & Beyond no longer in the market, it did leave a whitespace [this year],” Hamilton says. “So we asked ourselves, where can we fill in?”

Hamilton says The Container Store customer is looking online as well as shopping in-store. A popular promotion is the retailer’s 25% off offer that shoppers can add to their wallet pass on the app, similar to Bed Bath & Beyond’s promotional discounts.

Going forward, Hamilton says the retailer also uses its app to connect with shoppers. In fiscal year 2022, which ended in March 2023, the retailer had 450,000 first-time app downloads.

The Container Store Inc. ranks No. 345 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales.

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His first TikTok posts didn’t receive many views, he says.

“I was in a sense trying a little too hard. It felt very manufactured,” Oppermann says. “I was purposely trying to create content that would go viral, and create content for the algorithm rather than for actual people.”

Creating authentic videos for TikTok

Once Oppermann created videos that were more authentic to himself and his brand, he grew his audience to 105,000 followers on TikTok and his videos gained millions of views.

He gives an example of one video that took him three hours to create, which included the at-the-moment trending song, sounds and hashtags, and received 300 views. This is compared with a video that took 10 seconds to shoot of him saying, “I think this is the best shirt I ever created,” and then a shot of the T-shirt, which received 500,000 views. His takeaway was to create content that is “genuinely him,” and the content will resonate with his audience.

“I don’t need to copy what other people are doing, I know how to go viral (in a way) that’s true to myself, my business and my brand,” Oppermann says.

Online sales increase anywhere from 200% to 2,000% for products that GotFunny features in TikTok posts that receive 500,000 views or more, Opperman says.

@brys.onlinePersonally, I still think it’s the Silly Goose University one but i get the hype ♬ Bejeweled – Taylor Swift

These videos are all organic posts, with no ad dollars behind them. Even though they are promoting products on his site, the goal is to not have them feel like an ad, he says.

TikTok works for young shoppers

He also started only posting once per day, instead of two or three times a day, like he did at the start. This way, he’s not just rushing to put something together just to have it, and he allows each post time to gain traction and live on its own.

“I wasn’t giving the other content time to breathe,” he says.

This new strategy has been easier for Oppermann. He can create content that he finds funny. At 26, Oppermann fits the target demographic for his product. 56% of GotFunny’s TikTok audience are consumers ages 15-24 and 37% are 25-34, for a total of 93% of the audience that is younger than 35 years old.

Social media influences those young shoppers. More than half of shoppers 18-39 say social media influences their online purchasing, according to a Digital Commerce 360 and Bizrate Insights survey of 1,070 online shoppers in April 2023.

Instagram compared with TikTok

But not all platforms are created equally for each brand. Oppermann posts his TikTok videos as Reels on Instagram, but he posts separate images to his Instagram page that are more selling-focused than what he would post on TikTok.

Instagram posts have to be more “aesthetically pleasing,” he says, and have high production value. The TikTok audience and platform is better for more behind-the-scene and casual videos, which are more on-brand for GotFunny, he says.

This difference in audience taste could be why GotFunny has far fewer followers on Instagram, at 45,500, than on TikTok. The age range, however, is similar on both platforms, in which 85% of GotFunny’s Instagram followers are younger than 35.

“Instagram compared to TikTok has a lot of features and ways to build a business account that people will still follow and engage with and not feel advertised to or feel out of place with it,” Oppermann says. “Whereas TikTok is different. It seems to be oriented to the individual or people who are on there to entertain themselves or laugh. They don’t want to be sold on stuff.”

This article is an excerpt from the free, members-only article Why Wacky ads work on TikTok while sober is better for Facebook. Read the article here and more in-depth articles related to digital marketing here.

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Jacqui Segura, director of marketing at Mexicali Blues, knows firsthand that what type of marketing works for one demographic may not work for another. The medium and message must be tailored to the target audience if the marketing is going to attract and convert shoppers.   

And the same medium of marketing, such as the influencer marketing tactic that’s hot right now, is not always a slam dunk for every brand. Brands have to find the right influencers that fit for their brands and adjust the platforms their influencers use, such as a live-streaming event or with social media posts, to strike a chord with shoppers.   

2023 digital marketing survey

Results from Digital Commerce 360’s 9th annual digital marketing survey of online retail marketers reveal this as well. Marketers use a range of digital marketing tactics that vary in effectiveness. While marketers rank the staple digital marketing tactics — paid search and email marketing — as top revenue drivers, the other channels can be hit or miss with marketers.  

For example, SMS marketing really works for some merchants. 29% of retailers rank SMS marketing as highly effective, among the top “highly effective” marketing channels. However, significantly fewer marketers (26%) ranked it as somewhat effective. This means that of the marketers that use SMS marketing, only 55% say it is effective. This makes it the eight overall effective channel, with content marketing, affiliate marketing and marketplace ads beating it out for effectiveness.   

Digital Commerce 360’s July Strategy Insights dives into digital marketing tactics from large and small brands and uncovers ways marketers have leaned into practices that are working, such as with social media marketing. Plus, a look into retail media networks, including why they are growing in popularity and what types of brands they are a fit for. What’s more, the 9th annual marketing survey shows insights into what is happening with digital marketing budgets, what approaches are effective, and the adoption of growing tactics, such as using artificial intelligence and values-based marketing.   

Download the free 9th Annual Marketing Survey & Digital Marketing Strategies July Strategy Insights here.

—April Berthene, Editor, Strategy Insights 

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Retailers surveyed were from multiple merchandising categories, including apparel/accessories, health/beauty, hardware and more. Retailers ranged from small businesses with annual revenue less than $1 million to companies with annual revenue more than $100 million.

This article is featured in the Digital Commerce 360 July 2023 Strategy Insights. For more stories related marketing, download the report.

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“I keep an eye on all email-related metrics, but I keep a very close eye on [inbound website traffic from email],” he says.

Cabral is senior manager of email operations and strategy at J. Jill. In July 2022, the retailer completed the last of three email migrations — and experienced a drop in email deliverability.

Michael Cabral, senior manager, email operations and strategy, J. Jill

“We hit an [IP] block over the Fourth of July weekend,” Cabral says.

J. Jill’s consumer engagement in email deliverability went from 99.7% to 96.8%, Cabral says.

“That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re talking about a high volume of people, it’s actually pretty impactful for us,” Cabral says.

Emails lead to a “very large portion” of J. Jill’s online sales, Cabral says, without revealing more.

J. Jill IP address needed a ‘good’ reputation

The more a consumer clicks and engages with an email, the more emails that consumer receives from the retailer. If interaction declines, J. Jill sends fewer emails.

“If you’re not engaging with the emails, we don’t want to inundate consumers with our messages,” Cabral says. “And we don’t want them hitting the spam button. It’s actually better to opt out of our email program than hit the spam button.”

Senders are blacklisted when too many people hit the spam button on an email. A blacklist is a collection of IP addresses noted as sending out spam. Blacklisted email addresses are either blocked or messages are routed to the recipient’s spam folder.

J. Jill used Everest tools from Validity, a data quality and email marketing software platform, to see which emails are approved and unproblematic, he says.

Cabral and his Validity account manager determined that the retailer was targeting every email on its list as if they were engaged recipients that regularly clicked open emails.

“That was an issue because of an Apple iOS update for pre-caching, where everyone was considered an open email even if you didn’t open the email,” he says. Pre-caching is where software stores or caches a consumer’s web browser data in advance so when the time comes to email a consumer, the retailer can deliver it to them faster.

Warming up the IP address

In early 2021, Apple’s iOS 14 changes gave customers the option to opt out of activity tracking. This makes it harder for marketers to track web users and create personalized advertising campaigns.

At a certain point, J. Jill emailed people that were identified as having opened an email.

“But because of Apple iOS 14 changes, we were unable to truly know if it was an opened email,” Cabral says.

When J. Jill or any retailer completes an email transition to a new vendor, or changes the companies it sends its emails to, the retailer has to build up its IP address to get a “good reputation,” Cabral says.

To do this, J. Jill “warmed up” its email IP address, he says. Warming up the email IP address allows it to “get a good reputation,” he says. IP warming is the practice of gradually increasing the volume of email sent with a dedicated IP address, typically over a few weeks.

“To get a good reputation, you need people to open and close your email to show you’re a trusted sender,” Cabral says.

Gmail and Yahoo monitor email IP addresses to ensure recipients are not receiving spam messages. To avoid being blacklisted, Cabral first sent emails to its most engaged audiences, he says.

Once J. Jill consumers clicked through and engaged with emails, the IP block lifted, Cabral says.

“We started getting more and more people to click and open emails,” he says.

Enticing shoppers going forward

Now that emails are reaching the intended audience, Cabral says J. Jill prefers to promote the “newness” of its merchandise over discounts, Cabral says. That’s what’s relevant to customers, he says.

He knows this because he tracks what the email open rates tell him.

“That tells me that anything that’s new or just arrived was really a peak request,” Cabral says. “Those get the open rates. So I take advantage of that.”

J. Jill mixes up its messaging.

“Even when you’re talking about the same product, send one (email message) and then another two weeks later,” Cabral says. “I think that keeps the customer engaged in making a purchase.

J. Jill shoppers also go as far as emailing customer service if they’re not receiving messages, he says.

“I think our customers are very engaged with our email program,” Cabral says.

The retailer also emails customers with news of delayed shipments of new or popular-selling items. When a customer views an item that is delayed, J. Jill emails them that they will be alerted once the item is available, he says.

Since iOS changes, Cabral says website visits are down. However, the time users spend on site has lengthened.

“Our engaged customers are still coming [to the website], and they’re actually spending more than they previously had,” Cabral says.

J. Jill ranks No. 245 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest North American e-retailers.

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That’s the case with Khadijah Oliver. In March 2023, she posted a video on TikTok trying on plus-sized clothing in a Target fitting room, and the video went viral. She now has 53,000 followers viewing her content regularly.

Now, brands including Old Navy (owned by Gap Inc.), American Eagle Outfitters Inc., Abercrombie & Fitch Trading Co., Kohl’s Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. pay Oliver to promote their merchandise to her more than 50,000 followers.

Social media influencers like Oliver are everyday people who have accounts on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.

Unlike a professional athlete or artist, these influencers amass followers with just the content they post. Consumers follow a person they don’t know for various reasons, such as finding them entertaining or informative, liking the individual or trusting their judgement.

Micro-influencers gain traction with retailers and consumers

Some influencers have millions of followers. But increasingly, it’s micro-influencers, these non-celebrity influencers who have a few thousand followers, who are gaining traction with retailers and consumers.

Influencer agency Mavely, which connects brands with influencers to promote merchandise for a fee, reached out to Oliver. After joining, Oliver earned $1,200 in her first week by sharing plus-size clothing hauls with her followers. Since then, she earns about $6,500-$7,500 or more in commissions per month.

Retailers sometimes send merchandise for influencers to try. Jen White has been an influencer for nearly seven years. She’s on YouTube and TikTok, and she has about 98,000 followers on TikTok.

White has worked with brands directly as well as through influencer agencies like Awin, which connected her with sporting goods and apparel brand Under Armour Inc. White also works with online bedding brand Brooklinen and Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc.

Brooklinen pays White a flat fee. She earns commissions from brands like Under Armour from referral links posted to her TikToks.

“The more engagement you get, the more commission dollars I can make off of it versus other deals I’ve done. With Dick’s Sporting Goods, it’s a fixed payment with no commission attached,” she says.

The importance of authenticity for influencers

White spends her own money on merchandise she likes, but she also accepts credits from retailers to spend on their websites or in store. She also receives free items to try before posting an honest review.

“I like the blend of it,” she says. “Some brands send me products. But I don’t want to work with brands that don’t really fit, or I don’t like the product. I’d feel guilty posting about it.”

Under Armour sent athletic shoes to White, which she says was a good fit.

“I try to do what relates to me — and I think my audience appreciates [the honesty],” she says.

Oliver provides her followers with affiliate links to items she tries on in her videos.

Compensation differs depending on the brand, Oliver says. She earns a percentage of sales she generates from posts linked to Old Navy and American Eagle — and it’s not always about the highest bidder. She doesn’t pick one brand over another because of how much commission she might make, she says.

“American Eagle didn’t offer the highest percentage commission, but I still link my picks because I like their jeans,” Oliver says.

If Oliver likes a brand, she posts about it, regardless of compensation, she says.

“I’m spending my own money on what I buy,” Oliver says.

And like White, she sometimes also receives store credit to spend.

“Old Navy has offered me [credits] to buy from them,” Oliver says. “But they don’t tell me what specific items to buy.”

“The videos that have done really well are because I enjoyed buying those items,” Oliver adds.

How influencers and retailers connect

Agencies like Mavely and Awin offer a link between influencer and retailer.

“It depends on what the brand is looking for, and we customize our research based on what the brands ask for — and recently there’s been a big shift to micro-creators [micro-influencers],” says Piper Donnelly, account director, Awin Global.

It’s a growing area for analytics and marketing agency Kroger Precision Marketing/84.51, which is owned by grocer The Kroger Co.

“Kroger shoppers make up half the U.S. household population,” says Brian Spencer, marketing director at Kroger Precision Marketing. “We want brands to be able to engage our shoppers … and we’re focusing on smaller influencers.

“We want to really curate our influencers,” he says.

Kroger Precision Marketing has different tiers of content creators it vets “to ensure it’s a safe environment,” he says. They typically have a minimum of 10,000 followers and go as high as 30,000 to 50,000 followers, which the agency considers a “macro-influencer,” he says.

It’s one way online baby registry Babylist is reaching out to new consumers. Babylist devotes 20% to 30% of its digital marketing budget to social media, says Ashley Malone, vice president performance marketing. It works with Mavely to connect with influencers.

From April 2023 to June, Babylist launched campaigns with various influencers, without specifying how many, to drive registration sign ups, Malone says. After working with Mavely, the online registry experienced a 15% increase in registry sign ups.

Going forward, Babylist will continue to use “a steady stream of influencers or creatives not only on our affiliate platform, but also in our social apps,” Malone says.

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“We needed a global overview of our entire [pool] of consumers and their interaction with the brand,” says Yoed Negri, global director of digital transformation, SodaStream.

Yoed Negri, global director of digital transformation, SodaStream International

Negri says SodaStream understands that its customers interact with the brand through more than one channel: email, SMS text and social media posts. But they weren’t sure how those interactions lead to an increase in conversion, he says.

“We understood that the current marketing infrastructure we had was not enough,” Negri says.

SodaStream’s marketing software provider, Optimove, offers artificial intelligence software. In 2022, SodaStream began using the capability in six markets, which represents about 10% of countries where SodaStream sells its products, Negri says. SodaStream products are sold in store at retail chains like Walmart Inc., Target Inc., and others, as well as online. The retailer sells directly to consumers in 20 markets online.

Test campaigns show how likely consumers are to convert

One way SodaStream engages with SodaStream drinkers is by sending recipes to customers they know like Pepsi-flavorings, diet flavorings and other options based on past orders. The retailer wanted to see how its customers responded to the recipes when received via email, SMS text or through social media posts, Negri says.

The beverage retailer declined to disclose the specific flavors presented, but Negri says the results showed that ads appealed differently to consumers depending on the channel. For example, for email campaigns, SodaStream saw a 3%-5% increase in conversion and 15% increase in average order value.

SMS text conversion rates were 10%-15% higher compared with email depending on the market, Negri says.

For social media posts, Negri says it’s important to note engagement and conversions.

“We see 7%-10% increases in engagement for personalized content and 5%-7% increase in conversions,” he says.

SodaStream conducted the tests over a period of four to eight weeks in late 2022, Negri says. Optimove’s AI software learns how consumers are responding to ads within six to eight weeks, Negri says.

Using AI to anticipate conversion

When deciding which campaigns to propose to which customers, Optimove’s software uses the data it collected to determine the best campaign for each, says Pini Yakuel, CEO of Optimove.

A retailer might decide to send a marketing campaign or a promotion, such as a birthday promotion, via email, SMS or a combination of both methods. Optimove’s AI determines the best combination for each customer base, Yakuel says.

Digital marketers also use Optimove’s analytics for the following:

• The likelihood to convert.
• The likelihood of becoming a top spender.
• The risk of churn (the measure of how many customers stop using a product).
• Likelihood of reactivating (also known as re-engagement, where retailers reach out to people who have previously expressed interest or engaged but have since disengaged with communications).

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