Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

Ben & Jerry’s Homemade is one of the premier ice cream manufactures and started the ice cream chunk trend.

MyWebGrocer’s objective was to get 50,000 new members in the Ben & Jerry’s email club by offering a coupon across our digital Ad Network covering 92 US retailers.

Three things needed to happen for a successful campaign:

• Gain awareness with consumers.
• Work with a 3rd party for coupon rendering.
• Obtain legitimate verified email addresses.

MyWebGrocer developed the ad creative’s with a strong call to action, the landing page, the email verification and the technical requirements to work with the 3rd party coupon vendor. The ads were placed across the MyWebGrocer Ad Network inviting consumer who were already making their buying decisions to sign up to receive a coupon.

The campaign was fulfilled after only 4 days.

The response from Ben & Jerry’s “Really? 50,000 in 4 days? WOW!” They were thrilled with the immediate results and the high quality of the emails. And, the additional brand awareness and sales brought significant extra value to the campaign. The calls and emails to their customer care center solidified the campaign a success.

Cheers!
Courtney

Brandkeys ran a survey and found that consumers are making their buying decisions based on perceived brand value ahead of costs. This includes store brands as well as products. The survey was done in recently in the current economy so it is interesting that customers are still loyal to brands that provide value before lower price only.

So this sets up a great environment for expanding loyalty programs including online channels. Think about your loyalty and how to expand it because from this survey, consumers are watching.

Here is a link to Brandweek’s e-magazine article:
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3i615140fc749e4798117296a07597b88e?imw=Y

Today’s MorningNewsBeat.com had more headlines about Wal-Mart making a strong effort to sell groceries on-line as part of their ship-to-store program. Wal-Mart is not a new force in the US retail landscape, nor are they new to the grocery world as they have steadily moved up to be the largest grocery distributor in the US.

Many grocery retailers don’t consider Wal-Mart a threat, or at least haven’t felt that they have competed with Wal-Mart historically. One of the predictable effects of a down economy is that buyers are more price conscious. Wal-Mart has consistently sold on price as shown in their very simple ad campaign where they tell you how much money you can save per year buying your groceries from them versus a traditional grocery store. Still think they aren’t a threat?

It’s difficult to compete on price against such a behemoth when margins are already pennies on the dollar, so you need to look at value. Offering additional services to your existing customer base is a great reason to keep them in your store and out of the big boxes, and offering online shopping will help further increase sales by giving consumers the ability to shop for nearly every item that’s in the store. Consumers are stretching their money and spend more time researching before purchasing, so making sale and promotional information available to your customers can help increase sales. Stores where customers talk, text or email from mobile devices while shopping are stores that you should consider for online shopping if they don’t have it already.

So what can you do about it? If you’re already in on-line grocery you can do more with it. In-store promotional materials, email marketing campaigns, branded coupon pages and customer acquisition programs are just some of the tools we can use to keep you ahead of the curve.

Kellogg’s is the world’s leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods. MyWebGrocer’s objective was to increase sales in Kellogg’s snack category.

Solution: Kellogg’s eBusiness team partnered with MyWebGrocer to target moms, a key demographic, to drive incremental sales and build brand loyalty.

Kellogg’s snack campaign ran from August to December of 2008. Kellogg’s utilized MyWebGrocer’s targeted daily recipe and weekly specials emails to promote the August Fuel for School campaign and featured snack products.

MyWebGrocer designed nearly 300 creatives to serve across the network. MyWebGrocer optimized creative weekly to improve click through rates and influence sales. Rotating creative allowed MyWebGrocer to emphasize products based on factors including seasonality and new flavor introductions.

MyWebGrocer created unique landing pages featuring Kellogg’s products that enabled online users to add products to their lists and to purchase products.

Results: In 2008, Kellogg’s snacks sold on MyWebGrocer increased 81% over the previous year almost double the initial goal.

Kamela Warren, eBusiness Manager: “Kellogg’s online advertising with MyWebGrocer has shown double-digit product sales growth online from 2007 to 2008. The ability to track and report sales enable us to test and forecast what works in online grocery.”

-Cheers
Courtney

Every online advertising campaign is different. Objectives, messaging and overall strategy depend on what is being advertised, where, to whom, and to what end. Advertisers have been making media buys and evaluating campaign success based on these factors for decades. Online marketers know no one media mix will prove most effective for everyone. Why, then, do so many insist on cycling through the same creative?

The creative, or actual image, being shown in any given advertising placement is the single most important aspect of any online advertising campaign, and not only for reasons a brand manager would recite, like positioning and brand identity. Creative are golden opportunities to connect with consumers on a personalized level, to increase brand equity and to drive engagement through relevant content that augments the site’s focus.

Think about it. It seems obvious that creative running on the New York Times home page would send a different message than those serving across Facebook. After all, you’re reaching different users with different interests and divergent needs. If an objective is to target multiple demographics, it should be obvious based on creative content.

For advertisers running online campaigns, creative should be customized based on where they will serve and who will see them. For publishers managing those campaigns, creative should be optimized based on back end performance metrics and current observations. Otherwise, brands miss out on the benefits niche online environments provide to engage consumers and drive behavior.

Rachel