When a leading pet food brand wanted to increase ratings and reviews in preparation for a new product launch, Ansira helped support their product sampling marketing campaign with a robust audience targeting strategy.
The challenge
A pet food brand wanted to boost ratings and reviews for a product launch
A leading pet food brand was preparing to launch a new product and needed to generate reviews and ratings ahead of time. A product sampling marketing campaign was decided as the best course of action, allowing consumers to trial the product with limited sample availability. The goal of this campaign was to drive household acquisitions, loyalty, and, ultimately, purchases.
The solution
Ansira helped execute a sophisticated audience targeting strategy
With the help of Ansira, the pet food brand leveraged an audience targeting strategy and SKU matching model to drive sample product sign-ups. Using this approach, the Ansira team determined the ideal number of reviews per SKU needed for the product launch: 40+ reviews with an overall rating of 4 or more stars.
The plan was to conduct product sampling marketing with an audience in the brand’s database that was most likely to drive sample sign-ups. Elements of this campaign would include:
- A solicitation email for sample sign-ups
- An intuitive landing page for sample selections
- A thank you email
- A sign-up list matched to product samples based on three selections
- A review and ratings request email
The audience selection process identified two potential audience groups for the email send. The primary audience, who would be included in the first email send, consisted of adult and senior dog owners of 5+ years who were known to engage heavily with enterprise emails. This audience was also identified by their ultra/premium buyer status, coupon interactions, positive review submissions, and wet/dry food purchasing behavior.
The secondary audience, which would be used for a second email send if needed, comprised adult and senior dog owners of 5+ years who exhibited medium engagement with enterprise emails and were known as ultra/premium brand buyers.
Ansira analyzed these two audiences and made educated predictions on their expected open and click-through rates using historical email averages and inferences based on content type.
The results
Product sampling campaign drives significant increase in conversions and subscribers
The results of the product sampling campaign were similar to the predictions forecasted, producing a 56% conversion rate for review clicks and an 11% form conversion rate. The brand also gained 2K new subscribers through this targeted sampling.
The ratings and reviews campaign also generated significant learnings and opportunities for the brand to improve future campaigns, including:
- A new group of reviewers and super fans to offer samples to in the future
- User-generated content the brand can use for additional marketing initiatives
- Opportunity to leverage further communications with positive reviewers to drive loyalty
- Opportunity to showcase product innovations to negative reviewers as a win-back strategy
