Showcasing the sales potential for beacon-powered campaigns within supermarkets, Hillshire Farms recently upped purchase intent for its products by 20 times after capturing more than 194,000 engagements via beacon provider inMarket’s Mobile to Mortar platform.

The food marketer sought to ramp up brand awareness and purchase intent for its American Craft sausage links by targeting grocery store shoppers using a variety of loyalty applications. Hillshire Farms leveraged inMarket’s Mobile to Mortar network to deploy beacons in supermarkets and serve customers with relevant messages designed to encourage them to choose its products from the shelf.

“As a marketer, the moments when people are open to influence are the moments that matter,” said Todd Dipaola, founder and CEO of inMarket. “In a grocery store, this moment is when a shopper is standing next to the product trying to make a purchase decision and because beacons are so precise, they allow brands to reach out and engage a shopper at the moment a purchase decision is being made.

“This is something only beacons and first-party applications can do,” he said. “That is what makes beacons and app partnerships so valuable inside the retail environment.

“Beacons drive sales because they engage shoppers at the exact moment they are most receptive to receiving guidance; in-store while making the purchase decision. This places a brand or product at the top of a consumer’s mind when they are actually ready to purchase something, driving an immediate sale rather than relying on a shopper’s memory to recall an ad they saw from three days before.”

Grilling up mobile engagement
Hillshire Farms teamed up with inMarket to roll out the beacon-powered campaign, which took place from May through June of this year. The objective was to target shoppers in stores such as Kroger, Safeway, Target and Walmart.

InMarket’s Mobile to Mortar network reaches approximately 50 million consumers through third-party shopping apps including CheckPoints, List Ease, Key Ring and Epicurious.

Hillshire Farms tapped inMarket’s platform in a bid to persuade more consumers to try its American Craft sausage links by serving them contextual messages via beacons and geofencing technology.

Shopping app users received a customized message curated by inMarket that showcased the quality of Hillshire Farms’ products and invited them to put its sausage links into their shopping carts.

For example, one creative unit sent to List Ease users prompted them to add American Craft sausage links directly to their preexisting in-app shopping lists.

This enabled Hillshire Farms to stay at the forefront of grocery shoppers’ minds during the most critical moment of the purchase journey.

“List Ease is a synchronized shopping list app that reminds consumers about their family’s list,” Mr. Dipaola said. “Upon the shopper opening the app in-store, they experience a native engagement letting them know about the product and allowing them to add the item directly to their list.

“Other apps can deliver this engagement demonstrating deliver recipes ideas and other personalized content featuring a product.”

Cooking up strong results
During the campaign, Hillshire Farms saw purchase intent for its American Craft products increase by 20 times. It also garnered more than nine million brand impressions and 194,000 Mobile to Mortar engagements.

Additionally, the campaign yielded a 36 percent lift in brand awareness.

Beacon-powered campaigns have proven to resonate well with shoppers in grocery store settings.

Energizer recently elicited 411,641 in-store engagements through an inMarket beacon-powered campaign that served nearby shoppers, who were leveraging various shopping apps such as List Ease and Ziplist, an in-depth look at its EcoAdvanced batteries (see story).

However, the use of beacons is extending beyond delivering in-store promotions to predict when a shopper is most likely to visit a store so an offer can be sent in advance, resulting in a verified sales lift, according to recent data released by inMarket and Crescendo Collective (see story).

“Places of commerce, such as grocery and drug stores, are the optimal locations [at which] to implement beacons because consumers make $833 billion dollars worth of buying decisions per year in those buildings,” Mr. Dipaola said. “Modern consumers overwhelmingly use their phones to inform themselves about what they buy and are most open to guidance on mobile devices.

“Brands see enormous ROI reaching shoppers when and where it matters, versus in a geofence around a store.”