Family Dollar Converts New Buyers with Smart Ads

Dollar Tree's Family Dollar has zeroed in on personalized video ads as a solution to consumers’ declining interest in print circulars following a successful test campaign. “Just as newspaper readership has dropped, we’ve seen print declining,” Family Dollar creative director Bridget Cusick told the Path to Purchase Institute. “And so, we really wanted to see if another method of delivery would help us improve performance.” The retailer leveraged an existing partnership with Aki Technologies, which works with Dollar Tree's third-party Chesapeake Media Group retail media network, to amplify the sales and Smart Coupon offers that were already scheduled to run within its traditional weekly circular with a programmatic campaign tapping into Aki’s AI technology to tailor video ads to individual customers at precise moments. Running from Feb. 7 through April 10, 2021, across various mobile applications, mobile web and desktop destinations, the virtual ads were targeted to Family Dollar’s Smart Coupon users as well as new buyers, defined as unidentifiable households near Family Dollar locations that hadn’t shopped there in the past. “It was radius and look-alike targeting for those new buyers,” Cusick said. Mobile signals ranging from location and time of day to the type of app or content being consumed and motion of the device helped determine which personalized creative to serve at each unique moment in time. “The most important signal that we utilize when serving video is just understanding receptivity, and we believe understanding the motion of the device really plays into [that],” Aki vice president of sales Matt Knust told P2PI. The campaign delivered some 72,000 creative ad variants in total, each concluding with a map showing the recipient’s closest store. As reported by Nielsen Buyer Insights, it increased revenue beyond the expected baseline during the course of the campaign as well as a two-week post period, with new buyers being the most responsive by far. (See Sidebar for full results.) “It was such an impressive result that it was immediately clear to us that [video circular] was something we were going to obviously put into our regular media plans going forward,” Cusick said. “We were very pleased with our ability to do dynamic creative, and the actual shopper response.” Chesapeake Media Group While the campaign and Family Dollar’s own 2022 media plans are separate and apart from Chesapeake Media Group, the tactic of the video circular is something that Family Dollar is considering as an option within the retail media network. For now, brands seeking to tap into this capability can run non-cooperative video ad campaigns with Chesapeake Media Group. Aki’s partnership with Chesapeake Media Group involves powering all the off-site media that drives shoppers back to the Family Dollar app or website – specifically paid digital media, as parent company Inmar handles the social commerce aspect — including targeting, media buying, creative building and analysis of results. The duo recently won the "Best Collaboration" category in the 2021 Modern Retail Awards by highlighting a six-week, localized incentive program executed for Clorox Co.'s flagship brand that utilized both personalized video ads and standard banners to drive more than 100,000 store visits and an overall 11.9% sales lift. Separate from its work with Family Dollar, Aki's is also the recipient of a 2021 OmniShopper Award from P2PI in the "Digital: Mobile Activation" category for a personalized campaign supporting PepsiCo's new better-for-you snack brand Off The Eaten Path.

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