Family Center Farm & Home: Fall Digital Promotion

Printed circulars for retail stores carry a hefty price tag for both printing and mailing. Family Center made a bold break from print to all digital – something that many stores have tried to do in the past and failed. Family Center would launch a two-week sale to go digital only.

A social media campaign was planned to complement their normal email messaging, using Facebook targeting to replicate the print edition’s wide reach to those who aren’t already subscribed to emails. A single landing page was created to showcase sales items and coupon downloads. Paid ads in multiple objectives (reach, traffic, etc.) were sent to engaged Facebook fans, including each store location. A lookalike audience of people who match current customer profiles was also targeted.

Family Center’s point of sale system tracked sales of ad-highlighted items against the most recent print version’s performance of ad-highlighted items. A set of coupons was produced as an additional metric to increase immediacy of the digital offering and offer the ability to track in-person conversion from social marketing.

Family Center Farm & Home isn’t going back to the expense of a print mailer anytime soon. The results were an overall storewide sales increase of 10.5% over their best performing print mailer (previously a Black Friday holiday print mailer in 2017). Fall 2018-over-Fall 2017 ad sales were higher by more than 25%.