In 2023, social campaigns returned a 204:1 ROAS matched to POS data. A lift study against a control group showed a 9.42% increase in casual shopper visit velocity.
The challenge
Grocery is a functional category, so Gelson's had to win more visits from shoppers who already know it.
The first gap was awareness spend with unclear payoff. Gelson's invested steadily in online marketing to new prospects. It was unsure it could raise visit velocity or average ticket size.
A second challenge was no link from social to store. Gelson's could not attribute Facebook, Instagram and TikTok campaigns to in-store traffic and sales.
The remaining issue was casual shoppers were hard to reach. Gelson's lacked tools to segment and target casual shoppers who could become frequent visitors.
The solution
Create the data foundation: profiles from the flip of a switch. Gelson's turned on Adentro's secure WiFi portal with "the flip of a remote switch." Guest WiFi began collecting first-party customer profiles immediately. Customer Data tied each shopper's online journey to their in-store visits.
Audience Segmentation: isolating the casual shopper. Visit data identified casual shoppers by how often they came in. Gelson's targeted that group with social ads built to drive repeat visits.
Build a behavioral audience: modeling the best customers. The top audience was a prospecting audience modeled on POS data through the Affinity Network. The seed was the customers who spend the most and visit most often. A second audience was modeled on all customers. A retargeting audience ran alongside.
Activate paid audiences: creative by age group. Ads ran on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Promotional creative covered recipes, sales and food items. Creative was split by age: 21-44 and 45+.
Read the outcome: a controlled lift study plus POS matchback. Gelson's split casual shoppers into a test group that saw the ads and a control group that did not. Walk-Through Rate™ matched exposed shoppers to verified visits. In 2023, social results were matched to POS data for revenue and ROAS.
Why the combination mattered
Guest WiFi and Customer Data recognized customers; Audience Segmentation identified casual visitors; POS profiles helped seed Affinity Network audiences; social delivery reached selected shoppers; and matched visits plus register data reported outcomes. Only the exposed-versus-control study supports visit-velocity lift claims.
The results
- 204:1 social ROAS (2023)
- $0.28 social cost per walk-through
- 36K+ first-party contacts collected
- 498K+ additional contacts recognized by Adentro
- 37,575,000+ impressions
- 9.42% lift in visit velocity of casual shoppers versus a control group, over 60 days
- $175K increase in weekly sales over the same 60-day period