How we put first-party data into overdrive for Smithfield’s email campaigns

Do you know who your most engaged users are in your email campaigns? If you don’t, know this: understanding this segment of your users is a key initiative to making the most of your first-party data, which will only be more important as cookies vanish from the marketing landscape.

We rolled up our sleeves to identify and understand the most engaged users for Smithfield, an American CPG company devoted to the mission of producing “Good food. Responsibly.” The Virginia-based company approached us midway through 2023 to tackle the goal of improving their weekly email open rate.

To do this, we broke the initiative into three stages:

1. identifying Smithfield’s most engaged audience segment;
2. crafting campaigns to increase engagement in that audience segment;
3. increasing the number of Smithfield subscribers in that audience segment.

When we dug into Smithfield’s email campaign history as part of the first phase, we recognized that Smithfield was sending to just two audience segments a month: 90-day engaged (opened/clicked an email in the last 90 days), and 365-day engaged (same logic, just expanded to 365 days). We immediately queried Smithfield’s database to find users who had engaged within the last 30 days and got a return of 16K users – a small but significant base.

In phase two, we developed a single email for the 30-day audience to gauge reaction and effectiveness. Though the brand is not direct to consumer, Smithfield was promoting a contest partnership with NASCAR ($250 in free groceries!) that we knew would be ideal email content. The email outperformed everyone’s expectations with a 51.35% open rate – nearly double Smithfield’s average open rate.

After the test email, we decided to send a second email to the 30-day engaged users featuring a popular recipe but no incentive, which was in line with Smithfield’s usual email formats. The email, which featured popular sandwich recipes, registered a 42.22% open rate.

Given the results, we decided to nurture the relationship with this audience by incorporating them in monthly send calendars, setting us on a path to fostering a loyal audience and garnering better insights on active subscribers. The 30-day audience continues to be the highest-performing segment for the Smithfield brand, with a 41% average open rate.

In phase three, we built a strategy to move more of Smithfield’s subscriber base into the 30-day engaged segment. This strategy included campaigns with specific messaging designed to re-engage old contacts, with more consistent and frequent sending schedules. By the end of the year, we had built the 30-day engaged segment from 16K users to 47K users – a 194% increase.

If you’re looking to drive increased engagement and brand affinity in your email campaigns – and make better use of your first-party data in general – we’re here to help! Contact us at info@dmipartners.com to start a conversation.