Instacart
Retailer growth & enablement
In 2022, the Retailer Growth team was formed and I had the opportunity to take a lead design role for consumer experiences. This new team’s mission was to focus on building growth drivers for retailers and Instacart – specifically, those focused on affordability. The team focused on a two-phase strategic approach which focused on retailer empowerment on the Instacart app.
Retailer Funded Marketing (RFM) was the first initiative that unlocked a new revenue stream for Instacart using retailer funding for promotions, and was also the first initiative where the e-commerce organization launched a feature on Instacart App. Since our launch, we’ve reached $192M in attributed GMV, 2,9x ROAS, 24M customer savings to date, and $6M in retailer funding.
With the second phase focused on In-store marketing. The team worked towards an emphasis on converting in-store customers to Instacart using retailer tactics to drive higher online growth.
Historically, Instacart's core growth strategy centered around funding offers for retailers in the hope of getting customers to shop at new stores. However, the team recognized that wasn't the most scaleable strategy and shifted towards retailer enablement, allowing retailers to fund their own offers and campaigns and allow them to define their personal and unique strategy on Instacart. We partnered with retailers closely to define new affordability tactics encouraging new user growth within the Instacart app as well as converting customers who typically shop in-store.
Measuring success is dependent on the offer/campaign we build for retailers. It could range from acquiring new customers to driving habitual growth. Ultimately, the team was measured on GMV (Gross Merchandising Value) across our strategic initiatives.
There was initial skepticism with the new shift in strategy across the Instacart org. The team had to show immediate value and focus on impact metrics to communicate to teams the need to emphasize affordability through retailed funded offers. This required consistent collaboration with the onboarding, home, and storefront teams to add experiences to their surfaces.
The current model of growth was focused on Instacart funding retailer offers to customers. This model created a lackluster experience that had limited opportunity for customers. Instacart couldn't fund every single offer and have them be compelling. So this led to a new shift in strategy and encouraged retailers to fund their own offers on Instacart based on the goals they were trying to achieve.
This was a new surface to not only the e-commerce team, but to the company as a whole. We've only operated our growth strategy in one way but as we've grown and improved our retailer partnerships, we wanted to become more of a retailer enablement organization. By providing the right tooling structure and consumer experience for retailers to be confident and motivated to build campaigns through Instacart. There were a few steps to achieve this, but ultimately, we had to sell this vision to product leadership. Requiring monthly leadership meetings with our VP of products across ads and the consumer experience, and collaborating in person to define multiple entry points to tackle higher growth acquisition.
Ultimately, the team wouldn't be successful if we couldn't get the retailers to fund their own offers on Instacart. And they wouldn't do that if they couldn't accomplish their own personal goals. So the team set out to create a scaleable and flexible offering experience that allowed retailers to choose different offer types based on their core goals.
Example of creating a new offer:
The retailer growth team had the opportunity to collaborate with teams across all surfaces. Allowing us to build key relationships while implementing company-wide growth levers.
The team identified 6 key offers that retailers could use to drive their growth goals. The core offer types that we introduced to Instacart are the following:
$X off
Drive retailer user acquisition by offering customers $X off when they shop at a new retailer
Free delivery
Drive retailer user acquisition by offering customers free delivery if they shop at a retailer for the first time
% off with max $ amount
Drive retailer user acquisition by offering customers a certain percentage off in their total order
Get $X off after linking your loyalty account
Drive higher loyalty linkage by offering customers additional deals by linking their loyalty account
Get $X off a collection
Drive higher engagement to curated collections by the retailer
Continuous offers
Drive retailer user acquisition by offering customers multiple offers such as get $10 off your next 3 orders if you shop at a new retailer
One of the key areas the team focused on was the home experience. The team identified this space as a needed surface area as customers use the home experience for discovering new deals and stores. Making it the perfect space to introduce retailer offers. We collaborated with the home team to add on to existing formats (the signpost grid) and develop new formats that scale with the growth system.
Signpost grid
Offers for you
In partnership with the rewards team, the team was able to introduce a new module on home-labeled offers for you. A space-to-house retailer offers and Instacart offers under one module. This allowed us to create habitually to enable customers to focus on one module for all of their rewards and offers on Instacart.
One of the most engaging formats on the home experience was what we called the signpost grid. The grid provided the most visibility to customers on new retailer offers. Because of the limited content space with the grid, the team worked closely with content to create a scaleable framework that provided transparency to customers without using any bait & switch methods.
When a user selects a retailer to shop in, the user is taken to the storefront to start shopping. Within this experience, the team focused on visualizing the offers. In collaboration with the core growth team, we were able to stabilize a growth system that showed progression whenever a customer adds to their cart. The team introduced what we call the eyebrow banner that carries throughout the customer shopping experience. However, the different offers may have different requirements and steps depending on the complexity of the offer
Default offer experience
With our initial approach of gathering more customers to try new retailers, the team wanted to focus on getting customers to convert from in-store customers to online customers.
90% of shopping still happens offline. Converting even a small percentage of them yields large online growth. Based on similar campaigns we've launched the team expected we can achieve a conversion rate of 2% amounting to a $30M H2 in period iGTV opportunity.
With this opportunity, the team collaborated with product marketing and retailer partners to encourage engagement through a concept called "bag-stuffers". An experience that has curated posters and deals for customers to scan.
We focus on a 3 phase journey.
We considered ourselves service designers for this project, so it was imperative that we considered the in-store experience. We collaborated closely with retailers and product marketing to define the right moments to communicate Instacart's bag-stuffers for customers to take home. We identified key areas such as checkout and entry way posters to communicate the app and the offer.
When a customer first sees the poster they are instructed to scan the poster with their camera. One of the key experiences we wanted to focus on was making it as clear as possible that they are getting an offer and they can enter the Instacart app without having to sign up. The only information we required early on was email so we could communicate with the customer through CRM.
Depending on the offer retailers provide, customers can earn up to X amount in savings. When that's the case, we provide a simplified experience that builds anticipation and excitement for customers to see what offer they receive.
When customers are taken to the Instacart experience, we want to reduce the amount of noise they see when they first start shopping. We've found customers convert at a significantly higher rate when they add their first item within the first 10 minutes. So we wanted to take away any upsells, comms, or anything else that we felt could limit that experience. We came up with the concept of a simplified storefront. Focusing on items locally to the customer so there may be more relevancy. The customer could continue to the actual storefront page as well.
When a customer completes their shop and enters their cart experience, is when we communicate that they must complete their signup process to get the deal. This allows customers to see whether or not Instacart is right for them without needing to create an account or download the app.
This was a massive effort that pushed Instacart toward a new direction in growth and marketing. It allowed the team to think outside the box and strengthen our partnerships with retailers. This 2 phase strategy allowed us to focus on conversion, acquisition, growth, and retention and I'm proud of the work the team was able to do. These initiatives led to significant growth to customer growth which is still considered the most successful initiative in retailer growth. The North Star is still being built but existing elements of the experience are live today.