How a retailer added a brand-funded growth channel and made customers more valuable
Days to category adoption by new customers
Average additional shopping trips within 30 Days
Average increase in ecomm spend per visit within 60 days
Zero cost to Retailer. Completely brand-funded.
The opportunity
The retailer had a broader ambition than adding another customer perk.
It wanted to improve the ecomm experience and generate measurable customer growth. It also wanted to expand its shopper marketing and retail media offering with a differentiated channel capable of delivering more than impressions and clicks.
Swish Commerce’s merchandise as media model was a natural fit.
The physical product became the media unit: funded by brands, targeted using first-party data, delivered within an existing order, and measured through subsequent purchase behavior.
The retailer also needed to create stronger internal alignment.
Like many retailers, its retail media, shopper marketing, ecomm, and merchant organizations operated with different priorities, budgets, and definitions of success. The retailer wanted a program that could connect those teams around shared outcomes rather than require one organization to win at another’s expense.
Swish created that bridge:
- Retail media gained a new, monetizable channel tied to measurable commerce outcomes
- Shopper marketing gained a high-engagement, brand-funded activation
- Merchant teams gained a tool to accelerate new items, expand category participation, and restore product velocity
- ecomm gained more frequent visits, higher spend per visit, and frictionless paths to repeat purchase
- Customers received relevant full-size products within a shopping journey they already used
The retailer was not simply adding another sampling program.
It was adding a growth platform connecting media, merchandising, customer experience, and commerce.
Merchandise became media. Media drove discovery. Discovery drove retail growth.
The swish approach
A lightweight path to launch
The retailer joined the Swish Network through a lightweight integration with its existing ecomm platform partner.
Because much of the integration could be enabled through the retailer’s existing technology ecosystem, the program launched with minimal internal technical lift.
Under the Swish Network model used by the retailer, participation was free to the retailer, while participating brands funded the campaigns and full-size product experiences.
Swish managed the intelligence layer behind each campaign, using first-party purchase history and real-time basket signals to identify qualified shoppers and match them with relevant products.
The retailer selected Swish’s push-based surprise-and-delight model.
Traditional pull-based sampling requires customers to discover an offer, opt in, claim a product, or complete another step before receiving it.
Swish reversed that process.
When a customer qualified, a free full-size product was placed directly into the shopper’s upcoming pickup or delivery order. There was no separate claim or request process.
After checkout, the customer received a text message explaining that a participating brand was providing the product with the upcoming order.
The experience was unexpected, relevant, and frictionless. The retailer delivered something genuinely valuable to the customer, while Swish handled targeting, campaign orchestration, customer communication, and measurement behind the scenes.
Traditional sampling asks customers to find and claim the experience. Swish brings the right product directly to the right customer.
The strategy
Measuring what customers did next
The retailer did not want to evaluate the program through products distributed or anecdotal feedback alone.
It wanted to know whether receiving a relevant full-size product changed future shopping behavior.
Swish compared two closely aligned audiences:
- Qualified customers who received a relevant product
- Qualified customers who met the same campaign criteria but did not receive one
The behavioral differences were clear.
Recipients returned more often, spent more per visit, entered categories they had never previously purchased through ecomm, and repurchased discovered products through both digital and physical-store channels.
The product created a positive customer moment.
More importantly, it created measurable downstream value.
Campaign Impact
Days to category adoption by new customers
Average additional shopping trips within 30 Days
Average increase in ecomm spend per visit within 60 days
Zero cost to Retailer. Completely brand-funded.
Within 14 days: new category adoption
When shoppers received a relevant product from a category they had never previously purchased through ecomm, they began entering that category in as little as 14 days and continued purchasing within it afterward.
The effect appeared across multiple areas of the store.
Customers who had never purchased frozen products online began adding frozen items to future orders after receiving a relevant frozen product.
Customers with no prior ecomm purchase history in confection, candy, or snacks similarly entered those categories following a relevant product experience.
The program did not simply generate a purchase of the sampled SKU.
It expanded the number of categories the household shopped.
Within 30 days: 1.5 additional shopping trips
Recipients generated an average of 1.5 additional shopping trips within 30 days compared with similarly qualified customers who did not receive a product.
Swish was not only generating conversion for the sponsoring brand. It was increasing the customer’s engagement with the retailer.
More trips created more opportunities to capture spend across the entire store—not only within the sampled category.
Within 60 Days: $6.80 more per ecomm Visit
During the 60 days following the product experience, recipients spent an average of $6.80 more per ecomm visit than similarly qualified customers who did not receive a product.
The result was not $6.80 in total additional spend over the measurement period. Customers spent an average of $6.80 more each time they returned for an ecomm visit.
Combined with increased shopping frequency and broader category participation, Swish improved three connected drivers of customer value:
More trips × more spend per visit × more categories = more valuable customers
The participating brand funded the initial product experience.
The retailer captured the downstream value across future trips, baskets, and categories.
From ecomm discovery to omnichannel purchase
Digital grocery is designed for efficiency.
Customers often shop from lists, reorder familiar products, return to previous purchases, and rely on Buy It Again functionality.
That convenience is valuable, but it can also limit discovery. Shoppers may repeatedly purchase the same items and remain within the same categories.
Swish adds discovery without interrupting the shopping journey.
A relevant full-size product is placed directly into an existing order, giving the customer a meaningful at-home experience with something they might not have found independently.
The experience also creates a built-in advantage for repeat purchase.
Because the product was fulfilled within the customer’s order, it became visible within purchase history and familiar reorder pathways such as:
Buy it again. Previous purchases. Reorder.
The journey became:
Relevant discovery → Full-size experience → Purchase history → Easy rediscovery → Repeat purchase
Swish created the discovery moment. The retailer’s existing ecomm experience made the next purchase easier.
The impact also extended beyond ecomm.
Customers who first experienced products through pickup or delivery later purchased through both future online orders and physical stores:
Discovered through ecomm → Repurchased through ecomm → Purchased in store
Ecomm became the measurable point of discovery, while the resulting value flowed across the retailer’s broader business.
Featured results
14 DAYS
To category adoption among customers
Who had never purchased the category in ecomm
+1.5 TRIPS
Average additional shopping trips
Within 30 days
+$6.80 PER VISIT
Average increase in ecomm spend
Within 60 days
BRAND FUNDED
Full-size product experiences
Without retailer campaign cost
LIGHTWEIGHT INTEGRATION
Enabled through the retailer’s
existing ecomm technology ecosystem
OMNICHANNEL GROWTH
Discovered through ecomm
Repurchased online and in store
ONE SHARED GROWTH CHANNEL
Retail media, shopper marketing,
Ecomm, and merchandising win together
One platform. Three high-value growth engines.
1. Launch acceleration
New-to-store and new-to-shelf products face a difficult early challenge: generating awareness and velocity before shoppers naturally discover them.
Swish gave the retailer’s CPG partners a faster start.
From the beginning of a launch, brands could place relevant full-size products directly into the orders of qualified shoppers, helping them:
- Generate immediate awareness
- Accelerate first trial
- Build early household penetration
- Establish repeat purchase behavior
- Kick-start velocity during the critical launch window
For merchants, this created a stronger path to new-item success.
New products were not simply added to the assortment and left to compete for attention. Swish proactively introduced them to the customers most likely to adopt them.
2. Lapsed-buyer reactivation
Enterprise and legacy brands used the platform to solve a different challenge.
Using first-party purchase history, Swish could identify customers who had previously purchased a brand but had since lapsed.
Those shoppers could be reintroduced through a new flavor, format, product innovation, or a well-timed reminder of something they once purchased regularly.
That gave established brands a new way to rebuild household penetration and restore lost velocity—not only compete for new-to-brand customers.
3. Owned-brand and private-label growth
The retailer has not yet fully activated Swish for its own brands, but it intends to use the same infrastructure to support private-label and owned-brand priorities.
Potential applications include:
- Introducing new private-label products
- Converting national-brand buyers
- Accelerating owned and exclusive brands
- Growing strategically important, higher-margin categories
- Reactivating previous private-label customers
In that model, Swish becomes more than an external CPG activation channel.
It becomes reusable retailer growth infrastructure.
Brands can fund acquisition and reactivation.
Merchants can accelerate new-item velocity.
Retailers can use the same capability to grow their own highest-priority products.
Value for the retailer
The retailer value equation
Brands fund relevant, full-size product discovery.
Swish manages targeting, campaign orchestration, customer communication, and measurement.
The retailer delivers the experience through its existing commerce journey.
Customers discover, adopt, and repurchase products and categories.
The retailer gains more trips, higher spend per visit, broader category participation, omnichannel sales, and a differentiated media channel.
CONCLUSIONS
The retailer takeaway
This retailer did not have to choose between retail media revenue, merchant priorities, ecomm growth, and customer experience.
Swish aligned them.
Participating brands funded relevant full-size product discovery. Customers received something useful and personalized. Merchant teams gained a new way to accelerate products and expand category participation. Retail media added a differentiated, measurable channel.
And the retailer gained customers who returned more often, spent more per visit, and shopped more categories.
Once the capability was enabled, its potential extended well beyond individual CPG campaigns—from new-item acceleration and lapsed-buyer reactivation to future private-label growth.
Swish is not simply another sampling tactic.
It is a brand-funded growth channel that makes customers more valuable, gives brands measurable performance, and allows retail media, shopper marketing, ecomm, and merchandising to win together.
When a capability is brand-funded, lightweight to enable, measurable against a qualified control audience, and valuable across the organization, the larger risk may be leaving it inactive.
FEATURED RESULTS
About Swish
Swish Commerce is the Programmatic Sampling platform transforming Merchandise into Media.
Swish enables brands and retailers to add the right full-size product to the right customer order at the right time using retailer first-party data and real-time basket signals.
Unlike traditional sampling, Swish makes product trial targeted, automated and measurable—helping brands acquire new customers, drive repeat purchases and build retail velocity while enabling retailers to create discovery, category growth and incremental revenue.
Right basket. Right product. Right time