For CPG marketers, accurately measuring the return on investment (ROI) of promotions remains a struggle, especially for the in-store purchases that still make up about 80% of sales, despite the growth of e-commerce. Ibotta today (Nov. 3) has launched a new tool that seeks to solve this problem, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
LiveLift is an in-flight campaign measurement and optimization tool that the promotions platform says can help drive incremental sales at scale and reimagine a key form of performance marketing. It works by analyzing billions of transactions from over 80 leading retailers that use Ibotta's platform, including Walmart, Instacart and Doordash, comparing statistically matched groups of consumers that have and haven't seen campaigns to determine baseline sales and sales lift generated by promotions.
The tool has been piloted by consumer packaged goods (CPG) giants Kimberly-Clark and Hain Celestial, as well as by Liquid Death. The disruptor beverage brand saw a 19% sales lift and 23% lift in daily units moved in a test of LiveLift. For Liquid Death Chief Media Officer Benoit Vatere, the tool is a “no-brainer.”
“To be able to optimize toward incrementality and to put promo dollars against incremental sales, and really guide what kind of incremental goals you want to hit, we couldn’t do that [before],” Vatere said.
Fuller funnels for CPGs
Ibotta plans to roll out LiveLift more broadly with additional features around increased measurement frequency and greater optimization capabilities. The tool is the platform’s latest development intended to improve performance marketing for CPG brands.
“Marketers have come to expect precise measurement in their digital marketing efforts, but historically did not have access to the same level of capabilities for digital promotions,” said Bryan Leach, CEO and founder of Ibotta, in a statement. “LiveLift enables brands to reinvent their national promotion strategy, allowing them to drive incremental volume at scale with control and efficiency.”
For Liquid Death, Ibotta’s LiveLift allows a brand that has been traditionally focused on top-of-funnel marketing — without major media buys — to bring consumers through the funnel with temporary price reduction promos and increase incremental revenue.
“When you cannot really control where your promotions are going and who it’s going in front of, it can be very challenging,” Vatere said. “If you start getting promos in the hand of someone that was planning to buy anyway… it becomes very expensive.”
The rollout of LiveLift follows the recent announcement of a partnership between Ibotta and Circana, the technology and analytics company, to leverage Circana’s Household Lift measurement and AI-powered analytics. Ibotta campaigns resulted in strong incremental sales that exceeded category benchmarks, per Circana Household Lift studies. Likewise, Liquid Death sees Ibotta campaigns powered by LiveLift as a key component of its lower-funnel efforts — especially for a brand with a smaller budget than giants in the beverage category.
“The biggest issue with smaller brands is thinking because they have less dollars, they should just be in the lower funnel,” Vatere said. “You need to have both. The mix has to always be the same, [but] the dollar amounts will vary.”
