Brands will for the first time be able to measure the impact of out-of-home sampling campaigns on sales performance, following a partnership between brand agency Sense and retail data company Crisp.
The collaboration “directly links out-of-home sampling campaigns – from street teams and city activations to festivals and commuter hubs – to verified sales performance across the UK’s five biggest grocery retailers” the companies said.
Sampling has “long relied on guesswork” when it comes to gauging the impact on sales, they added. While in-store sampling can readily be matched to the store’s sales data, brands have struggled to get the same clarity for out-of-store activity, typically relying on coupon redemption or consumer feedback surveys.
“Out-of-home sampling has always been a powerful way to get products into people’s hands, but without credible sales measurement, it’s been underutilised and undervalued,” said Nick Adams, CEO at Sense.
“This partnership… finally closes the loop, offering live, independent, verifiable sales data that brands can easily plug into their reporting. No more claimed intent or skewed feedback, just hard, actionable data to inform strategy. It sets a much-needed new benchmark for the category.”
A recent Sense-commissioned survey of around 100 senior fmcg marketers found 75% of those who hadn’t run a sampling campaign in the past two years said it was because they didn’t believe it drives value or in-store sales. And nearly all (95%) of that group said they would reconsider sampling if they could prove its impact on sales.
A further 62% of marketers currently running sampling campaigns said they receive no sales data at all to validate ROI.
The integration feeds SKUtrak’s EPoS data directly into Sense’s measurement framework, so brands can build “a clear picture of what happened after the sample: where and when sales increased, and by how much”.
“Sampling has always had strategic value, but without clear evidence of its impact, it’s struggled to earn its place at the top table,” said Guy Cuthbert, founder of Atheon (the original developers of SKUtrak) and now general manager & SVP at Crisp. “This changes that. By tying sampling activity directly to verified in-store sales, we’re helping brands turn great real-world experiences into measurable commercial results.”
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