Smithfield Foods: A better approach to CRM

Smithfield Foods makes products people love. After all, who amongst us can resist the allure of freshly cooked strips of bacon? Looking to create a dialogue with its customers, and deliver a more personalized experience, it needed to reimagine its CRM program. The strategy: remove all behavioral barriers to participation, create a segmentation approach based on the consumer’s relationship with food, and deliver a steady stream of appetizing content. The resulting Friends & Family program epitomizes the hometown character of the company, and its dedication to bringing people around the table. Participation grew ten-fold in just the first year, and has been directly attributed to a significant growth in sales.

Smithfield’s existing program was expensive, under-performing, and yielding little to no data.

First step: augment existing data and profile it

Created four segments that embrace their product portfolio in different ways; enrollees self-select the “persona” they feel best describes them, which is adjusted over time as data is gathered

Created an architecture that was more experiential, less cumbersome

Core to the strategy: optimize data collection at every opportunity

A totally revamped, emotionally-centered, and customer-friendly CRM approach

Web site, e-newsletter, and social media

In less than a year, Smithfield Friends & family outperformed the original program on every metric including registrations, which has surpassed 200,000 active members in just one year

CREDITS — AGENCY: DONERCX. RICH FELDMAN: PROGRAM STRATEGY, CAMPAIGN STRATEGY, CREATIVE STRATEGY, CREATIVE DIRECTION. SHOUTOUTS: BEN APPLEBAUM, CREATIVE DIRECTOR; MICHAEL NEWMAN, DATA ANALYTICS, ANGELA HOMITZ, ACCOUNT DIRECTOR.