How a pet food brand drove 1,516 verified Walmart purchases in one campaign

A premium pet food brand sold in Walmart stores nationwide generated 1,516 receipt-verified purchases in a single campaign, the largest verified-purchase total Crafted has run to date, at $11.03 in media per purchase, while building a first-party list of 11,831 pet-parent emails.

The Challenge

National distribution at Walmart is the prize most emerging pet brands chase, and it comes with a catch: 4,600+ doors means 4,600+ places velocity gets measured. Pet food is one of the most habitual purchases in the store. Shoppers buy the same brand on autopilot, so getting a pet parent to put something new in the cart takes more than awareness, it takes a reason to switch on this specific trip.

The brand needed real trial volume at national scale, and it needed every one of those trials verified at the register rather than claimed by an ad platform.

The Approach

The campaign paired a free-product rebate with creator content and national paid amplification.

• Creator UGC showing real pets and real shopping trips to Walmart
• A free-product offer on the brand's wet pouches, redeemed through receipt upload, verifying both the purchase and the store it happened in
• National Meta targeting, viable because the pouches were on shelf in every door
• First-party data capture at opt-in, building a pet-parent database the brand owns

The rebate did double duty. It removed the risk of trying a new food, and it turned every redemption into a verified data point.

The Results

Every number below comes from verified receipts and captured opt-ins.

• 11,831 pet-parent emails captured, a first-party audience the brand owns outright
• 1,516 receipt-verified purchases, a 13% opt-in-to-verified-purchase conversion
• $11.03 in media per verified purchase, against a $13.39 product
• The recorded retail value of verified purchases came out to roughly 1.2x the media spend. That is a gross product-value measure on verified receipts, not incremental ROAS, and we present it that way on purpose.

Why Scale Matters Here

Fifteen hundred verified purchases is a volume story a buyer can't dismiss. Sample sizes this large turn a campaign into a benchmark: the brand now knows its cost per verified Walmart customer to the cent, at meaningful scale, and the store locations on those receipts show exactly where new trial is concentrating across the national footprint. That store-level view is data the brand can bring straight into its next category review.

Why This Worked

• Free offers break habit. Pet food is a switch-resistant category. Removing first-purchase risk is the strongest lever for getting a new brand into the cart.
• National shelf presence let media run wide. With the product in every door, there was no wasted impression problem, and paid social could optimize purely for conversion.
• Receipt verification made the scale credible. Fifteen hundred purchases claimed by a platform is a pitch. Fifteen hundred receipts is evidence.

Next Steps

With a verified cost-per-purchase benchmark established at national scale, the brand is weighing offer structures that improve margin per redemption while holding conversion, and using the store-level trial data and its new 11,831-strong email list to inform where deeper support pays off. The measurement layer stays the same, so every iteration produces directly comparable numbers.