Built to grow with you: How Storefront Pro powers your digital grocery business

With ecommerce contributing significantly to the dollar growth of the industry — nearly 75% of total grocery dollar growth according to a recent report — grocery retailers need scalable solutions that can support this key channel; but many retailers face technical dependencies that hamper their agility and ability to launch growth initiatives at scale and speed. 

In addition to these challenges, there’s the cost of acquiring versus retaining to consider. Acquiring customers cost significantly more than retaining existing ones. According to the Harvard Business Review, retaining a customer costs 5-25X less than acquiring a new one. With many marketing efforts naturally lending themselves to acquisition, it is easy for retailers to over-index on acquisition, resulting in marketing campaigns that are successful but expensive.

What’s needed is a clear, structured re-engagement strategy so that retailers are retaining customers as part of their growth marketing efforts. This requires the right tools to engage with inactive and lapsed customers, backed up by insightful analytics and performance measurement to guide their way. 

Instacart has launched new capabilities in Storefront Pro, adding customer campaigns to the loyalty, merchandising and retail media capabilities already built into the ecommerce platform. Instacart has over a decade of online grocery experience and aggregated learnings from more than 1.6 billion lifetime orders. This enables retailers to continue to control their entire digital grocery experience, drive online shopping behavior and convert customer intent into higher lifetime value and engagement. This new turnkey solution provides the foundation for retailers to launch, scale, and measure lifecycle and evergreen campaigns — driving customer growth with greater speed, flexibility, and control. Available as a self-serve tool, retailers can launch targeted campaigns in minutes, activate relevant offers in real-time, and continuously improve performance to drive incremental revenue at scale without the need for custom setup, dev work, or vendor coordination.

Transform campaign ideas into measurable growth—in minutes

You can launch your first campaign using these new features in Storefront Pro and start driving measurable growth faster.

1. Choose your campaign type 

Growth doesn’t come from a single campaign — it comes from understanding where customers are in their journey and delivering the right message at the right moment. Whether you’re launching a seasonal promotion, re-engaging lapsed customers, or building long-term loyalty, every interaction is an opportunity to increase customer lifetime value.

For promotional or evergreen campaigns, simplified Campaigns workflows help retailers quickly launch relevant customer experiences, with the flexibility to choose the right audience, message, and incentives. For always-on lifecycle engagement, Automated Campaigns provide proven, ready-to-launch journeys that can be activated in one click—automatically engaging customers at every stage of their lifecycle, from unactivated customers and first-time buyers to stale and deeply churned customers.

2. Target the right customers

The most effective campaigns don’t try to reach everyone — they reach the customers most likely to engage and convert. Great targeting goes beyond static customer attributes, it adapts in real time using evolving behaviors and customer signals to engage customers with greater relevance. Depending on your campaign type, use intelligent segmentation to automatically reach customers based on their lifecycle stage or build custom audiences using ecommerce behaviors, business insights, and unique growth goals.

3. Design your message

Create branded experiences that connect with customers. With customizable messaging and creative tools in the Instacart Platform Portal (IPP), you can manage campaigns and tailor customer communications from one centralized place.

For automated campaigns, start with pre-built email and push notification templates built from what works, then tailor the experience with your own copy, creative, and design. Pre-populated content, recommended subject lines, and creative placeholders make it easy to launch quickly while creating on-brand experiences that resonate with customers.

4. Attach the offer

A high-performing campaign depends on two things: the right incentive and a seamless redemption experience. Storefront Pro gives you the control and flexibility to do both. Create offers that align with your business goals by defining the promotion type, value, eligibility, timing, and audience- or get started faster with pre-configured offers and timing.

However, even the strongest offer can underperform when customers encounter friction during redemption. Every point of friction between discovering an offer and applying it creates an opportunity for customers to abandon their purchase.

Click-to-redeem (C2R) incentive links eliminate that friction by enabling customers to redeem offers with a single click. The incentive is automatically applied, creating a seamless path from engagement to checkout. These links can be seamlessly deployed across the marketing channels you already use, as well as through storefront pop-ups- ensuring customers receive a consistent redemption experience wherever they engage. 

Example customer experience for a campaign 

5. Launch with one click

Launching an email campaign isn't just about creating compelling content—it's also ensuring your emails actually reach your customers' inboxes. 

Instacart manages the underlying email infrastructure for you, including setup and IP warming to establish a strong sender reputation over time. That helps your campaigns land in customers' primary inboxes (not spam folders), so more of your marketing reaches the audience it's intended for.

A great place to start is with abandoned cart emails. These automated emails remind customers to return and complete their purchase, helping recover revenue that might otherwise be lost. Work with your Instacart representative to enable these today.  

6. Measure what moved

Launching a campaign is only half the work. Knowing what drove results and doubling down on it is what turns a one-time win into compounding growth.

Campaign reporting in IPP gives you a clear view of business impact with metrics like attributed GMV and conversions, helping you understand which campaigns generate the greatest return. Instead of relying on intuition, you can make confident, data-driven decisions that increase marketing efficiency and drive long-term growth.

Grow your ecommerce channel today

Everything you need to launch high-performing campaigns is available now in Storefront Pro. Activate the campaigns that fit your goals, customize messaging and incentives, and start driving more meaningful customer engagement.

Ready to get started? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager to activate these features, or explore the latest release notes to learn more.

^{FMI & NielsinIQ. (2026). Digital Engagement Transforms Grocery Shopping}

^{Gallo, Amy. (2014). Harvard Business Review. The Value of Keeping the Right Customers}