Holiday wins kept rolling in for The Marzetti Company through a full-funnel strategy

The Marzetti Company’s leading homemade rolls brand, Sister Schubert’s, had focused their success around the holiday season, becoming heavily reliant on seasonal advertising.

While this focus left the brand vulnerable to rising competition; it also created the opportunity to broaden its reach and build momentum for sustained growth throughout the year.

The Marzetti Company partnered with The Bluebird Group, a Premium Agency Partner in the Walmart Connect Partner Network and Skai, a Walmart Connect Premium+ Tech Partner, to launch a full-funnel campaign strategy, leveraging Walmart Connect’s solutions.

This approach focused on reaching existing loyal Sister Schubert’s customers and attracting new high-intent Walmart customers during the holiday season, while helping boost visibility and achieve sales growth.

The Marzetti Company recognized the need to move beyond a traditional holiday-focused approach and develop an advertising strategy that would help Sister Schubert’s reach new customers and achieve sustainable, year-round growth.

Skai and The Bluebird Group implemented a campaign strategy combining upper-funnel awareness and lower-funnel tactics to help deliver measurable results.

Using Walmart Connect’s full-funnel solutions, the campaign focused on maximizing return on ad spend and scaling more efficiently to reach existing and new customers.
 

• CTV: To help build awareness during key holiday moments through a high-impact video on the big screen.

 

• Offsite Media: To help engage new relevant audiences beyond Sister Schubert’s core base through advanced targeting using Walmart DSP.

 

• Onsite Display: To help increase visibility across Walmart’s digital properties, keeping the brand top-of-mind as customers browsed.

 

• Sponsored Products: To help boost conversions at the point of decision by capturing high-intent customers through optimized search placements.

 

• Sponsored Brands: To help showcase the product portfolio using a premium, shoppable format.

 

• Sponsored Videos: To help educate and inspire Walmart customers by highlighting product benefits and seasonal relevance using a compelling visual format. 

 
This approach helped engage customers across the journey, from awareness to consideration to conversion. These channels worked together, and this strategy helped position Sister Schubert’s for both holiday success and long-term growth.

The campaign leveraged Skai’s proprietary real-time optimization capabilities, enabling performance monitoring and in-flight adjustments to maximize impact throughout the holiday season. Once the peak period ended, the focus shifted to long-term measurement, with a deep dive into customer retention and repeat purchase behavior to 
evaluate the sustained effectiveness of the campaign.
 

The Tactics

• Dayparting: Through Skai’s platform, the brand’s ads were strategically served during high-traffic times to align with customer intent and maximize visibility when conversion potential was highest.

 

• Competitive Campaigns: The campaigns were strategically aligned with Walmart’s peak holiday traffic periods, when customer demand was at its highest and competitors significantly ramped up their advertising efforts. By activating during these high-traffic windows, the brand was able to stay competitive, capture attention, and convert customers.

 

• Targeting strategies: Various targeting tactics were used to help expand beyond the brand’s traditional holiday audience to attract new buyers while deepening engagement with loyal customers.