Creative that didn’t feel like advertising drove a 40% conversion lift for a major department store retailer

The challenge

A major department store retailer with nearly 300 stores and a growing digital business already had something valuable: a high-intent post-purchase moment at the end of every transaction.

Customers were completing purchases, landing on confirmation pages, and staying within the retailer's owned checkout experience. The surface existed. The traffic was there. But the team knew the moment wasn't performing as well as it could and they wanted more revenue from it without making the experience feel cluttered, promotional, or off-brand.

The solution

Fluent worked with the retailer across three areas simultaneously: creative, bidding, and mobile app capability.

On the creative side, Fluent introduced receipt-style formats designed to blend naturally into the post-purchase flow. Instead of feeling like a separate ad unit dropped into the confirmation page, the updated creative felt native to the checkout experience, capturing attention without disrupting it.

On the bidding side, Fluent refined strategies to improve advertiser efficiency and maximize yield on the retailer's post-purchase inventory, balancing performance for both sides of the marketplace.

On the app side, Fluent collaborated with the retailer's team to roll out the latest SDK, launch new creative formats, and pass enhanced data parameters, improving personalization across one of the retailer's most important digital touchpoints.

Why it worked

No single change drove the results. The lift came from creative that felt native, bidding that worked smarter, and app upgrades that improved personalization quality across a key surface. Each improvement reinforced the others, and none of them added friction to the checkout experience the retailer had spent years building.

The result

Click-through rate increased 16%. Effective conversion rate grew 40%. And net revenue from post-purchase offers increased 33% month over month. All from a monetization surface the retailer already owned, optimized to finally match its potential.