How three years of proof turned a handful of seasonal campaigns into one of the biggest and fastest-growing merchant relationships on Fluz.
Convenience was easy to sell — paying for it wasn't.
Grocery bills have only climbed in recent years, and shoppers are looking for real ways to save — on time as much as money. Instacart's whole premise is convenience: skip the store, skip the line, get what you need without giving up an evening. But convenience isn't free, and Instacart's challenge was making it feel like a win rather than an added cost — a way to save on something members were already buying, without adding a single extra step. It's also not just produce and pantry staples anymore. Instacart now delivers electronics from Best Buy, beauty from Sephora, and plenty in between, so the same challenge shows up on nearly every kind of errand, not just the weekly grocery run.
A campaign plan built to earn a bigger bet every season.
Fluz didn't pitch Instacart one campaign and hope it stuck. Every few months, a new Fluz party landed on a season shoppers already recognized — back-to-school, the holidays, grilling season — and each time the results held up, the next one got bigger. The mechanic stayed simple: cashback that climbs as more members commit. What changed, season after season, was how much Instacart was willing to put behind it.
Growth kept accelerating instead of leveling off.
Instacart's gift card volume on Fluz grew 126% from 2024 to 2025. That's already a strong year — but measured across the identical seven-month stretch of each year, the acceleration is the real headline: volume grew 63% from 2024 to 2025, then 133% from 2025 to 2026. Cards sold climbed right alongside it, up 87% year over year, while the average card loaded 21% higher at the same time. Instacart's audience on Fluz isn't just larger each year — it's spending more per visit, too.
Every year's return justified the next year's bet.
Fall shows this most clearly. Gift card volume more than tripled — up 3.3x — from 2024 to 2025, with cards sold up 1.7x and the average card loading 93% higher at the same time. ROI on the campaign climbed from 10.1x to 16.5x across those two years — a return strong enough to justify putting more behind it the next time, which is exactly what happened. The December gifting campaign moved the same direction from a different angle: volume up 6.4x and cards sold up more than 9x in a single year — proof the growth isn't riding on one standout month.
And the growth wasn't just existing members buying more.
Fall carries the clearest signal on where that growth came from. The share of buyers who'd never purchased Instacart on Fluz before rose from 34% in 2024 to 45% in 2025, and the share who hadn't bought Instacart in six months or more nearly doubled, from 6% to 12%. More of each year's Fall buyers are people the campaign is genuinely bringing in or bringing back — not just the same members spending more.
From one campaign to one of the biggest partnerships on Fluz.
What started as a handful of seasonal tests has become one of the largest and fastest-growing merchant relationships on the platform — not because the plan stayed the same every year, but because every season it worked, Instacart bet bigger on the next one.
Curious what a Fluz campaign could do for your brand? Get in touch.