- AI-generated email subject lines and body copy across CRM channels
- SMS campaign optimization across 250+ campaigns
- Attention + Achievement framing beat standard Black Friday messaging
The Challenge
An Omnichannel Reset for a 60-Year-Old Retailer
Founded in 1959, Carrefour had grown into one of the top 10 retailers in Europe, with more than 12,000 stores worldwide. By the late 2010s, narrowing margins, digitally-native competitors, and disappointments in overseas markets made it clear that the old playbook was running out of room. Under CEO Alexandre Bompard, Carrefour launched the Carrefour 2022 transformation strategy, with omnichannel retail — built on stronger digital capabilities — as one of its foundational pillars.
That pivot put enormous weight on Carrefour's digital customer communications. In France alone, the retailer's contact base totalled 15 million people. Online ordering, home delivery, and curbside pickup had produced a rich trail of behavioural data — purchase history, return rates, conversion rates, cart abandonment, NPS scores — but none of that data was improving the wording of the emails and SMS messages going out to those 15 million customers. Charles Giannesini, head of customer activation and strategy at Carrefour, knew the data and the language had to be connected.
The Solution
From Email Pilot to 250+ Campaigns Across CRM
Giannesini had first heard Persado speak at an industry event before joining Carrefour, and when he stepped into the role he saw a partner who could turn Carrefour's customer data into language that moved customers to act. Carrefour and Persado started with a focused pilot on AI-generated email subject lines. The pilot hit Carrefour's targets and led directly to a formal, ongoing engagement.
From there the scope widened quickly. Subject lines expanded into full email body copy, then SMS campaigns, then website copy. By December 2022, Carrefour had run more than 250 campaigns on the Persado Motivation AI Platform, covering everything from promotional pushes to relationship-building communications. Persado's platform generates as many as 16 alternative versions of each message, predicts which will outperform the control, and lets Carrefour run language experiments whenever the team wants certainty before a big push.
"We now use Persado in a very industrialized way on all of our CRM channels. We are able to boost a lot of content, from the most relational communications to the clearly business-driven ones, with proven impact over time."
Charles Giannesini
Head of Customer Strategy & Activation, Carrefour
[ Experiment Spotlight ] — Black Friday 2022 SMS
Black Friday is one of Carrefour's biggest annual moments, with 20% off home appliances, photography, video, and audio. The team wanted to optimize every channel — including SMS. Persado's platform predicted that leaning on Attention and Achievement would beat Carrefour's standard Black Friday framing:
Carrefour Control Message
"Special Black Friday: Up to 20% off in multiple departments at your supermarket from 11/25 – 11/28. Learn more >"
Persado Winning Message
"Special info: Special offers just for you! Head to your supermarket before 11/29. Click to learn more >"
Emotion: Attention + Achievement
Result: +14.5% CTR above the control — more than 3× the engagement of the Carrefour-generated message. Notably, the winning message never mentioned Black Friday.
The Results
2.5× Campaign Uplift and a Roadmap Toward Personalisation
Across the full Carrefour portfolio, Persado-optimized campaigns delivered a 2.5× uplift over Carrefour's control messages. The Black Friday SMS campaign alone posted a 260% engagement uplift and a 14.5% CTR lift, and the insight from that campaign — that Carrefour's customers responded better when the message did not lean on the English phrase "Black Friday" — reshaped how the team thought about future holiday copy.
- 2.5× average digital campaign uplift with Persado Motivation AI
- +260% engagement uplift on Black Friday 2022 SMS
- +14.5% click-through rate lift on Black Friday SMS above Carrefour's control
- 250+ campaigns optimized across email, SMS, and website copy by December 2022
"We were very satisfied with the results and also very surprised that the winning message didn't even mention Black Friday. That gave us an interesting insight — it might be connected to the fact that many customers complain about the use of English words. Not mentioning Black Friday might have been among the reasons for the impressive uplift here."
Thomas Lefèvre
Head of CRM, Carrefour
The partnership is now entering its next phase under Carrefour 2026, the retailer's updated strategy to become "data-centric, digital-first." Persado's role is shifting from message-level optimization toward audience-level personalization, including Persado Language Profiles — a first-party data signal that captures how individual customers respond to different emotional framings. For a 60-year-old grocer navigating its biggest transformation in decades, the language layer has become one of the clearest levers Carrefour has for turning data into growth.
