There’s no slowing down SampleSource. The company has followed up the October launch of its national multi-brand co-op sampling service, SampleSource.com, by signing a deal with Walmart to be the vendor exclusively responsible for facilitating request-based sampling on Walmart.ca.

To start, Walmart.ca will only sample one product at a time, says Rob Linden, director, SampleSource. Those samples will be featured on the website until the quantity provided by the company’s clients run out. Linden says this typically happens in a matter of days. Over time he believes the arrangement with Walmart will evolve so that they can offer customers a menu of sample items they can pick and choose from. Customers can go online, educate themselves about the product, and then decide whether or not they would like to receive a sample. Marketers can take advantage of a turnkey package including inclusion on the website, warehousing, packaging, a custom letter for customers explaining the sample and shipping and tracking. They can also purchase packages to build awareness about the program that include banner ads on the website and eblasts. Linden adds that marketers will drive traffic to Walmart.ca themselves and shoppers will also gain awareness about the program through blogs and newsletters.

“At the end of the day marketers are trying to find additional retail touchpoints for shopper marketing, as well as to drive trial of their products,” says Linden. “This is a great example of cooperation between all parties, and at the end of the day, that’s what’s most important. This is really going to help drive consumers to the Walmart stores.”

Linden says a few brands have already signed up with SampleSource, and the first executions are expected to go to market in February or March.

“Sampling, from all of the data that we’ve seen and the research that we’ve conducted with Nielsen and on our own, is the number one driver of purchase trial hands down,” says Linden. “The hard part for marketers has been finding the most effective way to do it. We’ve figured out ways to make it more efficient.”

Sampling, says Linden, is on the rise thanks to technology providing marketers with more ways to distribute their wares, and request-based sampling is particularly effective, resulting in conversion rates anywhere between 30% and 60% depending on the category, four times higher than traditional sampling methods.

“Request-based leads to far higher purchase rates,” he adds. “It also allows for a lot of security to be built into the system. I predict that we’re going to see a lot more online sampling over the year.”