Traeger Serves Up Hot Marketing with Headless CMS Thanks to AWS and Amplience

While humans have been cooking with fire since their first appearance on Earth, we’ve come a long way from a slab of sabretooth meat hanging over a campfire. Like all corners of life, technology has evolved how we do things—and when it comes to cooking with fire, Traeger has led the charge on change.

Established in the 1980s, Traeger is known for its market-leading wood-fired grills. With a strong following among outdoor cooking enthusiasts, Traeger has made it a priority to keep customers happy by providing new, useful innovations. Recently, that meant melding its signature product with the newest technology, which began with the company’s migration to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

To create a richer experience across its digital platforms—including an ecommerce website, a mobile application, and displays in smart grills—Traeger made content a priority. Whether it was a must-try brisket recipe or a feel-good video about going from grill newbie to wood-fired wizard, Traeger focused on its content to connect with customers and grow a following. It worked.

But as mobile traffic increased and content grew, Traeger’s new challenge was to provide a unified, robust customer experience. Website speed and site performance was buckling under the Traeger’s tech stack—at times, page load clocked in at 15 seconds. Meanwhile, a slow process for publishing new site content was leading to bottlenecks. Delivering new features often took weeks—and sometimes months.

Meeting Transformation Halfway with a Hybrid Headless Model

In keeping with its emphasis on digital experiences, Traeger wanted to adopt a more flexible, agile setup that would not only increase site speed, but also allow internal users to share content rapidly. The goal was to help various teams—from software developers to marketers—create brand consistency. By moving its CMS toward a headless model, the marketing department, in particular, could publish faster. This is because a headless CMS separates the frontend (or the head) from the backend content management, connecting them through APIs. But Traeger didn’t want to dive in fully to headless at the start. The company sought a hybrid headless model that still offered equal levels of control and flexibility.

Easier Content Delivery Results in Historic Sales and Faster Load Times

That’s when Traeger engaged AWS Partner Amplience, which brings together data, performance insights, and generative artificial intelligence (AI) to help businesses deliver content. With Amplience’s expertise and solutions, Traeger could build the exceptional experiences it’s known for across channels, supported by the uptime and scalability of AWS.

In three months, Traeger onboarded Amplience’s platform into its tech stack. For business users, the interface allowed them to stitch together infinite experiences using modular components. Plus, they didn’t have to wait for a developer to tag a page or make a change in the system’s backend. Instead, using Amplience, they were able to deliver new content multiple times a day. Overall, the plan worked and engagement rose—resulting in several record-breaking sales days.

Improving Relevance for Every Customer

Now that Traeger’s teams are comfortable with, and benefiting from, their foray into headless commerce, they’re looking at how a purely headless model can help them do more for their customers. A big focus is personalization. The marketing team can now cater content to a customer’s food preferences.

Localization is another ability Traeger is exploring. So far, Traeger wants its US site to display content in supported languages, with German already available. This model lets Traeger meet customers where they are—communicate with them the way they want, from any device, across the entire Traeger digital ecosystem.

To learn more about how Traeger worked with Amplience to create a hybrid headless model on AWS, read the case study.

About Traeger, Inc.

Traeger Grills is the creator and category leader of the wood pellet grill, an outdoor cooking system that ignites all-natural hardwoods to grill, smoke, bake, roast, braise, and barbecue.

About Amplience

Amplience is the AI Content company that brings together data, performance insights and generative AI—helping businesses deliver persuasive content for every shopping context, fueling truly personalized and connected experiences.