Deconstruction

Etsy’s - Onboarding Process

● Etsy’s onboarding process is as simple as it can get. It uses the standard

onboarding model that most eCommerce brands follow.

○ Their signup form consists of Oauth signup process as well as email based signup.

Addition of Oauth enables faster sign up which is a plus.

○ Etsy’s email campaign and promos lack an onboarding series. An onboarding series

can help new users get accustomed to the style of communication they can expect

from the brand.

○ Even their website and mobile applications do not have any sort of onboarding

process. One has to manually explore and understand how things work.

Etsy’s engagement channels

● Etsy’s focus has gradually shifted from email to mobile first market. It has seen a

surge in mobile interaction on a year-on-year basis. Having said that, they also

kept their email strategy similar over the years.

○ Mobile Engagement - Etsy’s mobile app has a simple and clean structure. Brownie points

for their primary page which is a personalized section, meant just for you, more on this

later. They actively engage based on how often you use their mobile app. If you shop more

on mobile, you’ll find Etsy giving precedence to mobile push over emails.

○ Email Engagement - Etsy’s email engagement consists of three kinds of emails. It consists

of - personalized promotional emails, generic promotional and cart management emails.

A look at Etsy’s mobile engagement (1/2)

● Here is a detailed structure of Etsy’s mobile app based user engagement , have

a look

○ Personalized window/tab - As soon as you open Etsy’s mobile app, you’ll directly land on

their recommended tab. Recommended is a personalized tab unique for every user. This

personalized experience is powered by the data Etsy gathers about user, by tracking

their on-site interaction.

○ Promotional Push notification - Etsy’s promotion over push channel basically depends on

mobile app usage. If your app usage is low, you will hardly receive push notifications,

similarly high app usage directs promotional communication to mobile, first.

A look at Etsy’s mobile engagement (2/2)

○ Abandonment based push interaction - Etsy actively pursues users who abandon their

cart, our very first reminder for an abandoned cart was triggered just an hour after we

last used the app. We received over 4 push notification encouraging us to complete our

order over 2 days.

○ User-action based notifications - Etsy also is a community of buyers and sellers. They

have weaved a social network around it allowing you to follow and interact with each

other. When someone follows or sends you message, you get a user-action based

notification on your mobile.

A look at Etsy’s emails

● Here is a detailed structure of Etsy’s emails, have a look -

○ Personalized promotional emails - Etsy emphasizes a lot on user personalization on their

website. They understand the importance of personalization in order to excel in

eCommerce. The use of behavioural data and machine learning is evident from the

tailored promotional emails that you receive.

○ Abandonment emails - Etsy keeps a close track on their user’s behavior. One of the

reason for implementing such tactics is to lower cart abandonment rates and boost

conversion rates. Our abandoned cart triggered 4 emails over the course of 2 weeks

pushing us towards purchase.

○ Generic promotional email - These are non-personalized emails sent to almost all users

3-4 times a week. The frequency increases during festive periods.

Let’s take a look at a few examples

Etsy’s welcome email is highly visual with a few generic recommendation. It also suggests you to follow top brands and followers in the welcome email.

They can build upon this email and come up with a welcome/onboarding series, so that it is easier for a new user to get accustomed to Etsy.

All the emails that Etsy sends you,

encourages you to download their app.

This is great because it opens the door for

Etsy to engage with users using multiple

channels. It’s also a nice strategy because

today the consumer market is moving

completely towards a mobile first

approach. .

This is one of the cart-abandonment emails that we got from Etsy

The email subject line is of casual tone with no personalization, it could benefit with a simple tweak like, Hey Yash, You haven’t bought that yet?

Apart from their CTA for check out now, Etsy also adds similar products in the email.

Hoping that these products might peak your interest and trigger another sales opportunity. This is one of the ways that Etsy leverages personalized user engagement.

Here you can see that the App sends out push notification for abandoned cart. The message is brief and to the point.

Tapping on the notification directly takes you to the checkout section.

Etsy’s Personalized emails are based on things that we favorited or liked on their website or mobile app. They also add products based on our browsing history on their website.

As you can see from the example, I favorited a keychain, so I got new keychain recommendations.

You’ll also notice that I have a bunch of recommendation for mobile cases and wallets down below. This is because I purchased a wallet and a mobile case through their mobile app.

Example Takeaways (1/3 )

● Emails have a good structure and are highly visual with text based content

given lower importance. Clearly the visual content is a way to encourage users

to revisit their website and boost user engagement.

● A “welcome email” is present, though it does not explain what sort of emails to

expect in the future.

● They tick the checkbox when it comes to promoting sales and clearing out

abandoned cart. They maintained a frequency of 2 email reminders for

abandoned cart per week.

Example Takeaways (2/3)

● We also received a whole bunch of personalized emails, based on user events

such as liking/favoriting a product, browsing or searching for products.

● Emails are pretty frequent. We can confirm that their mailing rate is uniform

throughout the week. They are one of the few brands that also communicates

over the weekend.

● Machine learning is pretty evident in their emails, notifications, as well as in

the product. All the recommendation emails sent to us are a result of their

inbuilt AI and machine learning engine.

Example Takeaways (3/3)

● The sheer volume of emails we received were a lot to handle. Slowly with time a

user’s interest might drop because of the volume.

● Email surprisingly did not optimize based on user activity rate. One of the

examples would be optimization based on when the user is likely to open an

email. One can utilise a factor like timezone of the user to maximize email open

and CTOR rates.

What stood out? (Pros of etsy’s user engagement)

● Etsy has a smart omni-channel customer engagement engine. It gives precedence to

the device that you’re most active on. This is a good sign that shows their commitment

towards quality user engagement.

● Etsy’s AI based personalization and recommendation engine seems to perform well.

They use it thoroughly for their on-screen recommendations, emails and push

notifications.

● Etsy has always spoken how it is not just an average eCommerce website. They have a

social network twist added to their product. One can follow fellow users, and interact

with them. Same goes for sellers, you can follow and engage with them too on 1:1

basis.

What needs improvement? (Cons of Etsy’s user engagement) (1/2 )

● Over our analysis period we saw no retargeting or ad campaigns running on

social networks. This is ironic, as they have their own mini social network built

within the product.

● Etsy lacks any sort of email based welcome/onboarding series. There is also no

sign of an onboarding process built into their app. An onboarding series can help

a new user understand the product and its user communication process.

What needs improvement? (Cons of Etsy’s user engagement) (2/2)

● The sheer volume of their promotional emails is overwhelming, over time we

started losing interest towards their emails because of the volume.

● Subject lines and body headers are not personalized at all. Adding a simple

data field such as name, could improve the open rates.

● Their Machine learning engine does not bridge the gap between cross selling

completely different products that might be useful to the buyer. Addressing

such instances using ML algorithm can lead to a delightful user experience.

Overall Etsy User engagement deconstruction takeaway

● Etsy serves good, personalized and highly visual emails and mobile push notification.

● Email content is personalized based on their web and app interaction. You are majorly

served product recommendation based on data forecasted by an AI and machine

learning based engine.

● Etsy’s omnichannel approach is brilliant, they target the most active channels first to

communicate with their users.

● They lag behind when it comes to retargeting lost users and also with win-back tactics.

● We suggest that they should seriously implement an onboarding process for new

users after they sign up.

Thank you!

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