Latest / The Retention Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Email, SMS, and Loyalty for Repeat Customers / How a Pet Brand Uses Abandoned Cart SMS to Win Repeat Customers
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this pet supply brand called Pettail. They sell premium leashes, harnesses, travel bowls — the kind of gear that looks good on Instagram and costs about forty to sixty dollars a pop. Luna: Right. I've seen their ads. Very aesthetic, very millennial dog owner energy. Lucas: Exactly. And like most DTC brands, they had a problem: first-time buyers would come in, buy a leash, and then disappear. Their repeat purchase rate was hovering around 15 percent. Luna: That's pretty low for a brand where the product literally wears out or gets chewed. Lucas: Right. A leash has a natural replacement cycle — maybe six to twelve months. So the repeat opportunity is baked into the product category. But they weren't capturing it. Luna: So where did they start? Lucas: They looked at their biggest leak: the abandoned cart. About 70 percent of people who added a product to cart never checked out. Standard for ecommerce. But Pettail realized that many of those abandoners were first-time visitors — people who'd never bought before. Luna: So if you can convert that abandoned cart, you've got a new customer, not just a recovered sale. Lucas: Exactly. And from there, you can try to turn them into a repeat buyer. So they built a three-message SMS sequence targeting abandoned carts. No email — just text. Luna: Why SMS specifically? Lucas: They tested email versus SMS in a small pilot. SMS had a 40 percent higher open rate and a 3x click-through rate. For a brand with a younger audience — Pettail's core is 25 to 40 — SMS just outperformed. Luna: What did the sequence look like? Lucas: Message one goes out 30 minutes after abandonment. It's short: a product photo, the item name, and a straight line — 'Your is still waiting. Check out here.' No discount. No urgency. Just a reminder with a visual. Luna: And people clicked? Lucas: Eighteen percent click-through on that first message alone. But only about 4 percent converted. Most people needed another nudge. Luna: So message two? Lucas: Four hours later. This one adds social proof: 'Over 500 pet parents have grabbed this harness this month. Ready to join them?' Still no discount. They're trying to convert without devaluing the product. Luna: That's smart. You're using FOMO instead of a coupon. Lucas: It works. Click-through on message two was 12 percent, and conversion ticked up to about 6 percent cumulative. But the big jump came on message three, sent 24 hours after abandonment. Luna: This is where they bring the discount? Lucas: Yeah. Ten percent off, with a 48-hour expiration. 'We noticed you left something behind. Here's 10 percent off to complete your order.' That message alone converted another 5 percent of the original abandoners. Luna: So total conversion across the three messages was about 9 percent? Lucas: Nine point one, to be precise. That's not huge on its face, but when you consider that most of those were new customers, the lifetime value math changes. Luna: Did they track what happened after that first purchase? Lucas: They did. They looked at the cohort of customers acquired through this abandoned cart SMS sequence and compared them to customers who bought without any SMS intervention. The sms acquired cohort had a 63 percent repeat purchase rate within 60 days. Luna: That's four times higher than their baseline 15 percent. Lucas: Right. Part of it is selection bias — people who give their phone number and respond to SMS are probably more engaged anyway. But the sequence itself also includes a post-purchase loyalty prompt. Luna: What's that look like? Lucas: After the first order ships, they send a text with a link to join their loyalty program. It's a points-based system — points per dollar, bonus for reviews, free shipping at 500 points. That text alone drove a 22 percent enrollment rate. Luna: So you're basically capturing the customer twice: once at the cart, once after delivery. Lucas: Exactly. And the loyalty members from that SMS cohort had a 78 percent repeat rate over six months. That's huge for a pet accessories brand. Luna: I want to push back on the discount strategy, though. If you train customers that abandoning cart gets them 10 percent off, won't they just wait for the discount next time? Lucas: It's a real risk. Pettail saw that about 12 percent of customers who converted via the discount did not make a full-price purchase later. But they also segmented: if someone abandoned cart twice in 30 days, they suppressed the discount on the third message. Just the reminder and social proof. Luna: So they're using behavioral data to avoid training the worst behavior. Lucas: Exactly. And they also A/B tested a version with no discount on message three — just a stronger urgency line: 'Your cart expires in 6 hours.' That version had a 7 percent conversion rate, versus 9 percent with the discount. So they lost some conversions but preserved margin. Luna: Which version did they keep? Lucas: They ran both, split by customer segment. New visitors got the discount. Returning customers who had never bought got the urgency version. And existing customers — people who had purchased before — got a different sequence entirely. Luna: What did existing customers get? Lucas: Just one text, 15 minutes after abandonment, with a product recommendation based on past purchase. No discount. 'We thought you'd like this matching collar for your leash.' That converted at 14 percent, with zero margin erosion. Luna: That makes sense. You already have trust with existing customers. You don't need to bribe them. Lucas: Right. The whole strategy was about matching incentive to relationship. And the numbers bear it out: the overall repeat rate for the brand went from 15 percent to 34 percent within six months of launching this SMS program. Luna: That's a massive lift for a relatively simple flow. Lucas: It is. And if these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used at your own brand, or if you just appreciate that we keep this show ad-free, a handful of listeners chip in monthly at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Genuinely helps us keep making episodes like this one. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a big difference. We don't run ads, so listener support is what keeps the lights on. Lucas: Anyway — back to Pettail. One thing I found really clever was how they used the abandoned cart SMS to also collect zero-party data. Luna: How so? Lucas: In message two, the social proof text, they included a link that said 'Tell us what you're looking for — we'll find the perfect fit.' Clicking that opened a short quiz: dog size, activity level, style preference. About 8 percent of recipients filled it out. Luna: And that data fed their recommendation engine for future emails and SMS? Lucas: Exactly. They used it to personalize the post-purchase follow-up. If someone said they had a large, active dog, the next SMS recommended heavy-duty harnesses and chew-proof toys. That personalized follow-up had a 41 percent click-through rate. Luna: So the abandoned cart sequence isn't just about recovering that one sale — it's an acquisition funnel for data. Lucas: That's the real unlock. Most brands treat abandoned cart as a recovery tool. Pettail treated it as a relationship-building tool. And that's why their repeat rate doubled. Luna: Any other brands doing this well? Lucas: There's a supplement brand called Nourish that does something similar, but they use a two-message sequence with a quiz on the first message. No discount at all. Their conversion is lower — about 6 percent — but the data they capture is richer. Luna: So the trade-off is short-term revenue versus long-term data. Lucas: Right. And it depends on your category. For a pet brand where the product is fairly simple, a discount might make sense. For a supplement brand where personalization matters, you'd rather get the quiz data. Luna: I think the key takeaway for me is that abandoned cart SMS shouldn't be a generic flow. Segment by customer status, and think about what you want to get out of it beyond the sale. Lucas: Exactly. The sale is table stakes. The real win is the repeat customer. And Pettail showed that a smart, segmented SMS sequence can be the first step in that journey.