Etsy is one of the leading eCommerce brands around the world. They have over 60 million users with over $3 billion in sales last year. Therefore, we decided to deconstruct Etsy's user engagement model.

1. Deconstruction

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Let’s take a look at a few examples

8. 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.

9. 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. .

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

11. 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?

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. Thank you!
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