Demo Series Transcript: Essential Use Cases for Retail & Ecommerce
Speakers:
- Kristen Session, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Blueshift
- Jolyon Hunter, Principal Solutions Consultant, Blueshift
Why Personalization and Cross-Channel Journeys Matter in Retail
Kristen Session: Welcome everyone! Today we’re diving into essential campaigns every retail and ecommerce brand should be running: abandoned cart, post-purchase upsell, and price drop alerts. These aren't just nice-to-haves—they're critical drivers of conversions, revenue, and long-term loyalty.
We'll show how easily these campaigns can be created in Blueshift using data, AI, and automation to personalize every customer touchpoint.
How to Recover Lost Revenue with Abandoned Cart Campaigns
Jolyon Hunter: Let’s begin with abandoned cart campaigns. In our Shopify-integrated demo site, I’ve added an item to the cart—a pair of shorts—but I haven’t purchased yet. That triggers an add-to-cart event, which Blueshift captures in real time.
We use this event to start a journey:
- Wait 2 hours to check if the purchase happened
- If not, send a message via the preferred channel (email, SMS, or push)
- Personalize content using the cart item, name, and behavior
We even factor in channel affinity and predictive engagement scores to determine the best messaging method. If the person is likely to engage via SMS, we start there. If not, we try push or email.
How to Drive Additional Purchases Through Post-Purchase Upsell
Post-purchase is another high-impact opportunity. In this case, we trigger a campaign once someone buys—say, in the last 7 days.
You can:
- Recommend complementary items based on past purchases
- Split test creative (e.g., showing 2 items vs 3)
- Use AI-powered blocks to insert best-fit products
Our recommendations engine lets you customize:
- Cart-based suggestions
- Affinity-based suggestions
- Top-selling or trending items
You can even add layers, like: "show what’s in their cart, and if it’s empty, show affinity-based products." All of this works across channels and templates.
How to Bring Back Shoppers with Price Drop Campaigns
This use case uses a feature called derived events. If a shopper viewed or added a product to cart, and that product’s price drops, Blueshift creates a new event.
We capture:
- Old price and new price
- Price difference and percent change
You can then send a personalized message like: “Hey Alex, that item you viewed just dropped by 20%!” and include the image and name of the product.
These alerts can be triggered by:
- Add-to-cart behavior
- Product views
- Wishlist activity (if applicable)
How Real Brands Are Using These Campaigns
Kristen Session: Let’s look at how leading brands are applying these use cases:
carparts.com:
- Sends one-to-one product recommendations across channels
- Runs automated cart, browse, and category abandonment campaigns
- 400% lift in CTR, 130% more message volume, and 50 hours/week saved
Tuft & Needle:
- Uses Blueshift to power behavior-based workflows like brochure requests and product upsells
- 181% increase in email revenue and 578% growth in site traffic
Sweetwater:
- Combines email and paid strategies using abandoned cart triggers
- See their full strategy in our on-demand webinar
Benchmark Insights for Ecommerce Marketers
Kristen Session: Based on over 38 billion messages sent by Blueshift customers:
- Triggered messages = 41% higher CTR than batch emails
- Cross-channel SMS = 102% lift in CTR when used alongside email or push
- Send-time optimization = 200% increase in conversion rates
- Product recommendations = 166% lift in conversion rates
These use cases are proven, scalable, and easy to set up in Blueshift. Visit blueshift.com/contact-us to learn more or request a custom demo. Thanks for joining us!
