Neal’s Yard Remedies transforms cart abandonment success with 419% increase in revenue

Starting in a quiet corner of Covent Garden, London, in 1981, Neal’s Yard Remedies is a modern apothecary, handcrafting natural and organic health and beauty products. Today, the company is a global leader, with a growing presence across five continents that includes stores and a thriving online store. 

Enhancing cart abandonment email strategy for increased revenue

Neal’s Yard Remedies has long understood the value of using a cart abandonment email to generate new revenue from its UK online store. The company was attempting to manage the entire process in-house, using a rudimentary module from Shopify to send emails to customers who placed products in their cart without making a purchase. However, it lacked the functionality, control and measurement to fully automate and optimise the process.

CRM Manager at Neal’s Yard Remedies, Jessica Fox, explains: “We recognised that we were not maximising the sales potential of our cart abandonment emails and went in search of a purpose-built platform. This would give us the control over the design, content and scheduling of emails, as well as the ongoing performance monitoring that we needed to succeed.”

The task of transforming Neal’s Yard Remedies’ cart abandonment strategy was given to Dotdigital and its Professional Services team. “We had already worked with the team to introduce an automation for sending messages to customers at the point at which they are likely to need to replenish their products,” added Fox. “Following the success of this initiative we decided to explore new opportunities to expand our collaboration with Dotdigital.”

Implementing a personalized and automated email solution

Fox added: “We handed over all the technical implementation to Dotdigital’s Professional Services team and our customer success managers, who carried out a customer journey mapping exercise before building the entire automation for us. All that we had to do was provide creative and copy for the emails.”

Today, when customers fill their cart with products but leave the website without buying, they automatically receive a personalised email within 20 minutes, showing the items along with a direct link to the checkout. Customers who do not return within the next three days to make the purchase are sent a follow-up email.

The advanced functionality of the Dotdigital platform has enabled Neal’s Yard Remedies to quickly and easily trial different approaches and benchmark sales performance. One such example is its use of A/B testing, to compare the success rates of emails that include a 10% discount code with those sent with only basket information. “The introduction of a promotional code had a positive impact on sales,” explains Fox. “However, the conversions and uplift from the new and improved approach to our cart abandonment emails have been remarkable.”

Achieving remarkable growth and leveraging Fresh Relevance for personalization

Neal’s Yard Remedies is not only achieving its objectives for both its replenishment and cart abandonment programs, which are to improve customer engagement and drive revenue growth, but it is exceeding expectations. The company has reported a hugely impressive 419% increase in revenue since replacing the Shopify cart abandonment module with Dotdigital. This represents the highest conversion rate of all the email types the brand sends to its customers.

The success of the automated cart abandonment campaign has led the company to further expand its relationship with Dotdigital, with the introduction of browse abandonment emails, and rolling out the program to its U.S. store.

Neal’s Yard is also looking to take its cross-channel engagement to the next level, using Dotdigital’s personalization platform, Fresh Relevance. Fresh Relevance will help address key challenges including growing impression share, converting more paid traffic and increasing order frequency. Now, Neal’s Yard can create a joined up personalized experience that starts from the moment someone lands on the website as an anonymous visitor right through to them becoming a loyal advocate.

To increase repeat purchase rates and loyalty, the team will use features such as popovers, advanced product recommendations, segmented offers, and dynamic banners highlighting loyalty points. Whether someone is on web or email, they’ll see the same personalized content.

“The platform itself is very user-friendly, allowing for an easy email build process, scheduling, and reporting. I work very closely with our account managers to develop and execute new trigger campaigns and have used the implementation team to build out two very successful automations, abandoned cart and replenishment,” concludes Fox. “I haven’t ever come across a barrier using the platform, it allows you to be simplistic with your CRM or very sophisticated, which I think is often a rarity with some platforms. The approach is always collaborative working with Dotdigital, and for someone who works pretty autonomously in a CRM team this is always very beneficial and enjoyable. I always recommend Dotdigital to my friends in marketing as I have always been so impressed!”