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With more than 88 million active users globally, eBay is the world's largest online marketplace, where practically anyone can buy and sell practically anything.
the challenge
While eBay remains one of the most popular online shopping destinations, over time they had seen a steady decline of activity from their top buyers.
Our challenge was to re-engage these top buyers and stem the decline in activity, including buying and visits to the site. Baked into the challenge was the knowledge that top buyers are already receiving multiple emails and other forms of communication from eBay on a regular basis — their guard was up.
the solution
We developed targeted, personalized communications that would first engage top buyers in a place where they weren't inured to seeing eBay messaging, and would second drive them to engage with the eBay site.
The first part of the equation was an unexpected in-the-mail catalog with personalized messaging for each top buyer. For relevancy, the catalogs were versioned based on past purchase behavior. Within the prominent personalized messaging, we referred to top buyers by their username and invited them to visit a personalized URL (PURL) — the second part of the equation.
The PURL had personalized content and live auctions in categories of interest to the buyer. Since a top buyer finds it hard to resist placing a bid (and winning!), visiting the PURL drove immediate engagement and purchases.
the result
eBay saw increased revenue from the best and most active buyers, and recent buyers showed a propensity to become engaged. Of those who visited the PURL, over half went on to make a bid or a purchase.