Architect Use Case: Replenishment

Each consumable or perishable product such as groceries or skincare has a predictable lifespan or a use-by date. Having a replenishment strategy and reminding users to repeat purchases ultimately increase the lifetime value and revenue.

In many industries, for replenishing products, once shoppers have committed to a specific type of product in their routine, they are unlikely to change. A customer may buy a product from you for the first time, but the second purchase may not happen. You can avoid losing repeated sales with a good replenishment strategy. For example, sending a reminder message to customers having bought a moisturizer three months after their purchase, considering that a moisturizer runs out in four months on average, may make the customer repurchase it. 

Based on the products that you sell, you can let your customers know when their item is about to finish with replenishment journeys and create a personalized customer experience. They will be reminded to replenish their stock just before their products run out with these handy automated reminders. It is therefore convenient for them to repurchase from you, which will reduce the likelihood of your customers choosing your competitors.

How to Engage Customers to Replenish

Before designing your journey, you can go over the tips designed for replenishment journeys:

• Identify the products that are frequently repurchased and to be replenished.
• Determine the average duration between purchases for the same products.
• Consider offering packaged discounts, and help them set up more convenient payment and delivery options while messaging for replenishment.
• Ensure your message motivates customers to replenish. For example, using a friendly language can increase the open or click rate (e.g “time to restock?”, “running low?”).
• Personalize your message. For instance, addressing users by name may draw more attention.
• Include a dynamic image in your message to show the replenishment product.
• Make sure you add a prominent CTA that directs users to the respective product or category page.
• Offer an alternative product to have a look in case they may not wish to repurchase the current product.
• Provide easiness (preferably one-click) for making the replenishment purchase. It is also possible to tailor recommendations to suggest higher price point products to enhance customer lifetime value if done strategically.

Goals

While converting your users with a replenishment journey to grow your business, you can also improve your customer activation, retention, and transactions. Each targeted and converted user will help you with:

• Revenue,
• Transactions,
• User retention,
• Conversion rate,
• Repeated sales by first-time buyers,
• Purchase frequency.

Requirements

• Your website or app must have a payment structure where users can make purchases. 
• Purchase information must be collected. Once your website is mapped by Insider during your onboarding, Insider starts to collect this information by default, so you do not need any additional integration.
• All objects under Insider Object Integration must be implemented for purchased items to be tracked.
• Prior to using any channel in your journeys, integrations for the respective channels should be completed. Depending on the channels you want to use, you may require additional integrations.
• In case you need some custom events, you are supposed to create and send them to Insider.
• If you have a mobile app, SDK Integration must be implemented.

Creating a Replenishment Journey

You can create a replenishment journey to remind your users to buy the products that may be low in their stock.

Pet Business

As a pet owner, Paul bought dog food. You know it will be consumed in around one month. You take Paul on the replenishment journey and keep him on hold for a month. By sending him a message including the dog food, offer him to replenish its stock before it is about to run out.

Cosmetics & Beauty 

Send a reminder message to customers having bought a moisturizer three months after their purchase if a moisturizer runs out in four months on average to be replenished. 

Groceries

Jane usually uses your grocery delivery service to order groceries. You take her on the replenishment journey and wait for her next purchase for a specified period.

• If she makes a repurchase, she will exit the journey.
• If she doesn't make a repurchase during the defined period, she will receive a replenishment reminder message with packaged discounts and delivery options.

You can use the pre-made replenishment journey template and customize it or you can create it from scratch.

1. Select a starter

Add the On Event starter and select the purchase event. When the users make a purchase, they will enter the journey.

If you want to target users to remind them to replenish a specific product or from a category, you can add event parameters after selecting the purchase event. For example, select the category or taxonomy parameter and type your shampoo category name.

For further details, refer to On Event.

2. Add flow logic

Add a Wait for Some Time element by considering the average duration between purchases for the same product/category. After the Wait element, you can check if the users make a purchase in the duration of the Wait. You can either select the Purchase or find the same event in the Events.

You can add event parameters to check if users purchase from the desired category or the same product exactly.

In addition, before sending a message, you can check if users are reachable on that channel. If not, you can try another channel on another path. Also, you can use Next Best Channel to increase the possibility of engagement.

3. Creating content

You may add different messages to the journey flow, including App or Web Push Notification, Email, SMS, and Whatsapp. You can customize your message content with the products that may draw users’ attention. You may also want to show a banner via On-Site or In-App channel or use the remarketing opportunity via Facebook.

After deciding how you want to continue with the communication for replenishment, you can design your content.

1. Select ‘Event Parameter’ on the Add Dynamic Content menu.

2. Check the ‘Use the event that triggered this Journey when the user entered.’ box.

3. Once you check this box, the event that is used in the starter will be automatically selected and disabled.

4. Choose the event parameter that you want to insert in the content.

5. You will be prompted with the respective information at the top of the page. Accordingly, the event parameter(s) you choose will be inserted in the content.

6. Define a fallback value for your dynamic content.

7. If you want to use an event parameter again, you can use only the event of the starter.

Web Push

You can add the event parameters to show what users can replenish based on their previous purchases.

Email

You can utilize and customize the pre-made replenishment email templates placed under Select Templates.

Advanced Replenishment Journeys

You can check user behavior and interactions to move your journey to an advanced level.

For example, you can check if the user’s discount affinity is high, and give these users promo codes in the content accordingly.

You can check multiple reachabilities on channels of the users concurrently and lead them to the corresponding path.

You can have A/B Split on the journey flow to compare different contents on the same or different channels, and the autowinner leads users to the winner content/channels automatically.

You can immediately exit the users from the journey when they meet the exit criteria. For example, the user can make a purchase again from the same category they bought before while they are waiting for some duration on the journey flow. To not send already-bought replenishable products, you can exit users automatically from the journey regardless of the position of the user in the journey flow.