With the holidays quickly approaching, it’s important for retail e-commerce companies to help customers find the items they love and drive urgency to make the biggest impact. For retailers with rapidly changing catalogs or single-inventory items, this challenge is often amplified. With flash sales, limited (or one-of-a-kind) items and even auction timelines, these online retailers depend on real-time data and 1-to-1 personalization to encourage shoppers to discover — and act quickly on — limited items and deals.
What are their secrets for success? Here are five techniques, along with real-world examples, to consider when personalizing the customer experience before time is up.
1. Badging
It’s easy for shoppers to be overwhelmed by a company’s product offerings when browsing online. One way to call attention to specific items is by using badging — that is, visually highlighting metrics or attributes about a given item (e.g., “New!”; “Limited Edition”; “500 Views Today”; “2 Left”) — to drive attention and urgency around certain items. When combined with personalized recommendations, badges — which are most effective when rendered dynamically, based on real-time data about the catalog item and related customer behavior — can help shoppers focus on “hot” items they’re likely to be interested in, leverage the wisdom of the crowd and drive purchases before items sell out. By promoting items and their real-time status to each visitor, badging is often effective in increasing conversions and boosting average order value (AOV).

Note the badges used on select items above, which can be rendered dynamically.
2. Abandoned Cart Emails and On-Site Messages
A key way to re-engage shoppers and drive conversions quickly is by triggering emails to visitors based on their behavior and actions on a website or mobile app (such as leaving an item in their cart without checking out). These emails remind shoppers of specific items and promotions they may have previously engaged with across channels, and can be combined with personalized incentives and discounts (e.g., 10% off, free shipping, etc.) tailored to the recipient. For companies that offer flash sales, or that have limited or rapidly changing inventory, triggered emails can be especially effective at reminding shoppers of time constraints and dwindling inventory, thus spurring urgency in purchases. In addition to email reminders, cart abandonment messages can be displayed to visitors as they start to exit a page, encouraging shoppers to complete a purchase before they lose out on the item.

This cart abandonment message which reads “Forget Something?” includes an image of the actual item the shopper left behind.
3. Open-Time Email Recommendations
What good is an email if the information within it is out of date or the product recommendations are out of stock? Its effect is the opposite of what was intended, and often frustrates and de-motivates the recipient. Open-time emails — where promotions, recommendations and content are personalized when a message is opened, not when it’s sent — can take shoppers’ up-to-the-moment, cross-channel behavior and inventory levels into account to provide the most personalized, accurate, up-to-date and helpful experience. This is crucial for companies whose business model depends on helping shoppers find items before they sell out.
Take, for instance, Invaluable, the world’s leading online marketplace for fine art, antiques and collectibles. Invaluable has a product catalog with hundreds of thousands of items — many unique and one-of-a-kind — that changes over every single month. With open-time emails, Invaluable sends collectors personalized product recommendations that dynamically change based on item availability and auction status, to help recipients get the items they love before they’re gone. By swapping out static email recommendations for dynamically populated ones, Invaluable has seen a 21% increase in email clickthroughs.

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The product recommendations in this email are determined at open-time for each individual recipient based on that person’s past behavior and demonstrated interests.
4. Timers
The pressure of a ticking clock — highlighting the limited nature of a deal — can underscore urgency and drive purchases. NeweggFlash, a flash sale website (and sister site of Newegg.com) provides shoppers with a wide range of consumer technology products at attractive prices for a limited time. By adding a deal countdown timer and “people currently viewing” counter to its product detail pages (and A/B testing different versions to find the best look and feel), the company saw a 17% lift in conversion rates.

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This flash sale product page includes both a dynamic timer and viewer counter to drive urgency.
5. Inventory Counters
“QUICK! Get it before it’s gone!” When something is on the verge of selling out, we can all relate to the feeling of wanting it even more. So displaying an inventory counter for low-stock items that are relevant to shoppers can help them make that last-minute decision to purchase before something disappears.
High-performing retailers often combine the above strategies too — for example, sending triggered, low-stock emails displaying real-time inventory counts to users who have shown an interest in a given product. Plus, by adding open-time email capabilities, companies can ensure that every item recommended is the most up-to-date, relevant content — while also factoring in the recipient’s latest browsing behavior, purchases and real-time inventory.
Final Thoughts
The above personalization strategies are important ones for all types of e-commerce companies — and for those with rapidly changing catalogs, they play an especially crucial role in driving demand. So that shoppers can capitalize on a flash sale — before it disappears in a flash — and find the perfect, one-of-a-kind item before it’s auctioned away, they often need help finding hot, relevant products and motivation to complete their purchases. Real-time customer data management and 1-to-1 personalization are key.
To learn more about how Evergage can be the personalization and customer data platform (CDP) for your company, request a demo today.
