Introduction/overview

Client Information:

  • Company Name: Silver Lining Herbs

  • Industry: Herbal supplements for horses, dogs, and humans

  • Location: Buhl, Idaho 

Background:

Silver Lining Herbs is a trusted provider of herbal health products designed to support the well-being of horses, dogs, and humans. With a growing e-commerce presence and an expanding customer base, Silver Lining Herbs recognized the need to recapture lost revenue from abandoned carts and to better engage their customers at key points in the buying journey.

Unific partnered with Silver Lining Herbs to implement a segmented abandoned cart recovery strategy that leveraged customer behavior data, Dynamic Coupons, Segments, and Unific Sync Properties. Because no previous abandoned cart data existed for the client, a 10% recovery goal was established as the baseline benchmark to measure success against.

The challenges/problems they were facing

1. No Existing Abandoned Cart Recovery Data

Challenge: Silver Lining Herbs had no historical baseline for abandoned cart recovery, which made it difficult to measure performance, set realistic targets, or understand which segments of their customer base were most worth re-engaging.

Impact: Without a benchmark, revenue from abandoned carts was effectively being left on the table, and the team had no way to evaluate whether their marketing efforts were moving the needle.

2. One-Size-Fits-All Messaging

Challenge: Sending the same abandoned cart message to every customer ignores the differences between a brand-new shopper and a loyal, high-value repeat buyer. New customers may need additional trust signals and incentives, while loyal customers respond better to relevance and timing than to deep discounts.

Impact: Generic messaging undercuts margin by offering unnecessary discounts to customers who would have returned anyway, while failing to give new or hesitant customers the nudge they need to complete checkout.

3. Protecting Margin While Driving Recovery

Challenge: Discounting is an effective abandoned cart lever, but applied too broadly it erodes margin on customers who do not require an incentive to return.

Impact: Over-discounting reduces profitability and trains customers to wait for promotions, while under-discounting leaves recoverable revenue on the table.

4. Re-engaging Customers Across a 15-Day Window

Challenge: Reaching abandoned cart customers at the right cadence is critical. Emails sent too early can feel pushy, and emails sent too late miss the window of buying intent. Spreading messaging across multiple touchpoints requires careful sequencing.

Impact: Poorly timed messaging leads to lower click rates, fewer conversions, and missed revenue opportunities.

Solution

To address these challenges, Unific designed and implemented two segmented abandoned cart recovery workflows tailored to distinct customer groups. One workflow targeted Potential Core Customers (New, Promising, and Low Value segments), and the other targeted Core Customers (Champions, Loyalists, and Big Spenders).

Each workflow delivered five emails over a 15-day window, showcasing the abandoned cart products with a direct link back to checkout. Segmentation allowed Unific to calibrate the discount strategy to the value of each customer group: Potential Core Customers received a 10% discount to encourage their first or early purchases, while Core Customers received a smaller 5% discount applied only after the second email, preserving margin on shoppers who were already loyal to the brand.

For both workflows, Unific used Dynamic Coupons, Segments, and Unific Sync Properties to personalize the messaging, automate the timing, and measure performance against the 10% recovery goal.

The Implementation Process

Segmentation: Customers were segmented into Potential Core (New, Promising, Low Value) and Core (Champions, Loyalists, Big Spenders) groups using Unific's segmentation tools, enabling tailored messaging based on customer lifetime value and behavior.

Workflow Builds: Two abandoned cart recovery workflows were created, each consisting of five emails delivered over a 15-day period. Each email showcased the customer's abandoned cart products and included a clear link back to checkout.

Dynamic Coupon Configuration: The Potential Core workflow applied a 10% discount to drive recovery for newer and lower-value segments. The Core workflow applied a 5% discount only after the second email, balancing recovery with margin preservation for high-value customers.

Measurement and Goal Tracking: A 10% recovery goal was set as the baseline benchmark, and conversion goals were tracked at the email level to identify which messages were driving the most recovered revenue.

Results

Potential Core Customers Workflow:

189 unique contacts were enrolled in the Potential Core workflow, with 24 reaching the goal criteria for a 12.69% success rate, exceeding the 10% baseline target. Performance by email was as follows: Email 1 delivered a 5% click rate with 7 customers meeting goal criteria, Email 2 a 2% click rate with 2 conversions, Email 3 a 1.4% click rate with 6 conversions, Email 4 a 3% click rate, and Email 5 a 0.8% click rate with 9 conversions. The final email continued to drive conversions even at lower click rates, demonstrating the value of a full 15-day sequence.

Core Customers Workflow:

349 unique contacts were enrolled in the Core workflow, with 48 reaching the goal criteria for a 13.75% success rate, also exceeding the 10% baseline target. Performance by email was as follows: Email 1 a 4.5% click rate with 9 conversions, Email 2 a 4.1% click rate with 4 conversions, Email 3 a 4.2% click rate with 4 conversions, Email 4 a 3.3% click rate with 1 conversion, and Email 5 a 3.3% click rate with 20 conversions.

Revenue Recovered:

Based on a Core AOV of $180.44, Silver Lining Herbs recovered $6,135 in revenue from Core Customers. Based on a Potential Core AOV of $82.31, Silver Lining Herbs recovered an additional $1,152 in revenue from Potential Core Customers. Notably, 9 Core Customers were recovered without using a coupon code at all, preserving full margin on those orders.

Cost Efficiency:

The average monthly spend on the Unific products used to power these workflows was less than $600 a month, delivering a strong return on investment against the recovered revenue.

A New Benchmark:

Silver Lining Herbs now has a reliable benchmark for abandoned cart recovery rates, giving them a measurable foundation to build on. As they continue to learn more about their customers and further personalize their campaigns, recovery rates are expected to grow over time.

Conclusion

The collaboration between Unific and Silver Lining Herbs successfully turned an unmeasured revenue gap into a repeatable, segmented recovery program. By pairing Dynamic Coupons, Segments, and Unific Sync Properties with workflows tailored to Potential Core and Core Customer behavior, Silver Lining Herbs not only beat their 10% recovery target across both audiences but also recovered over $7,200 in revenue at a fraction of the cost. The result is a scalable foundation for abandoned cart recovery that protects margin on loyal customers, incentivizes new ones, and gives the team a clear benchmark to improve against going forward.