The online resale market is highly competitive! How Mercari improves user stickiness and repurchase rate

The online resale market has become more crowded and increasingly competitive in recent years. Players such as Mercari are working hard to differentiate themselves from the competition and win more users.

Mercari launched a series of customer engagement campaigns last year that focused on incentivizing buyers to sell their products to drive more sales and repeat purchases. According to the company, these incentives created sales lift and increased overall traffic to Mercari.

Test ways to attract customers

Mercari says its user experience and marketing teams are able to deliver targeted offers that keep users coming back to the app, and Mercari’s customer relationship management [CRM] team begins collecting information about purchase and sales intent as soon as users list their first item.

Condon, head of Mercari, said: "We soon began to encourage users to list new products and make some suggestions for improvement to the current listings." Mercari mainly incentivizes users to sell goods by providing them with shopping points, which makes Mercari buyers more motivated to sell on Mercari.

In addition, Mercari is increasing its use of machine learning to predict which users may have which needs. Users can get sales inspiration from tabs such as "Sold in the past 10 minutes" and "Demand surge" on the homepage, which shows the products and brands that consumers are currently searching for. Mercari also conducts marketing activities around seasons or holidays, constantly refreshing and pushing products.

The MercariCRM team worked with vendor Braze, an AI-based customer engagement platform, to develop customer communications and campaigns. This allowed its engineers and product managers to focus on features that promote to consumers, including outreach via email, push notifications or SMS, which is currently being tested.

It is reported that these adjustments are producing results, especially the coupon program is very popular among users. In the latest data released at the end of January, the program helped Mercari increase sales by 8.5%, and its advertising return on investment reached 184%.

Focus on new service Mercari Local

Mercari is also working to get more buyers and sellers to use its Mercari Local, a service that allows customers to have nearby orders delivered using local carriers designated by Mercari.

Mercari Local opens up a whole new delivery path for new categories, such as large items or furniture. To popularize this delivery option, Mercari is working on listing tips to recommend smarter shipping and prices to users. Mercari Local is powered by Uber and shoppers only pay $8 for shipping.

The Mercari Local service also helped Mercari cash in on shipping delays last holiday season. December shipping deadlines prompted many Americans to plan their gift purchases early, and resale sites like Mercari took advantage of supply chain-related delays to promote local, second-hand gift items.

Competitive resale market

Matt Moorut, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said the pressure on resale apps to have more relevant merchandise is growing. He said competition in the resale market will become more competitive as it grows in size.

Market share growth will be used as a proxy for which company investors support, however, multi-channel marketing across push, SMS and email is becoming more common among platforms like Mercari that have high app usage.

For Mercari, it is important to constantly encourage buyers to become sellers in order to continue to increase user stickiness and repurchase rates and build a strong influence.

Editor ✎ Xiao Zhu/

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