Blog Post 3: Digital AI Marketing

The first time I ever consciously encountered AI marketing was while I was shopping online at Fashion Nova. After adding a couple of items I liked to my cart, I realized that the total was more than I wanted to spend, so I exited the site and started shopping at other online retailers. Less than an hour later, I received an email from Fashion Nova offering me a percentage off the items in my cart that I hadn’t purchased. It was a really good deal, so I actually did end up going back and purchasing the items.

This strategy used by Fashion Nova and many other online retailers is called abandoned cart emails. An AI tracks carts that are abandoned at check out and automatically sends the customer an email based on the company’s premade template. This is a very popular form of AI marketing online, as retailers lose $18 Billion annually in sales revenue due to 75% of online shoppers abandoning their carts. Not all abandoned cart emails send a discount code; Some will just remind you that you left your cart or tell you that there are limited quantities of the item left.

This is one AI marketing strategy that I actually find quite useful. After discovering abandoned cart emails from Fashion Nova, I was curious to see if I would get another discount code by abandoning my cart the next time I shopped there. When I went back to shop at Fashion Nova again, I left my cart, even though I was going to purchase the item regardless. To my surprise, they sent me the same email as before with a coupon. 

Regardless of whether this is actually improving Fashion Nova’s sales revenue or not, these abandoned cart emails were successful in their intended purpose of having me complete my purchase.