Beauty Consumers are Twice as Likely to Convert After Receiving Targeted SMS Messages, Listrak's 2025 Beauty & Fashion Benchmark Report Finds

Powered by Listrak Intelligence, the analysis reveals key insights for beauty and fashion brands around SMS, loyalty and overcoming e-commerce "window shopping"

LITITZ, Pa., March 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Beauty shoppers are twice as likely to convert after receiving an SMS cart abandonment message and 2.6 times more likely to convert after receiving an SMS price drop alert, according to a new report from Listrak, the retail industry's person-first marketing platform. The insights are part of the 2025 Beauty & Fashion Benchmark Report from Listrak, which powers digital connections for leading beauty and fashion brands including Peter Thomas Roth, COOLA, Oscar de la Renta and 7 For All Mankind.

Like beauty shoppers, fashion consumers also are embracing SMS, the Listrak report found. In the fashion vertical, every SMS campaign analyzed saw a year-over-year conversation rate increase, proving that fashion shoppers are becoming more comfortable purchasing directly from their phones.

"Listrak is more than a platform—it's a partner," said Jamie Elden, Listrak's Chief Revenue Officer, who also leads Listrak's beauty and fashion division. "With Listrak's expertise and predictive intelligence, we help fashion and beauty brands anticipate trends, optimize strategies, and make faster, smarter marketing decisions, driving real-time results."

The report's data and analysis were conducted by Listrak Intelligence, which unites AI-powered insights with industry-specific expert analysis.

Additional findings include:

• Loyalty Programs Take Center Stage: Beauty brands overhauled their loyalty strategies, leading to a staggering 60X year-over-year increase in loyalty sends. These campaigns saw 2X higher conversion than overall benchmarks. Fashion brands increased loyalty sends by 167% year-over-year as more brands launched or revamped their programs.
• Shoppers Are Browsing More: For beauty shoppers, "window shopping" surged last year, with browse abandonment sends up 51% and cart abandonment sends up 42%. Many beauty shoppers didn't convert immediately – either leaving without purchasing or researching online before buying in-store. To overcome window shopping in the fashion sector, fashion brands relied more on urgency-driven messaging in 2024, with Low Inventory, Price Drop, and Replenishment campaigns seeing a major uptick in sends.
• Fashion Brands Court Dormant Customers: For fashion brands, as customer acquisition costs rose, brands focused heavily on reactivating dormant shoppers nearly 2X the rate of last year.

In addition to identifying key trends, the report also provides guidance for marketers to optimize campaigns, including AI-powered strategies such as utilizing AI-driven product recommendations within broadcast emails to help with product discovery;  channel affinity to determine where they are most likely to engage; and product recommendations for Recurring Automated Campaigns (RAC) to deepen product discovery and help consumers find what they are shopping for.

Listrak's 2025 Beauty & Fashion Benchmark is based on data from 125 billion email and SMS/MMS messages sent by over 1,000 e-commerce clients between Jan. 1, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2024. 

About Listrak

Listrak is the person-first marketing automation platform that seamlessly integrates data, identity, and cross-channel messaging to power hyper-personalized customer experiences. Built for leading retailers and brands, Listrak drives measurable customer growth, maximizes efficiency, and delivers exceptional revenue results. For more information, visit https://www.listrak.com/. 

SOURCE LISTRAK