Personal care email marketing: long reorder cycles, scent launches and bundles

Why is personal care email marketing a memory problem?

A snack is gone in a week. A stick of deodorant or a tube of toothpaste can last a month or two, and a bottle of body wash longer than that. Long gaps between orders are normal here.

The problem is what happens in the gap. Personal care sits in the bathroom with your logo on it, but people don't think about it until it's empty. Then they're at the store, or adding things to a grocery order, and the shelf is right there. If your reminder isn't already in their inbox, you're competing with the whole aisle.

So the job is two things: know when each customer will run out, and stay familiar enough in the meantime that they come back to you instead of the shelf.

How should you time reorder emails for deodorant, oral care and body care?

Start with how long each product lasts with normal daily use, then send the first reminder about a week before that. Here's a starting point, labeled as an example. Swap in your own numbers.

These are placeholders, not benchmarks. Use your own usage estimates first, then switch to real order data as soon as you have it: pull the median days between first and second order for each product and move the first email about a week ahead of it.

A few things that break personal care reorder flows:

• One delay for the whole store. Your toothpaste buyer and your body wash buyer run out at different times.
• Ignoring quantity. A 3-pack lasts three times as long. If the flow only checks the product, it asks for a reorder while two sticks are still in the drawer.
• Stopping too early. With long cycles, people often reorder later than you'd expect. Keep a last nudge in the flow for the late ones.

The reorder reminder isn't one of the 8 core flows I install for every brand, but for products that run out, I'd add it on top of them early. In the 4 consumable brands I pooled, reorder reminder flows earned about $2.23 per person, roughly 28x the best campaign. The build is in my Klaviyo replenishment flow guide, and the timing math is in replenishment email timing.

What should you send in the long gap?

If someone's next order is two months out, sending a campaign every other day to them doesn't help much. What helps is a few useful touches that keep your name in their head.

In the Flow System I install, the Post Purchase Thank You flow splits by order count: a first order gets 6 emails over about 24 days, a second order 5, a third 4 and a fourth or later 3, all within 30 days. Here's what I'd put in the first-order path for personal care, matched to what they bought:

1. How to get the most out of it. Arrives with delivery. For a natural deodorant, what to expect when someone switches over. For a toothpaste, how much to use. Keep it short and honest.
2. The scent or flavor check-in. A week or two in: "How's the scent? Want to try another?" Personal care customers who don't love the scent rarely complain. They just don't come back. Give them an easy swap.
3. What pairs with it. The body wash that matches their deodorant scent. The floss that goes with the toothpaste. One product, one button.
4. Save the review ask. In my flows, the review invitation goes to every customer who reaches their third order. It's based on order count, not on how happy anyone seems, so nobody gets filtered out by sentiment.

Then hand them to the reorder reminder. More on the full flow in my post purchase email flow guide.

How should you launch a new scent or variant?

Scent launches are the most natural campaign a personal care brand has. They're news, and news beats brand voice in my pooled data from 7 brands. But not everyone on your list cares equally.

Here's how I'd run it:

• Tag scent and variant on every order. Save what they bought to their profile, so you know who buys citrus, who buys unscented and who buys the woody one.
• Tell the closest fans first. If the new scent is a cousin of an existing one, send it to the people who already buy that one before the full list.
• Give fragrance-free and sensitive-skin buyers their own lane. Someone who only buys unscented doesn't want five emails about a new fragrance. Send them the launch once, or skip them, and save their attention for news that fits.
• Make trying it low-risk. A sample size, a mini or a bundle that pairs the new scent with their usual one.

For the general launch playbook, see my product launch email guide.

How do bundles fit into personal care email?

Bundles do two jobs. A routine bundle, like deodorant plus body wash in the same scent, raises the first order and gets more of your products into the bathroom. A stock-up pack, like three deodorants, locks in the next few months.

Both change your timing. If someone buys the 3-pack, push their reorder email out to match. If someone buys a routine set, time the reminder to whichever product runs out first, and offer the set again.

Every core flow I install carries an offer: people who haven't bought get your welcome offer, and customers get a slightly better offer, a buy-more offer like a bundle, or a subscription. So bundles fit naturally in three places:

• Welcome email #1, as the easy "start here" option. In my pooled data, welcome email #1 earned about $4.50 per person, and emails #2 to #5 about $0.10 each. Email #1 carries most of the money, which is why the offer goes in it, and the rest of the 6-email, 7-day welcome builds trust before the offer expires.
• The reorder reminder, as the "stock up and forget about it" choice.
• Customer winback, as a reason to come back that isn't just a discount. In my winback, the offer doesn't show up until email 4 of 5, so a bundle gives the earlier emails something to say.

What should a personal care brand measure?

Judge emails by clicks and revenue. Opens are inflated by Apple Mail, and clicks tracked revenue about twice as well as opens in my pooled data.

• Days between first and second order, by product and pack size.
• Revenue per recipient on the reorder flow.
• How many customers switch scents vs leave after the scent check-in.
• Bundle share of first orders.

For the bigger picture, see my repeat purchase email strategy.

Where these numbers come from

The per-person numbers come from a pooled look at 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. The subject line finding comes from 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns. None of them is a personal care brand, and it's a small sample, so treat it as directional.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

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