Customer Story
Coffex turns abandoned carts into revenue with SMS reminders
Overview
Challenge: As online sales grew, Coffex was also seeing more abandoned carts and missed revenue, while email reminders were delivering little response.
Solution: Sinch Engage helped Coffex send short, automated SMS reminders to customers within an hour of cart abandonment.
Results: Low-cost SMS reminders recovered more revenue than had originally been left behind, generating $4,875.18 in sales from 205 messages that cost $28.56 to send.
“The return on investment is amazing. It’s such a small price per text message, when you think about it, but we’ve been using them to get $90-$100 transactions. It’s just been really successful.“
Sometimes the most effective fix is also the simplest. For Coffex, abandoned cart SMS did not require a complex new workflow or a big digital overhaul — just a short, timely reminder that helped turn missed purchases into real revenue.
Coffex Coffee Roasters has been roasting and blending coffee for more than 50 years, supplying cafés, hotels and function centres across the region. While online sales had been part of the business for more than a decade, the pandemic accelerated ecommerce growth and made website sales a much bigger part of the mix. That brought more completed purchases, but also more abandoned carts and more lost revenue.
The business first tried automated email reminders, but they were largely ignored. So Coffex turned to Sinch Engage (formerly MessageMedia) to see whether SMS could prompt more customers to come back and complete their orders.
A simple message at the right time
The setup was intentionally straightforward. Coffex sent short, friendly reminder texts to customers within an hour of cart abandonment, using templates and an automated workflow that was easy to manage without developer support. That simplicity mattered: the team could get the program live quickly and start testing results without adding complexity.
Wendy Faire says the process was simple to set up and easy to run, while still leaving room to explore other SMS use cases over time. For a business already balancing wholesale relationships, online growth and operational demands, that ease of use was a major advantage.
Strong returns from a low-cost workflow
The commercial outcome is what makes this story stand out. Over a six-month period, customers abandoned $4,127.24 worth of potential online sales on the Coffex website. In response, the business sent 205 SMS reminders at a total cost of $28.56. Those messages generated $4,875.18 in sales — more revenue than had originally been left behind in abandoned carts.
Wendy says the return on investment has been “amazing,” with many customers not only completing their original order but also purchasing more. In practical terms, a low-cost text message helped recover transactions worth around $90 to $100 each.
What makes the result especially compelling is how little was required to achieve it. There was no elaborate campaign strategy, just a well-timed message that reached customers on a channel they were more likely to notice than email. For Coffex, that was enough to create a meaningful revenue recovery engine from a common ecommerce pain point.
