alex nilsson
← back to work
supply, demand, and everything in between
On a two-sided marketplace, you're always solving two problems at once. Here's how I built the campaigns that kept both sides moving.
lifecycle marketing
campaign design
email & push strategy
context
Curtsy lives and dies by balance. Too little supply and buyers have nothing to shop. Too little demand and sellers have no reason to list. My job was to keep both sides of that equation moving through campaigns, challenges, lifecycle messaging, and the occasional mechanic that made the whole thing feel less like marketing and more like a game worth playing.
the approach
Marketplace behavior is either a habit or it isn't. You're not going to convince someone to list their clothes or buy a stranger's jeans through a clever subject line alone, but you can show up at the right moment with the right nudge and remove whatever friction is standing in the way. That's the job.
I built campaigns around both sides of the marketplace. Buyer activation and engagement on one end, seller supply and re-engagement on the other. Each with its own mechanic, its own message, and its own way of measuring whether or not it actually worked.
what I built
fee free sunday
The simplest idea with the biggest results. Sellers pay zero fees on the first 10 items they list on the first Sunday of the month. That's it. We launched with a three-day engineering turnaround.
Every single iteration doubled listings compared to a normal Sunday and tripled the daily average. Not once- every time, across ten iterations through January 2026. The consistency was the story. It wasn't a spike, it was a lever. And every month we pulled it, it worked.
A few highlights:
- Feb 9, 2025: 11,891 new items listed
- Aug 3, 2025: 12,732 new items listed (program high)
- Jan 4, 2026: 11,346 new items listed
Paired with a targeted drip for sellers who hadn't listed in 30+ days, and A/B tested supporting email creative throughout.
in-app challenge series
Over three years I built a suite of in-app challenges. Each one designed to drive a specific behavior through a completion mechanic, a progress bar, and a reward that actually felt worth showing up for. Here's the lineup:
fall wardrobe challenge (2023)
Users loved 5 items across 5 fall clothing categories, then nominated a friend via text for bonus entries. The nomination mechanic was the secret weapon- it reached 1,425 people who weren't even on Curtsy yet and drove 1,119 directly attributed installs.
instagram grid carousel
in-app view
push notification series
launch email
spring cleaning challenge (2023)
Sellers had one week to list 5+ items for a chance to win $500 Curtsy Credit, with each additional item earning an extra entry. An in-app progress bar tracked completion in real time, making the goal feel tangible and close. 4,433 users completed the challenge, driving 93,211 total items listed. This was also the first iteration of the in-app challenge mechanic that would go on to power every campaign after it.
launch email
instagram story series
in-app view
instagram grid carousel
push notification series
summer lovin’ (2024)
Users loved 25 items for a chance to win one. Simple, sticky, and directly tied to the behavior we wanted to drive. 13,900 completions, 3x the first iteration we launched in 2023. 11% of all active users participated. The concept worked so well that we built a version of it into the permanent onboarding flow. New users get the challenge in their first week on Curtsy to drive early buyer conversion before they churn.
in-app view
instagram grid carousel
push notification series
instagram story share template
in-app pop-up
launch email
lifecycle email + push
Owned the full Braze stack- segmentation, automation, A/B testing, drip sequences. The stuff that looks unglamorous but compounds over time.
A few standouts:
- Seller re-engagement drips (30-day and 90-day versions, A/B tested): sent to 3,800+ lapsed sellers in first deployment
- Prom occasion email: 38,541 sent → 28.75% open rate, 11.48% loved an item within 3 days
- Referral week email: 199.2K sends, 74,500 opens, 36.41% open rate
- Push notifications consistently hitting 10-11% open rates against a 5-8% baseline.
what I learned
The best campaigns don't feel like marketing. Fee Free Sunday removed a real friction point for sellers at exactly the right moment. The Summer Lovin' challenge made browsing feel like a game worth playing for buyers. Neither felt like a notification you swipe away. Both felt like a reason to show up.
Consistency compounds too. A campaign that works reliably every month is worth ten that work brilliantly once. Segmentation is everything. A re-engagement email sent to a seller who listed yesterday is noise. The same email sent to someone who hasn't listed in 30 days is actually useful. Getting that targeting right is what separated the campaigns that actually moved behavior from the ones that just moved metrics.
alex nilsson
← back to work
supply, demand, and everything in between
On a two-sided marketplace, you're always solving two problems at once. Here's how I built the campaigns that kept both sides moving.
lifecycle marketing
campaign design
email & push strategy
context
Curtsy lives and dies by balance. Too little supply and buyers have nothing to shop. Too little demand and sellers have no reason to list. My job was to keep both sides of that equation moving through campaigns, challenges, lifecycle messaging, and the occasional mechanic that made the whole thing feel less like marketing and more like a game worth playing.
the approach
Marketplace behavior is either a habit or it isn't. You're not going to convince someone to list their clothes or buy a stranger's jeans through a clever subject line alone, but you can show up at the right moment with the right nudge and remove whatever friction is standing in the way. That's the job.
I built campaigns around both sides of the marketplace. Buyer activation and engagement on one end, seller supply and re-engagement on the other. Each with its own mechanic, its own message, and its own way of measuring whether or not it actually worked.
what I built
fee free sunday
The simplest idea with the biggest results. Sellers pay zero fees on the first 10 items they list on the first Sunday of the month. That's it. We launched with a three-day engineering turnaround.
Every single iteration doubled listings compared to a normal Sunday and tripled the daily average. Not once- every time, across ten iterations through January 2026. The consistency was the story. It wasn't a spike, it was a lever. And every month we pulled it, it worked.
A few highlights:
- Feb 9, 2025: 11,891 new items listed
- Aug 3, 2025: 12,732 new items listed (program high)
- Jan 4, 2026: 11,346 new items listed
Paired with a targeted drip for sellers who hadn't listed in 30+ days, and A/B tested supporting email creative throughout.
in-app challenge series
Over three years I built a suite of in-app challenges. Each one designed to drive a specific behavior through a completion mechanic, a progress bar, and a reward that actually felt worth showing up for. Here's the lineup:
fall wardrobe challenge (2023)
Users loved 5 items across 5 fall clothing categories, then nominated a friend via text for bonus entries. The nomination mechanic was the secret weapon- it reached 1,425 people who weren't even on Curtsy yet and drove 1,119 directly attributed installs.
instagram grid carousel
in-app view
push notification series
launch email
spring cleaning challenge (2023)
Sellers had one week to list 5+ items for a chance to win $500 Curtsy Credit, with each additional item earning an extra entry. An in-app progress bar tracked completion in real time, making the goal feel tangible and close. 4,433 users completed the challenge, driving 93,211 total items listed. This was also the first iteration of the in-app challenge mechanic that would go on to power every campaign after it.
launch email
in-app view
instagram grid carousel
push notification series
instagram story series
summer lovin’ (2024)
Users loved 25 items for a chance to win one. Simple, sticky, and directly tied to the behavior we wanted to drive. 13,900 completions, 3x the first iteration we launched in 2023. 11% of all active users participated. The concept worked so well that we built a version of it into the permanent onboarding flow. New users get the challenge in their first week on Curtsy to drive early buyer conversion before they churn.
in-app view
instagram grid carousel
push notification series
instagram story share template
in-app pop-up
launch email
lifecycle email + push
Owned the full Braze stack- segmentation, automation, A/B testing, drip sequences. The stuff that looks unglamorous but compounds over time.
A few standouts:
- Seller re-engagement drips (30-day and 90-day versions, A/B tested): sent to 3,800+ lapsed sellers in first deployment
- Prom occasion email: 38,541 sent → 28.75% open rate, 11.48% loved an item within 3 days
- Referral week email: 199.2K sends, 74,500 opens, 36.41% open rate
- Push notifications consistently hitting 10-11% open rates against a 5-8% baseline.
what I learned
The best campaigns don't feel like marketing. Fee Free Sunday removed a real friction point for sellers at exactly the right moment. The Summer Lovin' challenge made browsing feel like a game worth playing for buyers. Neither felt like a notification you swipe away. Both felt like a reason to show up.
Consistency compounds too. A campaign that works reliably every month is worth ten that work brilliantly once. Segmentation is everything. A re-engagement email sent to a seller who listed yesterday is noise. The same email sent to someone who hasn't listed in 30 days is actually useful. Getting that targeting right is what separated the campaigns that actually moved behavior from the ones that just moved metrics.
← back to work
supply, demand, and everything in between
On a two-sided marketplace, you're always solving two problems at once. Here's how I built the campaigns that kept both sides moving.
lifecycle marketing
campaign design
email & push strategy
context
Curtsy lives and dies by balance. Too little supply and buyers have nothing to shop. Too little demand and sellers have no reason to list. My job was to keep both sides of that equation moving through campaigns, challenges, lifecycle messaging, and the occasional mechanic that made the whole thing feel less like marketing and more like a game worth playing.
the approach
Marketplace behavior is either a habit or it isn't. You're not going to convince someone to list their clothes or buy a stranger's jeans through a clever subject line alone, but you can show up at the right moment with the right nudge and remove whatever friction is standing in the way. That's the job.
I built campaigns around both sides of the marketplace. Buyer activation and engagement on one end, seller supply and re-engagement on the other. Each with its own mechanic, its own message, and its own way of measuring whether or not it actually worked.
what I built
fee free sunday
The simplest idea with the biggest results. Sellers pay zero fees on the first 10 items they list on the first Sunday of the month. That's it. We launched with a three-day engineering turnaround.
Every single iteration doubled listings compared to a normal Sunday and tripled the daily average. Not once- every time, across ten iterations through January 2026. The consistency was the story. It wasn't a spike, it was a lever. And every month we pulled it, it worked.
A few highlights:
- Feb 9, 2025: 11,891 new items listed
- Aug 3, 2025: 12,732 new items listed (program high)
- Jan 4, 2026: 11,346 new items listed
Paired with a targeted drip for sellers who hadn't listed in 30+ days, and A/B tested supporting email creative throughout.
in-app challenge series
Over three years I built a suite of in-app challenges. Each one designed to drive a specific behavior through a completion mechanic, a progress bar, and a reward that actually felt worth showing up for. Here's the lineup:
fall wardrobe challenge (2023)
Users loved 5 items across 5 fall clothing categories, then nominated a friend via text for bonus entries. The nomination mechanic was the secret weapon- it reached 1,425 people who weren't even on Curtsy yet and drove 1,119 directly attributed installs.
instagram grid carousel
in-app view
push notification series
launch email
spring cleaning challenge (2023)
Sellers had one week to list 5+ items for a chance to win $500 Curtsy Credit, with each additional item earning an extra entry. An in-app progress bar tracked completion in real time, making the goal feel tangible and close. 4,433 users completed the challenge, driving 93,211 total items listed. This was also the first iteration of the in-app challenge mechanic that would go on to power every campaign after it.
launch email
in-app view
instagram story series
instagram grid carousel
push notification series
summer lovin’ (2024)
Users loved 25 items for a chance to win one. Simple, sticky, and directly tied to the behavior we wanted to drive. 13,900 completions, 3x the first iteration we launched in 2023. 11% of all active users participated. The concept worked so well that we built a version of it into the permanent onboarding flow. New users get the challenge in their first week on Curtsy to drive early buyer conversion before they churn.
in-app view
instagram grid carousel
instagram story share template
push notification series
in-app pop-up
launch email
lifecycle email + push
Owned the full Braze stack- segmentation, automation, A/B testing, drip sequences. The stuff that looks unglamorous but compounds over time.
A few standouts:
- Seller re-engagement drips (30-day and 90-day versions, A/B tested): sent to 3,800+ lapsed sellers in first deployment
- Prom occasion email: 38,541 sent → 28.75% open rate, 11.48% loved an item within 3 days
- Referral week email: 199.2K sends, 74,500 opens, 36.41% open rate
- Push notifications consistently hitting 10-11% open rates against a 5-8% baseline.