In the digital products market, setting up an online store and listing products might be easier than consistently reaching customers and convincing them to buy. Competition in the gift and recharge cards business is not solely about product availability; it also involves accessibility, customer trust in the store, and the shopping experience it provides.

However, how can a recharge card store expand its reach to customers without relying solely on ads? And what should it do when a customer adds products to their cart, only to leave before completing the order?

The experience of Take Card offers a practical example of addressing these two challenges. Affiliate marketing helped the store achieve over SAR 20,000 in sales within a single month, while abandoned cart reminders contributed to recovering around 3.5% of customers, according to information published in Take Card's success story on Salla.

Behind these results is a journey that began in 2020, during which the store’s needs evolved from setting up a storefront to managing additional marketing channels and optimizing value from existing traffic.

The Beginning | How Did Take Card Start in the Digital Products Market?

Take Card launched in 2020, choosing Salla from the very start to build its online store and deliver digital products to customers.

In this line of business, the store's role goes beyond displaying available recharge cards or digital items; it extends to delivering an experience through which customers can easily find the right product and complete their order seamlessly.

For this reason, Take Card leveraged Salla’s professional themes to build an interface that reflects the store's identity and helps organize product displays. As its business grew, the need for marketing and sales management tools became even more crucial, especially with expanding opportunities to reach customers across various channels.

This is a point worth noting when considering a recharge card business; launching an online card-selling website is not the end of the setup phase, but rather the start of a journey requiring continuous improvements in customer experience, marketing, and performance tracking.

If you are in the phase of setting up your store, you can learn how to choose the right theme for your business before customizing its storefront and adding your products.

The Challenge | How to Grow Sales Without Relying on a Single Marketing Channel?

As e-commerce stores scale, managing growth becomes far more complex than simply adding more products or launching new ad campaigns. Reaching customers requires diverse channels, and not all incoming store visits convert into completed orders.

Take Card needed tools to help manage marketing and reach customers efficiently, without turning affiliate management into a series of manual, time-consuming tasks for the team. At the same time, there was an opportunity to capitalize on customers who showed interest in products but did not complete their purchases.

Here, the store relied on two tools, each serving a distinct purpose: affiliate marketing to expand customer reach, and abandoned carts to recover a portion of incomplete purchasing opportunities.

Affiliate Marketing | How Take Card Generated Over SAR 20,000 in a Month?

Affiliate marketing is based on collaborating with marketers who promote the store’s products in exchange for commissions calculated under specific terms. Instead of the store team handling all outreach activities internally, they can leverage a network of marketers while tracking their performance and results.

Take Card utilized Salla’s Marketers Portal to manage these relationships in one place, including organizing marketers' activities and tracking sales and commissions without having to rely entirely on manual processes.

The result was generating over SAR 20,000 in sales via affiliate marketing within a single month, with this channel contributing around 2% of total store sales, according to figures shared in its success story.

Although 2% might seem modest compared to total sales, it represents an additional channel whose contribution can be measured and developed. However, affiliate marketing success is not measured solely by sales volume; merchants also need to factor in commissions paid, net profit margins after costs, and the effort required to manage marketers.

If you are considering adopting this model, you can learn how to manage marketers and track their performance and commissions on Salla, or explore the steps to create a new affiliate marketing opportunity.

Abandoned Carts | How to Recover an Incomplete Sales Opportunity?

Not every customer who adds an item to their cart is ready to complete the order at that exact moment. They might leave due to timing, stop before making a payment, or decide to postpone the purchase despite their interest in the product.

For a store selling digital products or recharge cards, these visits represent valuable opportunities worth pursuing; the customer has already found the product and taken a step toward purchasing, but the process was not completed.

Take Card utilized abandoned cart reminders to encourage customers to return and complete their orders. Information published about the experience indicates a recovery rate of around 3.5% of customers using this tool.

This highlights the difference between the two tools: affiliate marketing helps expand customer reach, while abandoned carts focus on capitalizing on the interest already shown by visitors within the store.

Store owners can learn how to manage abandoned carts and track recovery opportunities on Salla, and then test the impact of reminders on completed orders rather than merely tracking the number of messages sent.

The Results | What Do Take Card's Numbers Reveal About Sales Growth?

Take Card’s experience demonstrates how different tools can contribute to improving store performance from multiple angles. Instead of viewing growth merely as an increase in visitor numbers, merchants can measure what each channel adds to sales and what operational tools help recover in terms of purchase opportunities.

Take Card's experience yielded the following results:

Over SAR 20,000: Sales via affiliate marketing in a single month.

Around 2%: The share of affiliate marketing in total store sales.

Around 3.5%: Percentage of customers recovered via abandoned cart reminders, as described in the published story.

These results do not imply that tools alone drove the store's growth, or that every merchant will achieve the exact same rates. However, they highlight two crucial opportunities: expanding customer acquisition channels and maximizing value from visitors who have already progressed far along the buyer's journey.

Key Lessons | What Can Merchants Learn from Take Card's Experience?

1. Do not rely on a single channel for customer reach. Affiliate marketing can be an effective way to diversify sales sources, especially if the store offers products that marketers can present to an engaged audience. However, it is essential to set appropriate commission rates and track order profitability so that increased sales do not turn into a burden on profit margins.

2. Do not consider every abandoned cart a lost opportunity. A customer who selected products and then left may simply need a well-timed reminder; however, cart recovery also begins with understanding the reasons behind incomplete purchases and optimizing the checkout and ordering experience.

3. Evaluate tools based on the results they deliver, not merely on their activation. A store can use multiple tools, but real value emerges when the impact of each tool on sales, costs, and customer experience is clearly understood.

4. Plan for growth right from the store setup phase. Whether you are planning to sell recharge cards or launch a store for other digital products, it is beneficial to establish a clear way from the start to track order sources and monitor customer behavior, enabling you to refine your decisions as your business grows.

Take Card's Experience | Tools That Evolve With the Store's Needs

The Take Card team sums up their experience with Salla by stating:

Salla is the best platform to facilitate commerce and success. From day one, it has grown with us, and whenever we need a new tool, we find it readily available.

Since launching in 2020, Take Card's needs evolved from building a storefront for digital products to utilizing tools that help manage marketers and recover incomplete purchasing opportunities.

What makes this experience valuable for merchants is not the sheer number of tools used, but the clear role each one plays: one tool helps acquire new customers, another helps optimize value from existing ones, with ample room in between for testing, measuring, and refining.

You can also check out Take Card's success story published on Salla to explore the journey firsthand.

Your Next Step | How to Start Your Online Store?

If you are wondering how to launch an online store to sell digital products or recharge cards, Take Card’s experience shows that getting started is not limited to choosing products and designing the store; it also involves planning how to reach customers, enhancing the buying experience, and tracking results.

You can begin by creating an online store on Salla, and then explore affiliate marketing and abandoned cart tools that help you scale your store as your business grows.