Etsy (ETSY) Bernstein 42nd Annual Strategic Decisions Conference summary

Leadership and strategic priorities

• New leadership team conducted a deep diagnostic in early 2025, focusing on customer experience and marketplace health.

• Four main strategic priorities: customer discovery, improved search match, customer retention/loyalty, and emphasizing creativity and human connection.

• Emphasis on building relationships over transactions, with a holistic approach to the end-to-end user experience.

• Focus on making Etsy's unique qualities more visible throughout the product and marketing experience.

• Early signs of improvement in marketplace health and buyer engagement.

Growth outlook and business drivers

• Returned to year-over-year GMS growth after previous declines, with confidence to provide a full-year outlook.

• Growth driven by increases in buyer count, order frequency, and mobile app adoption.

• Mobile app GMS grew 11% YoY in Q1, now representing 47% of total GMS.

• Owned marketing channels (email, push notifications) now drive as much GMS as paid search, improving ROI.

• Strategic focus on growing both new and reactivated buyers, with sequential improvement in active buyers for the first time in over two years.

Product and customer experience

• Mobile app enables personalized home screens, tabs, and sliders to promote cross-category shopping and occasion-based missions.

• AI and ML tools are increasingly used to personalize experiences and understand customer preferences.

• Efforts to improve listing quality and match search results to both query and user profile, not just conversion rate.

• Focus on building trust, safety, and loyalty programs to enhance retention.

• Experimenting with agentic commerce and AI-driven gifting agents for richer, context-aware shopping experiences.