How Abandoned Cart Emails Help Businesses Re-Engage Customers

How Abandoned Cart Emails Help Businesses Re-Engage Customers
categories: eCommerceInternet Marketing

Think of retargeting with abandon cart emails serves as valuable service to customers that can help to build brand loyalty, simply by serving as a friendly reminder.

"Setting up automated abandoned cart emails can help increase profits for eCommerce based websites. Data has shown that around two-thirds of eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned after customers find the products they are searching for within a website and adding the items to the cart."

What are the most common causes of shopping cart abandonment?

It has been found that customers abandon shopping carts for a variety of reasons. The most common cause has been found to be shipping and handling costs for products that have a fairly inexpensive price tag. For example:
  • A new potential customer finds your website and after carefully browsing through the site, they find what they are searching for.
  • The customer adds a product to their cart that is listed for $20, then create an account and starts stepping through the checkout process.
  • Once this customer arrives on the shipping stage, the rates listed for shipping could be much more than expected.
For this scenario, the lowest or only shipping rate option is: $16.95 - The subtotal would be $36.95. If the customer lives in the same state as the company they are purchasing from, then sales tax would be included, raising the total cost of the online purchase even higher. This can cause customers to shop around for a potentially better price and/or shipping rate.

In many cases, it is possible that potential customer may not find what he or she is looking for after searching Google for a better deal by comparing prices.

Who doesn’t like saving money by getting the best deal???
Sending automated abandoned carts emails with links back to the products that were added to the cart which serves as a reminder to customers, while helping to increase sales for commerce based companies.

Why should an abandoned shopping carts be treated as lead that has a high potential for success?

Ecommerce Shopping CartStudies have shown that the sooner abandoned cart emails are sent, the better the chances are the customer will return to complete the purchase. eCommerce marketing specialists recommend sending out 3 automated emails to customers to remind them about the products that they added to the shopping cart. The first email should be sent out an hour after the customer leaves and abandons their cart. The second email should be sent 24 hours after the first email, and the third email should go out after 2 days. Many companies provide an extra incentive to customers by including a discount code to help close the deal and get the sale.

A wealth of information can be derived from user interaction data. Monitor traffic data from eMails to learn more about the behavior of visitors that interact with abandoned cart emails and always look for opportunities to make improvements. Keep in mind that the more effort that is invested in the process, the better chances your company will be able to effectively convert abandoned carts into sales.

Taking time to create an abandoned cart email that is visually appealing and worded properly can help to improve the overall effectiveness and the recovery rate of potential sales. Don’t forget to monitor the data to measure progress. Review stats to see how many emails are opened, unopened, and convert into a sale. Don’t be afraid to make changes, then compare the data from before and after the changes were made.
 

How can eCommerce companies collect more visitor data?

Collecting and analyzing data is very important, Google offers an easy to use URL Builder that works with Analytics, this service also is used for to additional tracking functionality of the traffic data provided by Google Analytics. Marketing teams and large eCommerce websites can also Google Tag Manager can be used to create, save, and view data for all of the Google Analytics marketing tags.

Adding marketing tags to emails provides a method to track clicks, page views resulting from links clicked within emails and conventions. For example, the INSYTE eCommerce platform provides a feature to quickly add marketing tags to abandoned cart emails. The data is collected is stored and is available for quick easy access to the backend of the eCommerce CMS. If your company is not on the INSYTE eCommerce platform, we would be happy to show you more, contact the INSYTE web development team today for a LIVE 1-on-1 DEMO of our robust eCommerce platform with automated abandoned cart emails with marketing tags.

 

How much money do companies typically recover using abandoned cart emails?

Read these 9 Case Studies and Infographics about cart abandonment and email retargeting to learn how companies turned abandon cart emails into profits
  • According to SaleCycle, the average shopping cart, basket, and booking abandonment rate reached 73.6% in Q1 2013, up from 70.7% in Q4 2012.
  • Most abandonment happened between 8 pm and 9 pm, with Thursday the most common day for ditching a purchase.
  • Looking at basket abandonment emails, 48.1% of basket abandonment emails were opened (up from 45.9% in Q4) and 33.3% of these clickers went on to purchase a product (up from 30.1% in Q4).
  • The average order value was 58% higher for purchases from basket abandonment emails compared with direct sales (up from 36% in Q4).

What's the best subject line text, introduction, and body content to use for the emails?

Creating the perfect content for an abandoned cart email can be a challenge, so view 37 Examples of Abandon Cart Emails for great content ideas. This resource displays only the textual content used in emails sent from major online retailers in the US including Cooking.com, ProFlowers, Sam’s Club, Dell, L.L Bean, Vistaprint, Best Buy, Sears, Victoria’s Secret, and many others. Every eCommerce based business is different, which is why it’s important to make sure your company adapts to the particular needs of your current and potential customers. For more examples of how other eCommerce based companies made changes to the content of their abandoned cart email in order to help re-engage customers, this case study evaluates 10 Of The Best Performing Abandoned Cart Emails.

As discussed above, it’s best to start by reviewing the data related to abandoned carts and search for common traits. For example, if most of the items left in the abandoned cart have a high price tag, then include a 5% or 10% off or free shipping coupon code in the emails and see if it helps to recover unclaimed revenue for these types of orders. Whether making purchases online or offline, everyone likes to feel like they are getting the best deal, so going out of the way to help customers save money can often turn one-time customers into repeat customers.
 
categories: eCommerceInternet Marketing