Getting customers to visit your site and place items in their cart is only half the battle. According to Baymard Institute, cart abandonment rates average around 70% on most e-commerce sites. Re-engaging even a fraction of these customers can drastically increase a business's revenue. Luckily, there are numerous straightforward ways shopping sites can reclaim abandoned cart revenue.
How to reclaim abandoned cart revenue
Personalized abandoned cart emails
Abandoned cart emails are nothing new; you’ve likely received these emails from Amazon and other e-commerce sites you frequent. However, many abandoned cart emails feel more like advertisements than personalized messages.
Personalized abandoned cart emails drastically improve revenue potential, especially those acknowledging your customers’ shopping habits. For example, triggered emails that recognize first-time shoppers may read differently than those sent to long-time customers. Emails sent to new buyers can offer introductory gifts or how-to guides, whereas those sent to long-time customers may provide benefits for their loyalty.
Engage anonymous cart abandoners
Reclaiming abandoned cart revenue gets trickier when you realize how many of your customers are unidentified. In some cases, these customers aren’t on your email list. In other cases, they’re on your email list but aren’t logged in.
Sending emails to unidentified customers can be challenging. Luckily, Retention.com’s CartID+ tool can use cookies to reach out to otherwise anonymous customers. CartID+ can even send abandoned cart emails to customers who haven’t opted into your newsletter.
SMS notifications
Emails aren’t the only way to get a customer’s attention; text messages can be a more engaging medium for retention marketing. Some sign up for website mailing lists using emails they’ve created to collect spam mail. Although abandoned cart emails aren’t spam, some of your contact attempts won’t be seen if you only use emails to engage cart abandoners.
SMS notifications can’t be flagged as spam and are more likely to be seen than emails. Additionally, some studies suggest mobile customers are more likely to abandon their carts than desktop users. Text messages are an ideal way to communicate with your mobile site users.
Learn more about your customers
Personalizing communication is an exercise in futility if you know nothing about your customers. Apps like Retention.com’s Enrich tool can provide valuable information about the people visiting your site. Learning more about your shoppers’ demographics and interests can enhance your email-campaigning efforts.
Knowing whether a customer has a kid, a pet, or a specific hobby will improve your site’s product recommendations. The Enrich tool, combined with your abandoned cart information, is vital to building a customer profile to enhance your triggered emails.
Offer discounts and alert customers when sales are live
Sometimes, people abandon their carts because they decide an item’s price is too high. Offering a discount can be an excellent way to reclaim abandoned cart revenue. As a matter of fact, some customers abandon their cart specifically because they think they’ll receive a discount.
Popular sites like LifeHacker teach customers to use cart abandonment as a method for buying products at a lower price. It isn’t uncommon for a customer to place a product in multiple carts across multiple sites and buy it from the one that sends them a coupon. Still, you don’t have to cut into your profits to engage customers.
Sites like Amazon observe products that customers leave in their carts and send them emails when they go on sale. This method lets you re-engage cart abandoners while making the most of your planned discount events.
Create a guest checkout page
Many customers abandon carts because they don’t want to waste time creating an account. Customer accounts are ideal for collecting emails, phone numbers, and addresses for future engagement campaigns. Still, customers who can’t buy your products without creating an account may choose to shop elsewhere. Guest checkout pages are a simple way to make it easier for customers to shop on your site.
Display shipping options on the product page
Some customers abandon their carts because the shipping costs catch them off guard. Some sales methodologies suggest obscuring a product’s price by hiding shipping costs until the customer is ready to check out. However, the modern consumer has grown tired of dishonest sales practices.
Although you may not be able to reduce shipping costs, being upfront about them can reduce your abandoned cart rates.
Stick with what works
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach in retention marketing. You shouldn’t spend time on campaigns that you run blindly. Monitoring your engagement campaigns and investing more time and effort into the methods yielding the best results is essential.
If you’re considering an application or service to help you with customer retention, you should ensure it offers in-depth reporting. Retention.com tracks revenue and ROI weekly and monthly, making it easy to access your needed data. Additionally, Retention.com has valuable insights into the domains, landing pages, and times of day that generate the most emails.