Grow Revenue by Decreasing Cart Abandonment and Increasing Sale Frequency

Transcription

1 Grow Revenue by Decreasing Cart Abandonment and Increasing Sale Frequency

2 In 2016, ecommerce merchants lost an estimated $4.6 trillion worth of merchandise to abandoned carts, up from $4.2 trillion in Fortunately, abandoned carts are not the end of the road. It is possible to redeem these and turn them into purchases, winning loyal customers and increasing your revenue.

3 What s the big deal about shopping cart abandonment? Most ecommerce companies focus their digital strategies on acquiring new visitors. After all, the Internet presents an infinite pool of potential buyers looking for your products. However, 92 percent of visitors never convert and 70 percent of the few that do never repurchase. It s time to abandon your acquisition-only strategy. In fact, it s cheaper and easier to convert existing customers and visitors; it is 70 percent more expensive to sell to a new customer than to an old one. Even lapsed customers convert more easily than do new ones. The people that bought from you before can spend more money. As little as a 1 percent increase in retention can equal a 10 percent growth in revenue. So retention starting from the moment you acquire shoppers as visitors is the biggest opportunity in ecommerce today. To address these issues of poor conversion and retention, the logical place to start is where you almost had the revenue: abandoned carts. Between 55 and 80 percent of carts are abandoned online, but 63 percent of abandoned online purchases have recovery potential. With the right understanding, you can reap that potential for enormous profit.

4 Why People Abandon their Carts About 70 percent of shoppers that actually make it to the cart end up abandoning the cart before checkout. According to Statista, these are the most common reasons why shoppers did so in : Expensive Shipping 64% 54% Only Browsing 57% 40% Only Researching 48% 38% No Free Shipping 44% 39% Unaware of 35% 24% Shipping Costs Slow Shipping 22% 26% Long Proccess 19% 21% Bad Site Navigation 18% 16% As you can see, the majority of reasons have to do with shipping. While there may or may not be anything in your power to fix that, there is still plenty within your power to bring back shoppers.

5 How to Recover Abandoned Carts Capturing s before Checkout Getting shoppers addresses significantly decreases the amount of work you ll have to put in to win their business. Addresses allow you to reach out to shoppers directly and immediately after abandoning a cart or making a purchase. Don t make the mistake of waiting until the last minute (i.e., checkout) to get this information; most of them won t make it that far. If you don t have the address for the person s Internet browser, the best move you can make when they indicate they re going to be leaving your website is to capture their address before they go, says Karl Cordes, Bridgeline Digital s VP of business development. For example, use a behavioral overlay that offers incentives for subscribers. That way, you can capture the address for life. If changing your entire checkout process isn t an option, here are some other options that can get you a shopper s address: Ask shoppers that aren t logged in to either give their before completing a checkout or adding their items to the cart. Display a pop-up or lightbox that offers an incentive or discount in return for an address. Whatever method you utilize, remember this rule: ask for an address sooner rather than later. You never know how much time you have.

6 Bringing Customers Back with Coupons Armed with addresses, one of the best things you can do is to offer them discounts. Nothing invites reconsideration of a business like lower prices. Bridgeline Digital has seen this while working with clients. PetFlow, a dog- and cat-food supplier, enacted an campaign promoting its Direct-Debit subscription model. The campaign saw a 9 percent increase in first-time buyers becoming active customers. That was a huge increase in subscription revenue, Cordes said. Not only was it revenue for today, it was revenue for the next month and the month after that. Another retailer regularly sends vouchers for 15 percent off to shoppers with abandoned carts. The voucher is a reminder to return to finish the purchase. When the first goes unanswered, the retailer sends a second voucher after a few days wait. And there s really no harm in doing that, Cordes says. Sometimes people don t even open that initial , so resending it makes a lot of sense. The goal to move potential customers to occasional customers and occasional customers to regular. And if you have a set of products that makes sense for a subscription revenue, that s a great way to go as well. If they re just not buying, you don t have much to lose with a reasonable incentive.

7 Powerful Nurtures When drafting your s, here are some principles to keep in mind. 1. Remember timing. You don t want to shoppers who may still be browsing your website, but you also don t want to shoppers after they ve moved on and taken their business elsewhere. 2. Keep a friendly tone. You aren t sending a business , you re ing your customers. Make sure they know you care about them and their business. 3. Personalize your message. Use shoppers individual browsing histories to recommend products tied to their interests, (Product recommendations increase conversion by 3 to 5 percent) whether they be best sellers, characteristics matches, or also purchased with Get to the point. Make sure that you re guiding shoppers back to their abandoned carts. 5. Be mobile. Remember that shoppers may be reading your on a mobile device. Take that into account when formatting. 6. Incentivize. Place that coupon front and center. Create a sense of urgency with expiration dates and updates on product availability. 7. Test thoroughly. Play the part of a shopper and create an account, fill a shopping cart, and leave. See for yourself how well the system works in reaching out to you before you unleash it on others.

8 Using Customized Remarketing Lists Besides , remarketing lists are crucial to resolving your abandoned carts. Remarketing means placing targeted ads in front of a specific, defined audience of shoppers who have visited your website. You are responsible for defining the audience and creating the ads they will see, customizing the ads to meet their interests. Google Adwords allows you to create lists on very specific criteria. Lists can be built according to your industry (education, hotels, retail, etc.) and shopper behavior. For example, you create lists based on specific pages that shoppers viewed on your website (e.g., URL contains stilettos ). Google will use your criteria to match these shoppers with ads while they visit other websites. However, it is up to you to create the right ad for the right audience. Facebook likewise offers remarketing services through Facebook Business. Called Custom Audience, this service requires that you install a snippet of code on your website before building groups for Facebook to target. Besides that, it works similarly to Google Adwords as far as building a list is concerned.

9 Performance Metrics for Shopping Cart Abandonment Campaigns Here are some quick statistics on shopping cart abandonment campaigns: When offered free shipping, 93 percent of shoppers say they ll buy more products. The average conversion rate for retailers is 3.48 percent. When it comes to making a purchase, 55 percent of customers consider testimonials and reviews as a deciding factor. An entire 72 percent of millennials say they are open to remarketing ads. Remarketing ads have an average click-through rate 10x higher than that of traditional display ads. Remarketing generates an average 1046 percent lift in branded search, a 726 percent lift in targeted site traffic, and a 147 percent lift in conversions. Remarketing ads bring back an average 26 percent of users who will complete the checkout process. Shoppers are 70 percent more likely to convert when remarketed after cart abandonment. The average order value of carts recovered using abandonment s is 58 percent higher than it is for direct sales. Nearly half (48 percent) of cart abandonment s are opened. Of those opened, 33.3 percent lead to a purchase.

10 Going Even Further With 8 percent of customers generating 41 percent of revenue, any loss is a concern. But when your highest-spending customers stop buying, it s time to takes special measures. One retailer of luxury goods takes this very seriously. They send their best customers a beautifully etched loyalty card in the mail, says Carl Prizzi, Bridgeline Digital s senior VP of marketing. After a period of inactivity, they ll ship their customers a luxury candle to rekindle that relationship. It s retention done really well. Kombos suggests taking a similar tactic. If there are 30, 40, or 100 customers who are critical to your revenue and they stop making purchases, send them something of value. It s going to make a big difference in the long term. Beyond that, continue sending s to shoppers reminding them to return and purchase. Don t worry about being overbearing; simply include an unsubscribe option for those who get tired of being contacted. Otherwise, no harm can come from keeping yourself on their mind.

11 What the Top-Performing Campaigns Have in Common While no two campaigns will be identical, the most successful campaigns follow a common procedure: 1. Create a blueprint of the strategy. 2. Set priorities. 3. Automate responses. 4. Reach beyond the webstore. 5. Measure impact. Bridgeline Digital is ready to work with clients on each of these steps. Contact us today to learn more about how to take control of your abandoned carts and raise profits today.

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