Abandonded shopcarts
by Jenny Peters
Sending e-mails to website visitors who have left their shopping cart unpaid is up to 20 times more effective than a regular e-mail campaign. The conversion rates of such campaigns are between 15 and 50% according to test reports of large companies and international marketing agencies. But how do you best go about setting up such a campaign?
Timing & Tone of voice
Should you send the e-mail as soon as the visitor left the website or wait a week? A quick reaction can make the difference between a purchase from you or from the competition. But a hasty reaction can also leave a very pushy and sales-driven impression, maybe even obnoxious. You could drive away customers who would otherwise have returned for their purchase.
If you e-mail after about a week, your message can take the shape of a ‘friendly reminder’: “we think you may have forgotten about…”. If you're afraid to give your contacts a ‘Big Brother’-feeling, this would be a good approach to prevent this from happening. Make your message polite and service targeted. Don’t try to cross sell or offer incentives in this form.
Extra discounts
Offering extra discounts or adding a sales pitch to convince the reader to make his purchase are suitable to the quick response e-mail for abandoned shop carts. Do keep in mind that you may be offering discounts to people who would have come back regardless and who are now gaining extra benefits. Does their purchase (financially) outweigh the extra customers and conversion gained? Of course, if you make it a standard to be giving discounts to abandoned shopping carts, there will also be those who start leaving the cart on purpose to await your follow-up e-mail. Therefore, it’s best to only offer such discounts to new contacts in your database.
A service targeted e-mail will allow subtle stimulation of purchases by timing the messages right. Send reminders when:
- the shopping cart is about to be deleted from your logs
- a product from the cart is almost out of stock
- a product from the cart is becoming more expensive or on offer
(and tell the contact that’s why you are giving them a warning).
Permission to e-mail
For all of these campaigns, it’s essential that you know who you are e-mailing and that you’re allowed to e-mail them. Make sure that one of the first steps in the ordering process is asking for contact details. Include an opt-in request for e-mails in this step so that you’re allowed to mail the contact. Without this permission, all you could do is send one friendly reminder e-mail with a service emphasize. Never try to send strong commercial messages or more than one message if you don’t have opt-in.
This message was published in Dutch in TwinkleMagazine.
