Why You Need More in Your Toolbox Than Cart Abandonment Emails

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Why You Need More in Your Toolbox Than Cart Abandonment Emails

By Special Guest
Ryan Luckin , Head of Marketing at Bluecore
  |  August 31, 2015

Of all the tools marketers use to rescue ecommerce sales, cart abandonment, emails have become the proverbial hammer. Study after study suggests that cart abandonment emails work, so marketers quickly implement these emails to remind shoppers about what they almost purchased. However, marketers that rely strictly on cart abandonment emails are ignoring many other digital behaviors, and thereby leaving money on the table.

Marketers need at a least a wrench, saw, and drill to go along with the hammer. By complementing cart abandonment emails with other triggers, marketers can speak to potential buyers at different points in the purchase pipeline.

Consider these three triggers to expand your toolset and improve your ecommerce conversion rates.

Search Abandonment

Search queries provide a sneak peek into the minds of shoppers, providing a sense of style preference, color, size, etc. Let’s say you sell shoes online and a shopper searches for Air Jordan shoes. He does not click the results, but he does search Nike Air Jordan and Air Jordan basketball before leaving the website.

Clearly this shopper is interested in Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes, but it’s unclear why he abandoned your website. Perhaps he’s price shopping and saw your prices listed next to all the search results. If you have this shopper’s email address – from a form, newsletter signup, or previous sales – your website can match the shopper with his email address using cookies. Using the search queries, your triggered email engine could automatically send him a search abandonment email loaded with your bestselling Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes and maybe a 10 percent off coupon, free shipping code, or other incentive.

Further, when MJ decides to drop a new pair of Jordan’s on the market – consider who will be keenly interested.

Search abandonment emails target what the shopper is most likely to put in the cart in the future. Thus, they cover ground the cart abandonment triggers miss.

Category Abandonment     

Some shoppers prefer to browse products by category rather than search.

For instance, our shopper looking for Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes might click men’s shoes, basketball, and then Nike to narrow his selection. Next, using filter options that are common on shoe shopping sites, he might select size 11, the color white, and the $75 to $100 price range. And then he leaves the website.

Using the data trail the shopper left, a triggered email engine could send a selection of Air Jordan shoes that are size 11, white and $75 to $100 – or, perhaps a hero image featuring a shoe he was browsing, followed up by best sellers from the category that fit the same price range. Overall, the more filters and options a shopper can apply when browsing your site, the more targeted you can make category abandonment emails.

Price Drop Notification

Sometimes pricing deters shoppers at the search, browse, or checkout stage. The marketer doesn’t necessarily know that price was the reason, but if the company lowers the price by 10 percent, it’s worth telling the shopper most likely to buy the product. Price drop notifications can target shoppers based on their search, browsing, and cart abandonment behaviors.

Unlike search and category abandonment emails, which should be fired two to four hours after the behavior that triggered the email, price drop notifications should be sent as soon as possible. However, based on historical data showing when customers are most likely to open and click emails, the marketer could choose to fire these emails at a specific time and day.

Trigger Priorities

The point of implementing new email triggers is to reengage to reduce the overall volume of email being sent, prioritizing personalized triggered emails over generic promotional sends. Most marketers send cart abandon emails; it’s the hammer in every email toolbox. By identifying likely buyers and personalizing your communications, you can stay in the game beyond the point where most of your competitors will give up.  




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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