Thoughts on Shopping Cart Abandonment
February 8th, 2010 by KarenI’m going to start out this post with the overarching statement of “I LOVE to shop.” Shoes, clothes, house wares, books…you name it, I love to shop for it. I also love email marketing, which works out pretty well for me because I subscribe to almost every eTailer to receive discounts, new product announcements, etc. I do all of my holiday shopping online as well as purchase birthday gifts, wedding gifts and the occasional gift for myself (ok, maybe not occasional…) and I find it somewhat astonishing at the lack of retailers reaching back out to people who have abandoned shopping carts.
My number one reason for abandoning:
I typically don’t abandon my cart because I’m confused at the checkout page. 99.9% of the time I abandon because I need some time to sleep on my potential purchase and then I come back to follow through with the purchase at a later date (to see all of the other reasons why people abandon carts, check out Listrak’s new whitepaper here). I put things in my cart because I don’t want to have to go through that process again if I decide to purchase at a later time.
Now, let’s be serious, I don’t actually go back to purchase everything I put in my cart. Sometimes I’ll put that new Coach bag in my cart to make me feel better that day. Other times, I simply forget. I’m a busy person and although I may want to purchase something, it may not be a top priority for me (or maybe I just need to save up the cash to actually purchase that Coach bag…)
Insert shopping cart abandonment email here:
For those retailers that have reached back to me already with an email listing the items in my cart as well as other potential products I may enjoy: Congratulations! You can stop reading this now. For those of you who haven’t, shame on you for not enticing me to spend my hard earned money on your products.
Shopping cart abandonment emails are an easy, no brainer way to increase ROI on emails as well as recover potentially lost revenue on products people forgot they wanted. The few retailers that have reached back to me with an abandoned cart email, I almost always followed through with my purchase - even better if they included an incentive (free shipping, 10% off, etc.)
Listrak recently put out a whitepaper on this exact topic and found an astonishing 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times. Even more alarmingly, 22% admitted that they didn’t know what their abandonment rate is. Check out Listrak’s whitepaper here: http://listrak.com/university/Recovering-Lost-Sales/. There is no excuse for numbers like these.
But, we don’t have the budget, resources, time, knowledge…:
Stop. Stop right there with the excuses. Maybe your 2010 resolution should be to stop making excuses about not doing shopping cart abandonment emails and actually do them. Shopping cart abandonment emails rely on web analytics data and require an integrated email marketing solution, dynamic message assembly, and a behaviorally triggered messaging system. However, the messages can be set up to run in the background automatically so all you have to do is update the message template occasionally and monitor the results.
That’s where we come in:
Listrak has the platform and expertise needed to send the most sophisticated shopping cart abandonment campaigns. Working with you, Listrak will provide strategy, implementation, creative design, support, and campaign evaluation, to ensure your campaigns achieve your goals.
Look - Listrak has even built the workflow (with A/B split testing) for you here! http://listrak.com/university/Recovering-Lost-Sales/ShoppingCartAbandonment.png
Don’t believe me? Contact one of our experts today: http://www.listrak.com/contact-expert.asp
