Abandoned Cart Recovery

We live in an age where technology has given us the opportunity to view products online, add them to a cart, and then completely abandon them before making a purchase. If we saw this happening in supermarkets, we would find it incredibly odd. But this is the norm these days when it comes to online shopping.

Recent figures show that only 30% of online shoppers actually complete their purchase. That leaves 70% floating off into the abyss. It is our job as marketers to get those customers back and reignite that sale. This is where abandoned cart recovery campaigns are used.

These campaigns are used by businesses in all industries, but eCommerce is affected the worst when it comes to abandoned carts. Overall, eCommerce brands lose around $18B a year due to people abandoning their carts.

Getting these customers back to complete their purchase can be a bit of a challenge. Many businesses tend to use email to send messages to customers, which is a solid channel but can be incredibly difficult to stand out in. Other marketeers depend on retargeted ads to catch the customer’s eye. Again, a good way to get back in front of them, but is it worth putting your eggs in this basket?

Here, we’re going to explore a multichannel approach to abandoned cart recovery campaigns and how it is more effective than only using one channel.

The Problem with Retargeted Ads (for cart recovery)

Retargeted ads are a good way to get your product back in front of people and may even remind them to go back and complete their purchase. And they can pop up anywhere online: as they continue to browse the web, social media, news sites, etc.

As good as they are at getting your product back in front of their eyes, you can run the risk of being annoying and overbearing. Some people can also tend to be freaked out by the same ad popping up everywhere they go.

Should someone click through your ad and go back to make that purchase then great! But in the grand scheme of things, these types of ads don’t perform as well as the likes of SMS, email, push, etc for direct customer engagement.

Finally, there is the issue of click through rates. An email campaign would average a click through rate of about 2.6%, and an SMS campaign may give you a CTR of about 6% or just over. 

However the click through rate for retargeted ads are very low, hovering around the 0.7% mark. A significant difference to the other two channels above.

Introducing a multichannel approach to your campaigns means you are sending your customers different messages through different channels. You can also identify which channel they react to best and communicate with them through that.

The added bonus to this is that it is far more trackable. Using a platform like Xtremepush for this means that there is always a check in place from where the trigger for purchase came from. In other words, you can see how the customer came back to complete the purchase. This isn’t something you can accomplish easily with retargeted ads.

The Multichannel Approach to Cart Recovery

As mentioned earlier, email is often the go-to channel when it comes to carrying out your cart abandonment campaigns. Yes, you will end up in their email inbox in some way shape or form, but the average click rate of an email in the eCommerce industry is only just over 2%.

The email inbox is a highly competitive place to be for marketers. And it’s only become more difficult in recent times with the introduction of the “promotions” section for emails. This is where all marketing and sales promotions are stored. 

Using multiple channels to communicate with your customer increases the chances of that person returning to make their purchase.

Web Engagement 

You can send messages to customers on their laptops, computers, or mobile devices to direct them back to your site and complete a purchase.

Web push notifications are a really effective way of sending messages to those you want to target. These can be sent in real time or scheduled to be sent at a later stage.

You can also make great use of onsite messages. These will pop up to the user the next time they visit your site after abandoning their cart. These messages are often unmissable for the user so are a great way to nudge them towards making that purchase.

Mobile & App Engagement

Targeting customers through their mobile device is a sure way of getting in front of their eyes, given that almost everyone in the world has a mobile device on them at all times. 

App push notifications means that you can send a message to the customers you want to target that have your app. It can be very easy for someone to quickly go back into the app and complete the purchase they may have forgotten to complete.

In-app messages are quite similar to onsite messages, in that users are sent a real-time message when they are scrolling through your app. Again, a very good way of reminding customers that they have something left in their cart since their last visit.

And finally, you can always use SMS to send messages to those who have opted out of receiving push notifications. This method, although slightly more costly, has a very high CTR and you would certainly reap the benefits by incorporating it in your strategy.

Wrapping up

A multichannel approach to abandoned cart recovery will always perform better than a strategy that relies on a single channel, or just retargeting ads by themselves. By consolidating your engagement channels into a single platform, multichannel campaigns become so much easier to create.