#2 Remarketing - Bringing Back the Customer that Leaves
In eCommerce, you create a fully optimized
website based on industry best practices, and engage in various marketing
initiatives to encourage people to engage with the site. Many people do shop,
some of them actually make purchases, but most don’t. According to a report
from Bronto, 2010 data from Forrester Research showed more than half of online
shoppers abandon their shopping cart before completing a sale, while more
recent data from SeeWhy reports cart abandonment is trending upward at over 70%
of shoppers checking out of eCommerce sites before checkout (no pun intended).
When someone has indicated enough of an interest to add products to a shopping
cart, but then leaves, how do you get them to come back?
Google recently released a supplement to
its Adwords program by the name of Remarketing. It’s not an entirely new
concept as there are many other companies who do the same thing: drop a cookie
on to a user’s computer when they visit your website so that your ads
subsequently follow them, even if a site they are viewing is of an unrelated
subject. Popularity is building with this method and it certainly stands out
when a banner for children’s toys is at the top of a webpage about fitness –
although it begs the question of whether or not you’re getting the kind of
attention you want as opposed to the kind that makes the shopper never want to
come back. It’s simply not enough to try to maintain share of mind when
someone’s interest is dwindling.
The key to pulling a customer in after
they’ve abandoned a shopping cart is to bring the shopper’s attention back
to items that had originally piqued their interest, rather than merely remind
them of your brand. Email retargeting allows a shopper’s abandoned cart to be
emailed to them with a friendly reminder of the specific items in their cart,
and that they are still available to them – a feature available on the
OrderDynamics™ eCommerce Platform. With specific reminders including a list and
pictures of the items, you can start to re-establish a relationship between the
shopper and the products they were so close to buying, and re-affirm an
emotional attachment to them by using specific cues with colours and images to
influence the aura of the email. You can
take this a step further by offering a coupon code or free gift as an
incentive, or create a sense of urgency with messages like “your cart is
expiring soon”.
Why does this work? It essentially gives the
customer a second chance. Sometimes after abandoning the cart they decide they
should have made the purchase after all, but don’t want to go through the
hassle of duplicating the cart. If you send them a link to the cart, they won’t
have to. Sometimes the customer truly loves the items they’ve picked out, but
they can’t justify spending the money. If you send them a coupon code or gift
with purchase, it makes the purchase more enticing and boosts perceived value
of it. Sometimes the customer is
overwhelmed by all the options on your site and just can’t decide what to
do. Presenting them with the specific
products they were initially interested in, without the distraction of others,
and knowing they will only be so readily available to them for a limited time
is the extra push needed to close the sale, and potentially bring them back to
shop again.
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OrderDynamics Guide to Email Marketing
Part 1 - Finding the Text-to-Image Balance
Part 2 - Remarketing - Bringing Back the Customer that Leaves
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