Shoppers visit ecommerce sites to check out ratings and reviews, compare prices, and view ads as often as they do to purchase products. For retailers, each of these options is a channel. The emails are highly targeted because the offers are for the products the shopper viewed while browsing and they produce much higher returns than traditional emails. Key factors to consider when setting up triggered, browse-recovery emails are: Strategies for capturing shoppers’ email addresses, Content and incentives in the email, Timing of the emails, Number of emails, Frequency — how to handle multiple browse sessions. One-to-one Opportunity: Abandoned Carts Forrester Research estimates that 87 percent of consumers place items in a shopping cart and never complete the purchase. Emails should include information on the products that are in the shopper’s cart. Remind shoppers of the products in their carts. Cart abandonment messages. One-to-one Opportunity: Transactional Emails Order, shipping, and other transactional messages are an essential part of successful ecommerce email programs. Importance of Testing It’s critical to test every one-to-one engagement program.
Modern consumers are more educated about your products, more likely to use multiple devices to shop, and are almost always connected to the Internet.
Shoppers visit ecommerce sites to check out ratings and reviews, compare prices, and view ads as often as they do to purchase products. Across retail industries, segments, and audiences, shoppers are more tech savvy and more engaged with their favorite brands before and after the sales transaction.
And they don’t feel limited by device. A shopper’s decision process could include a trip to a brick-and-mortar retailer, a phone call with customer support, viewing product images on a tablet, and completing a purchase on a desktop computer.
For retailers, each of these options is a channel. Shoppers who navigate multiple channels with ease are omnichannel consumers. With multiple touch points to engage consumers with your brand and technology to automate personalized communications with shoppers, you can generate higher revenue within a single, existing bucket: email marketing.
To start, much of what shoppers do, we can measure. We know the product pages they’ve visited. We know, generally, where they live. We know the items they’ve purchased and we have hints about their interests, gender, and income.
It’s big data. And here’s where the magic of that data comes in: You can create and automate highly personalized messaging to any of your target audiences – down to individual shoppers, based on their past shopping behaviors. Shoppers love it because the communications are timely and relevant.
Welcome to your next big business opportunity: One-to-one marketing.
One-to-one Opportunity: Abandoned Browses
Most shoppers leave an ecommerce site without adding products to a cart. Creating automated browse recovery emails can entice these shoppers back, to complete the purchase. The emails are highly targeted because the offers are for the products the shopper viewed while browsing and they produce much higher returns than traditional emails.
Key factors to consider when setting up triggered, browse-recovery emails are:
- Strategies for capturing shoppers’ email addresses,
- Content and incentives in the email,
- Timing of the emails,
- Number of emails,
- Frequency — how to handle multiple browse sessions.
Brooks Sports is a running shoes and apparel company. Brooks believes that athletic consumers are not always in “buy mode.” In an effort to prompt re-purchasing and to educate customers about new products, Brooks added a browse-triggered email program for shoppers who had viewed a product that included an image of the browsed item. The result? The open rate was 61 percent, with a 24 percent click rate, a 7 percent conversion rate, and a return of $1.44 per email.
One-to-one Opportunity: Abandoned Carts
Forrester Research estimates that 87 percent of consumers place items in a shopping cart and never complete the purchase. There are multiple reasons for this. Certainly there are roadblocks that prompt shoppers to leave. These include required registration, too many pages to navigate, confusion, shipping policies, and security concerns.
Also, today’s shoppers often use carts to store products, to view and purchase later. They don’t necessarily abandon a shopping session as much as delay the purchase.
Regardless, an automatic, triggered abandoned-cart email program can be highly effective. Emails should include information on the products that are in the shopper’s cart.
Key considerations for an abandoned cart email program include:
- Mobile optimization. Most recipients will open the emails on their phones. Make sure your site is mobile friendly.
- Cart expiration. Provide ample time for recipients to complete their purchase before their cart sessions expire.
- Timing. Sending the first email within 24 to 48 hours works best for most retailers.
- Number of emails. How often and how many?
- Content. Remind shoppers of the products in their carts.
- Subject lines. Link the message to the abandoned cart; consider incentives and a sense of urgency.
World Kitchen is a leading online retailer of cooking supplies. With a broad range of choices, many shoppers placed items in their carts but then failed to complete the purchase….
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