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You spend money to generate a lead, move it down the funnel, and keep it engaged. But, at the very end, just after adding products to the cart, your would-be client closes the tab. Sounds familiar? Today we are going in-depth on why it’s worth trying the new tools that will help you to recover abandoned carts.
For most marketers, e-mail is a primary method of reminding them about the abandoned cart. Usually, it would include a discount — the final incentive expected to push an undecided customer towards the payment site.
How to choose the right tool for the job?
Form and content of the communication depend on a relation between your brand and client:
- new client – because of the lack of marketing consents, the communication should be based on remarketing, advertisement on social media, ad networks and search engines;
- registered client – if a client allowed for marketing communication we suggest using a more direct approach: e-mail and SMS;
- returning client – reinforce the trust by offering something more: discount, free shipping or an extra.
Creating a catching headline that would guarantee a high open-rate is difficult. Fortunately, there are other methods!
Back to the shopping path
The problem of no conversion at the last step reaches further than abandoned carts in e-commerce. It goes as far as filling forms, ordering services or in-app purchases. If you can track engagement step by step — check where the lead left. It will help you to personalise the reminder content.
Similarly to the periodical reminders about items waiting in wishlists, the cart notifications are based on a buying decision. Use the clients’ motivation and remind them about their choices.
SMS is an effective and direct way of reaching your customers with a reminder. Use your buying personas to prepare its content. Take buying preferences, order history, purchase frequency and amounts spent into consideration.
If you don’t have such statistics or cannot collect them, don’t worry — use what you have: contact data, history of viewed items or a wishlist.
What do you need to send SMS notifications in e-commerce?
The communication should be shaped around the relation between the brand and the client. Here’s a quick list of tools that make come useful.
- e-commerce system integrated with the SMS API (e.g. PrestaShop, Magento, edrone);
- marketing consents compliant with GDPR;
- message content that includes data from your e-commerce platform (e.g. name, product list, order history).
Their haste is your ally
Send an SMS message with a link to a payment site. I cannot stress it enough: do personalize the link. Serve your product on a silver platter so that the customer won’t have to do anything but clicking “Order”.
Add a discount or a free shipment. A/B tests should back the choice of the incentive. They will help you to select the right one for your target group.
The timing of the message is equally important. Test various intervals because SMS sent too early might be considered spam. On the other hand, reaching your customers too late might also be risky, as your competition never sleeps.
Defining the values of “early” and “late” requires intuition. Due to the speed at which bulk SMS messages are received (according to our recent research 69% of SMS are read during the first 5 minutes, 91% within 1 hour), a period of a whole day might be too long. Think of hours. Make your SMS an offer they cannot… abandon 🙂
Examples of SMS notifications in e-commerce
Sometimes, 160 characters are all it takes to push an undecided customer and get a positive review. After all, nothing says “we care” better than going the extra mile for your customers.
Although cart reminders are not the most popular marketing methods, they have a certain advantage — they allow you to directly contact a customer interested in a specific product in your offer. Such favourable conditions are rare, so you don’t waste them!
