tl;dr – Using cart abandonment solutions and email remarketing can help increase your site conversions.

· Issue 28 · October 2014

Leveraging Cart Abandonment

Chuck Hamrick

A

Solutions and Email Remarketing by Chuck Hamrick

recent study by Baymard Institutes indicates a 67.91% average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate, implying that your sales num-

bers may only be one third of what they could potentially be.

counts, and frequencies to see what works for your audience. While there are many cart abandonment solutions, I work

Optimizing your shopping cart can add a one to two percent

with one that operates as an affiliate. Thus, they are compen-

conversion increase to your merchant site’s overall e-commerce

sated by the effectiveness of the process, and its increase in

conversion. With a typical conversion rate of one to three per-

sales. To keep from trumping other affiliates, we have em-

cent, you can double conversions on your current traffic.

ployed an attribution model which pays up to three affiliates,

Some reasons for poor cart performance include a flawed cart layout with too many steps to a sale completion or pur-

instead of the traditional last click model. Keep in mind that cart abandonment affects all e-commerce traffic.

posefully hiding taxes and shipping fees until the final screen before payment. Overloading a cart with too many pricing/discount scripts can create a painful checkout experience, and cause duplicate orders.

Cart Abandonment Solution Integration How much preparation and integration does this require? Your cart abandonment vendor will handle the brunt of the

Cart abandonment solutions can help you identify the

design, tracking, and integration. Some site and possibly net-

reasons why your customers are leaving your shopping cart,

work integration may be required. Also, you want to insure that

and help increase revenue by converting those abandoned or-

all tracking goes through the affiliate program to insure the

ders using automated email remarketing campaigns.

affiliate gets credit. Payment to the abandonment agency/affiliate goes the same route as other affiliates.

Understanding the Email Remarketing Process

Once you get the remarketing emails optimized, you can

After the consumer leaves the cart/site, your cart aban-

look into further enhancements, like a pop window, that offer

donment solution can trigger an automated remarketing

a discount if the consumer makes the purchase then. These

email campaign. The first email is typically sent 60 minutes

can be designed to be unobtrusive to the consumer. There are

post-abandonment, and then again after 24 hours, should

also options to have retargeting funded through the affiliate

the sale not be completed. To encourage the consumer to re-

program, which is attractive as it’s a pure rev share model.

turn and close the sale, a promotion is offered; typically free

Cart abandonment as an affiliate model has less risk,

shipping or discount. If the consumer hasn’t completed their

better visibility, and can form a true partnership. Make sure

transaction after 48 hours, a third email is sent usually with a

you understand how your data is stored and expunged. Imple-

much bigger discount.

menting and optimizing these campaigns can significantly

While this email remarketing schedule has shown to increase site conversions, you should A/B test creative, dis-

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improve conversion to help you generate more sales from traffic you have today.

Chuck Hamrick is an outsourced program manager (OPM) in Park City, UT at Hamrick.Biz.