Most online retailers have one key goal with their abandoned cart email campaigns, and that’s to increase the amount of revenue this campaign generates each month.
Because we know it’s a high converting campaign, the goal is to get them sent to every person that adds an item to their cart, but then decides to abandon.
In order to make our abandoned cart emails recover more revenue, all we need to do is send these emails to more cart abandoners.
In order to do this, we need to identify every person that abandons their cart, but most online retailers are unable to identify these people because:
- They’re not logged in
- They’re switching devices
- They’ve never purchased from us before or it’s their first visit to their site
On average, we’ve found that retailers are only able to identify 25% of their abandoned cart sessions.
If you can increase the percentage of identifiable abandoned cart sessions (ie. the amount of people that abandoned your shopping cart), you have the chance to follow up more people with a high converting cart abandonment campaign, giving you a second (and third) chance at recovering the sales you previously lost.
So how do you achieve your goal of increasing the amount of revenue this campaign generates?
By identifying 100% of your abandoned cart sessions.
While you may not achieve 100%, you should always be striving to increase your identification rate.
If a user is not logged into their account on your site, or if they’re switching from their desktop computer to a mobile device (vice versa), clearing their browser cache, or if it’s the first time they’ve visited your website, you’ll likely have no idea who they are.
And unless they give you their email during the checkout process, you won’t be able to identify them.
That’s why the email marketing team at Rejoiner use this one technique to increase the rate at which our clients can identify more visitors on their site.
Identify Customers with This One Unique Feature: Email Append
Email append uses click-through data from your email marketing campaigns to create a larger percentage of identifiable browsing sessions on your site. It also enables you to connect and identify browsing sessions from the same customer when they occur across devices.
To identify subscribers clicking through your email campaigns, we append a unique, non-personally identifiable, customer ID on any link that a subscriber can click from your email.
This unique customer ID will connect browsing sessions that occur across devices, so we can create one complete picture of customer behavior after they click through.
The other obvious benefit is that browsing sessions that would have once been anonymous post click-through, are now identifiable sessions on site. This provides a better indication of customer purchase intent.
It’s very important that the unique customer ID be non-personally identifiable information (PII), as passing a non-obfuscated email address in a query string can violate the Google Analytics terms of service.
Applying this structure to all the links in your broadcast campaigns can help you identify more unknown visitors that are clearly engaged with your brand at that present moment.
Case Study Insights: See Email Append in Action
This case study from one of our customers showcases how email append can impact your abandoned cart email results, and the amount of revenue you’re able to recover.
Their Site Analytics on the Rejoiner dashboard showcased the following data, before and after two broadcast emails were sent out:
Their identifiable rate before the send was 29.1% (meaning they could only identify 29.1% of the 18,652 cart abandoners).
Our customer sent two broadcasts to 110,000 subscribers in total.
They achieved an average click through rate of 1.5% (they were able to identify these people (1.5%) that clicked through).
After the broadcast send, their identifiable rate increased from 29.1% to 35.1%, which helped us identify 1858 more cart abandoners.
The part that really matters is: How much more revenue are they able to recover now?
Assuming an average order value (AOV) of $50, we can see much how revenue they would be able to recover if every identifiable cart abandoner converted (identifiable cart abandoners x AOV).
- Before broadcast send: 5422 x $50 = $271,100
- After broadcast send: 7280 x $50 = $364,000
= $92,900 more in recoverable revenue.
Because they’re not going to convert every single customer, we’ll take their current campaign conversion rate (11%) and work out how much additional revenue they would receive by being able to identify more cart abandoners.
Net increase in identifiable cart abandoners: 7280 – 5422 = 1858
- 1858 x 11% (conversion rate of their current cart abandonment campaign) = 204 new customers.
- 204 (new customers) x $50 (AOV) = $10,200
This company could look at an additional $10,200 increase to their cart abandonment campaign recovery efforts each month (assuming traffic stayed the same).
This company will continue generating more site traffic, growing their list and capturing more leads and therefore can expect to see compounding returns over time as they continue sending this campaigns to new prospects.
The benefits of email append are definitely worth the time of implementation.
Because we know that identifying more prospects is a great way to improve the results of your abandoned cart campaign, we have….
Three Additional Ways to Increase Your Identification Rate
Email append is one great way to increase your IDR. Here are three more techniques you should use:
1 – Make it Easy for Customers to Login to Their Account
If someone has purchased from you in the past, they may already have an account. Getting them to log in and stay logged in will help you identify them once they’re back on our site.
Allowing users to log in with their Gmail, Facebook or Twitter account so they can save products when shopping, will reduce friction if they’re switching to different devices, plus this is a lot easier than having to remember another password.
If you need to increase the number of first time customers creating an account with you (so they can log in for their next purchase), provide an option to create an account after their first order has been placed.
This post on checkout best practices from ASOS showcases how they reduced their checkout abandonment rate by 50% by making it easier for new customers to create an account so they can log in.
2 – Pre-Submit Tracking
In the checkout process, site visitors are invisible until they sign in. With pre-submit tracking you have the ability to capture and store an email address as soon as it is entered into a form field on your site, helping you increase the percentage of identifiable sessions that start your checkout process.
If you ask for the email address field at the top of the checkout page and someone gets cold feet and doesn’t complete the entire process, pre-submit tracking is there to save the day by storing this email address for you, helping you identifying the visitor.
3 – On-Site Email Capture
To identify more customers in your funnel, adding an on-site triggered pop-up or opt-in that encourages customers to give you their email address in exchange for something of value will help increase your identification rate.
Here are three ideas for you to implement:
1 – MAKE A SPECIAL OFFER FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS
If you want to identify someone as soon as they visit your site for the very first time, triggering a special offer for first time visitors is a great way to help you identify that visitor and grow your email list at the same time.
Three offers you can test are:
- Free shipping
- 10% off
- 20% off
- Free gift with your purchase
Below is an example where 10% off your entire order is shown to first time visitors.
2 – PROVIDE AN EXIT OFFER TO PEOPLE WHO ARE ABOUT TO LEAVE YOUR SITE
If someone has made it to a product page or cart page but haven’t given you their email address, you know they’re at least a little interested in your products, so don’t let this person get away!
If they decide to leave your site and move their cursor to close that window, smart technology like Justuno will allow you to deliver a pop-up to visitors that break the browser plane (ie. when they try to leave your site). Here’s your last to chance to make your best offer and capture their email before they leave.
If you can capture their email like RageOn try to in the image below and they still exit your site afterwards, you’ll still be able to follow up with an email series at a later time and recover that sale.
Side note: work out your product margins to understand what offer makes sense for your business.
3 – RUN A CONTEST
It’s no secret that people love free stuff and that’s why running a contest is one way to grow your email list really fast. At the same time, you can identify everyone that opts in for the contest.
Isle Surfboards ran a contest where visitors that entered could win an inflatable stand up paddle board. Justuno put together this case study this case study outlining how they increased email subscribers by 660%!
This contest drove lots of people to their site. Contests like this are a great way to identify a lot more people on your site and grow your email list.
Action Items
- Email append can help you identify more cart abandoners and increase the amount of revenue your cart abandonment campaign generates
- Broadcast campaigns are a great tool to identify more site visitors and deliver content or generate sales
- Three more ways to increase your identification rate:
- Make it easy for customers to log in
- Ensure your email marketing software provides pre-submit tracking
- Use an on-site email capture solution like Justuno to ID visitors at multiple stages in your funnel
What to Do Now
If you would you like to identify anonymous visitors on your site and recover more sales, schedule a free strategy session and we will help you do this.
