Email remarketing for cart abandonment

email remarketing tools

[JohnBiggscr]

Background: We operate about a dozen or so sites. A few have adwords campaigns, the rest don't. A couple were made with x-cart, most with shopsite.

We realise we are missing out on conversions by not having any form of cart abandonment email remarketing.
What we are looking for is the following;
Either an add on module for x-cart or shopsite that can send out emails to people that abandon the carts before a purchase (And we realise that shopsite does not usually collect email info until check out time.)
Or... a software solution we can add to perform the same process
Or... an external company that offers the same service.

I know SeeWhy offers the service but my research seems to suggest they are waaaaay too expensive for us to justify going with them.

Has anyone any information as to what they did for email remarketing? Or any suggestions of where to look?

[ssgumby]

This isnt email remarketing, but we've had great success with retargeting. Essentially when a customer comes to our site and leaves without completing an order, we have ads show up in front of them all over the web (cnn, msnbc, facebook, etc, etc) .. this ad reinforces our brand presence and then we can later track these customers as they come back and convert to a completed order.

[directwheels]

I was going to say the same thing ssgumby just said. retargeting is great for stuff like that.

[enigma1]

How your shopping cart is setup is always a factor. IMO the most important one. I prefer to keep the checkout procedure tiny so when the customer adds something to the cart it doesn't need to complete a bunch of detailed fields to checkout.

It helps because customers can enter an email address only (and or name) at which point you have enough info to do retargeting. But if you present them with a detailed form they have to complete before they even know what they're going to pay (shipping etc) for an order there is a higher degree of cart abandonment.

[jwolthuis]

Cart abandonment remarketing borders on "creepy". Just because it's technically possible to email a cart abandoner doesn't mean it's a good idea.

It's not unlike walking out of Walmart and having a sales guy chasing me in the parking lot to offer a coupon for that Geo Foreman grill that I picked up and held for a few seconds in aisle 5.

[lgn1]

Considering it takes up to five visits to a website, before a customer makes a buying decision, you are probably driving more sales away, than you would gain.

[shoffy]

I can definitely see cart remarketing as creepy and appreciate the Walmart example.

However, in a virtual example, someone could be shopping Walmart, Target, Kohls, Sears, etc. at the same time. Getting ideas, filling up their shopping carts (so they don't forget what they saw), comparing shopping carts to other stores to find a deal, taking into account any shipping considerations..... and oh.... I am only on lunch break or have to get ready to make dinner.

So... I'll come back to this later...

Then... like magic.... "you've got mail". Inside is the shopping cart you were putting together (that you thought was all but lost). And, even better, there's a 10% off offer if you make a purchase within 12 hours.

As price is a big factor in why we buy it gives a potential customer one more reason to stop by... just to be sure. ;-)

The company I work for, Listrak, has some pretty impressive case studies to show how profitable rescuing abandoned carts can be. For vendors... and customers!

Shopping Cart Abandonment Case Study [listrak.com]

[jecasc]

It might work - don't know. But surely does not work with me. I had a company do that to me - I had entered some information and completed two steps of the checkout process. However I was very angry when I found out they had stored that data already and then wrote me an email and asked why I had abandoned the cart. I was not aware they had already stored the data in their database. So all they got was an angry email telling them to immediatly delete my data and an oath to never do business with them.

[shoffy]

I definitely think *how* a cart abandonment campaign is executed key. In some ways, it could help the problem today, but could train shoppers to make it a bigger problem tomorrow.

"I'll put this in my shopping cart and let it sit.... see if I can get a 5% coupon"

I think these types of programs, on a whole, offer a positive experience to both parties, but can definitely see how your situation @jecasc could be particularly annoying.

Has anyone else had bad experiences with this form of marketing?

Compared to JavaScript pop ups, chat windows, dirty "click cancel to close this window" tricks and other attempts to stop cart abandonment... is an email based solution the least invasive?