1. Home
2. Blog

[Vol. 3] Customer Recovery Tools & Tricks that Go Beyond Email

October 1, 2019

A profitable eCommerce business invests significant resources attracting new and existing customers to their products and website. But with 7 out of 10 customers failing to convert through the checkout, that investment goes unreturned, down the drain and out of your pocket. 

And, despite your attempts to solve this problem with an email asking what went wrong, cart and browse abandonment still happens on your website frequently. Why? Customer experience is now equal to price and product as a key brand differentiator, and generic cart abandonment emails aren’t providing an experience worth converting over. 

To solve the problem of abandonment on your eCommerce website, you need a customer recovery strategy that transforms the buyer experience by sending the right message, to the right people, at the right time – even after they’ve left your website. 

In the third (and final) part of our Customer Recovery Series, we’re tackling customer recovery campaigns – specifically, the tips and tricks to optimize your on-site and recovery campaigns for results. But first, a quick recap on volumes one and two of this customer recovery journey:

Part 1: on-site retargeting campaigns

On-site retargeting campaigns are ways to target online shoppers while they are still on your website. Once implemented, on-site retargeting campaigns can:

1. Encourage customers to convert rather than abandon, by using exit intent offers, delayed popups and live chat to overcome common booking barriers. 
2. Collect detailed contact information to use should abandonment happen, using real-time lead capture, exit intent popups, “Send My Cart” and push notification opt-in. 

Together, these campaigns look to reduce the problem of abandonment while feeding your recovery campaign with the maximum number of leads. 

You can find out more about on-site retargeting campaigns in part one of our Customer Recovery Series: On-Site Retargeting Campaigns: How to Optimize the Traffic You Already Have.

Part 2: Recovery campaigns

Recovery campaigns are a series of techniques targeting online shoppers who left your website before adding products to their shopping cart (browse abandonment) or after (cart abandonment). Once adopted, recovery campaigns can:

1. Remind shoppers about your web store;
2. Reengage their interest in your products;
3. Return them to your web store; and
4. Recover that lost conversion. 

Rather than a one-off cart abandonment email, this is achieved through a series of targeted emails, reminders and push notifications tailored to the customer’s journey. 

You can learn more about recovery campaigns in part two of our Customer Recovery Series: Recovery Campaigns: How to Recapture Abandoned Sales. 

But on-site and recovery campaigns are more than just tick box exercises. For them to work and increase your conversion rates, they need to be properly optimized and we’re going to show you how. 

Tricks to Optimize On-Site Campaign Results

On-site campaigns aim to squeeze conversions out of the existing traffic on your website; therefore you need to know about the existing traffic on your website. The following tools can help you to understand your website visitors better so that you can tailor your on-site campaigns to their needs. 

Abandoned session replays

Abandoned cart session replays allow you to watch a recording of shoppers abandoning your website. While this won’t be your top movie of 2019, it will allow you to pinpoint exactly where customers are leaving, enabling you to identify the reason and improve checkout flaws. 

For example, if lots of customers abandon when they get to the final checkout total, you could use this information to add a real-time final price in the shopping cart or, even better, offer customers free shipping as standard. 

Real-time notifications

Real-time notifications send you an instant alert when a potential customer leaves your website before purchasing, but after entering their contact details. This keeps you aware of your abandonment levels and spikes in activity. And because you’ll recieve the full contact record with the notification, it also allows you to add a manual outreach step to your recovery process by quickly contacting the shopper by phone or email. 

Real-time notification can be especially effective for B2B eCommerce businesses, where fast manual interaction can help overcome the complexities that accompany a B2B sale. For example, you can talk through the cost options, present booking incentives & offers, or even offer bulk discounts to persuade decision makers. 

A/B split testing

An exit intent popup is your last chance to convince a customer to convert before they click off your website – getting them right is therefore crucial. A/B split tests allow you to run multiple exit intent popups in real-time and record the results. You can use this data to create the perfect layout, content, and call to action for driving conversions or increasing email input. 

As an example, you might run an exit intent popup that offers free shipping and another that offers $5 off a $25 spend. You can then compare the total sales, recovered orders, and recovered revenue of both to see which appeals more to your audience. 

Checkout forms

The checkout page is a commonly abandoned step in the customer journey. Accordingly, form field repopulation and quick, simple checkout pages are two of the top best practices to ensure drop-off is minimized. But what we’re really interested in right now is the prioritization of the email field. 

Real-time data capture tools record contact data as it’s typed into your website, and the most important contact detail for your recovery campaign is an email address. Since shoppers tend to abandon the “payment” step of the checkout most often, we recommend placing the email field first in the checkout process to enhance your chance of obtaining that all-important data. 

Tricks to Optimize Recovery Campaign Results

Now that you’ve squeezed the most out of your existing traffic, it’s time to get all you can out of your abandoned traffic. We’ve already looked at cart and browse abandonment best practice for emails and messages themselves in part two. Now, we’re looking at the tools to enhance those recovery emails. 

Real-time visitor tracking

Real-time visitor tracking records the exact stage in the shopping journey that someone leaves your website. This information allows your recovery software to automatically queue that shopper into the right recovery campaign, to send the right message at the right time. 

Why does this matter? Because someone leaving your website after a quick two-minute browse will respond to different tones, content and psychological tactics than someone who spent twenty minutes on your website adding products to their cart and signing up to your push notifications. Real-time visitor tracking allows you to queue these shoppers into the appropriate browse abandonment or cart abandonment email campaigns and send them relevant content. 

Product recommendations

Product recommendations have the power to increase conversions by 4.5x, according to a study by SalesForce. A product recommendation engine uses AI to learn about a customer’s likes and dislikes and then recommend products they’ll be most likely to purchase. It’s a powerful tool for supercharging your recovery campaign results with very little effort. 

Product recommendations are especially effective at cross-selling and upselling in browse abandonment emails, where the customer has viewed several products but not yet found one worthy of being added to their shopping cart. 

A/B split testing

A/B split testing can test the effectiveness of your cart and browse abandonment emails too.  You can split test browse and cart abandonment email subject lines, copy, and content to find the perfect messaging for engagement and conversion. 

Further reading: Check out our top abandoned cart subject lines that get 40-70% open rates. 

Form autofill

When your recovery email or push notification encourages a shopper back to your website, you want to get them through the checkout as quickly and easily as possible – before doubt sets back in. 

An easy way to speed up your checkout process is using Form Autofill to repopulate the checkout form with information that you already hold about the customer. For example, name, email and address. Not only does this bring them to the ‘buy’ button quicker, but it also comes across as helpful, giving a positive impression of your brand. 

Tricks to Optimize Post-Recovery Campaign Results

And the optimization doesn’t finish with your recovery campaigns. You can continue optimizing your website traffic and leads using:

Zapier

Some customers simply require more time to think about their purchase, and that’s ok because Zapier feeds website leads who failed to convert into your CRM system. You can then include them in future marketing campaigns and start building an ongoing relationship until they’re ready to make a purchase from you. 

Contact enrichment

Ecommerce solutions, such as CartStack, scour the web to find as much information as possible about your website visitors. Information such as phone numbers, postal addresses, social media profiles, and known organizations; information that can all be used to supercharge your future marketing campaigns with tailored content that engages interest and moves them one step closer to being a lifelong customer. 

Summary

The final stage in any customer recovery strategy should look to optimize your new on-site and recovery campaigns to get the most conversions possible out of your existing and abandoned website traffic. You’ve done the hard work; why not reap the rewards. 

And that’s the final part of our three-part Customer Recovery Series. TL;DR?

1. Reduce the problem of abandonment while increasing your leads using on-site campaigns such as: exit intent and delayed popups, live chat, real-time email capture, Send My Cart, and push notifications; 
2. Re-engage and convert abandoning customers using browse abandonment emails, cart abandonment emails, push notifications and Send My Cart recovery campaigns;
3. Perfect your on-site and recovery campaigns using abandoned session replays, real-time notifications, A/B split testing, product recommendations, Zapier, and contact enrichment; and
4. Learn even more about how you can perfect your recovery strategy by signing up to the CartStack blog for tips, tricks, and best practice.