Whatever the reason for the abandonment, the simple fact is that the vendor has let untapped revenue slip between their fingers.

Experian CheetahMail’s new white paper, The remarketing report: Benchmark data and analysis for connecting web behavior to email marketing explains the value in marketing to abandoners, reporting that sending reminder emails to abandoners who do not convert after the first abandoned cart email can boost campaign revenue by up to 33 percent.

But why do website visitors abandon their carts in the first place? A study by PayPal and comScore found that 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times in just three weeks. The average cost of abandoned goods in those shopping carts was $109. In the same study, 46% of online shoppers said high shipping charges was a “very important reason” for ditching their carts.

Other reasons for abandonment included:

Wanted to comparison shop: 37%
Lack of money: 36%
Wanted to look for a coupon: 27%
Wanted to shop offline: 26%
Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24%
Item unavailable at checkout: 23%
Couldn’t find customer support: 22%
Security concerns: 21%

What can online retailers do about curbing abandoned carts and making the sale?

1. Optimize the checkout process. Make the purchase process as simple and seamless as possible. This includes providing estimated shipping costs, delivery dates, and total costs early and obviously in the checkout process. Make it clear that the transaction is safe and secure. Offer an easy way to contact customer service. Post the return policy in an obvious location. Have a clear and easy to read progress bar throughout checkout. Pre-populate saved customer information. Provide multiple payment options.
2. Run an abandoned cart (remarketing) program. Abandoned cart programs are a great way to convert abandoners into purchasers. Remarketing programs send emails to abandoners enticing them to complete the purchase.
3. Consider providing an incentive to buy. This could be a frequent buyers program, wishlists, online coupons, free shipping offers, a “save your cart” feature, or special buyers clubs, to name a few. The incentive does not always have to be monetary, though, and our recent study has shown that not all businesses should offer incentives within their remarketing messages.

For more information on how to create successful remarketing campaigns, be sure to read our latest research, The remarketing report: Benchmark data and analysis for connecting web behavior to email marketing.

Today, Experian CheetahMail released

As most of us would expect, abandoned cart messages pull higher open, click and transaction rates than standard promotional messages. However, marketers might be surprised to learn that cart abandoners respond differently to triggered emails that leverage web analytics data. A few specific notes on browsers versus abandoners include:

• Emails sent to cart abandoners (those who have placed an item in their shopping cart but have not converted) with an incentivized offer only pull $0.09 more in revenue per email than those emails that do not contain an offer.
• Meanwhile, customers that only browsed products but did not add any items to their cart (i.e. ‘browsers’) are much more likely to respond to an incentivized email offer.

This report confirms that email marketers don’t need a special remarketing offer to convert abandoners into buyers. This is a positive development for the email industry in that we don’t effectively encourage our customers to abandon their carts with the hope of receiving a discount email at the end of the process.

Another frequent question is whether or not the email call-to-action should direct traffic directly to the shopping cart, or to land on the website home page. Data from this report suggests that marketers should keep the following rules in mind:

• The quicker a customer can access their own cart and view the actual products they were interested in, the higher the returns.
• That being said, even the most basic abandon and browse emails (even those that simply link to a website home page) pull in over 31% higher transaction rates compared to bulk promotions — a number that senior management will find difficult to ignore.

Across all industries, businesses are finding opportunities to follow-up with customers based on various website browsing activities. This white paper gives marketers the vital tips they need to avoid leaving unspent money on the table. Find your strategy to “remarket” to abandoners and browsers — download the white paper now!

Email marketing continues to be a mainstay in online advertising, but a few trends are forcing marketers to be more disciplined in the way they reach their customers.

Consider the following:

• Your customers are bombarded with an incredible amount of information every day. They have access to innumerable information sources and an unprecedented amount of flexibility in the ways they connect to these resources. Some estimates suggest that the number of emails delivered annually is approaching 62 trillion messages. To put this into perspective, an estimated 1.2 billion people have Internet access in the world. Therefore, the average Internet user will receive 142 emails every day (including weekends). Also, other forms of digital messaging media are continuing to proliferate. One estimate indicates that 81.2 million text messages will be sent to U.S. mobile phone subscribers this year.
• Expectations have changed too. Your customers expect an experience that speaks to them individually – messaging to their basic demographic or market segment is not enough.

So what do these trends mean for the email marketer? Relevance is more critical today than ever.

Two of the best ways to make your messages more relevant is to incorporate timeliness or behavioral data into your campaigns. Fortunately for marketers, integrating web analytics data into email campaigns is an easy way to make messages both timely and relevant. Many of today’s winning email campaigns are using web analytics data to engage customers by reminding them of a product they recently abandoned on a website, or introducing them to additional benefits of a product they just purchased.

To better illustrate the real world benefits that can be achieved, let’s consider a best practice case study: U.S. Auto Parts Network. US Auto Parts integrated Experian CheetahMail’s email marketing technology with Omniture SiteCatalyst online analytics through Omniture Genesis.

With the integration in place, U.S. Auto Parts gained precise insight into the purchasing habits of customers by measuring their post-email click behavior. They were then able to maximize both time and behavior based relevancy by using online behavior data to automatically trigger highly targeted ReMarketing messages to cart abandoners by reminding them about products still in their shopping cart. The email reminders linked back to the abandoned cart, including the products, with added incentive to complete the purchase.

The results? U.S. Auto Parts boosted revenue per email and transaction rates 50 times higher through the integration by using time and behavior as the key triggers. By creating and measuring relevant content, US Auto Parts’ emails connected with customers, leading to clicks and higher conversions. As email marketers continue to find innovative ways to engage customers, relevance will make the difference between boosting conversions or becoming just another email in customers’ inboxes.

Chris Parkin is Senior Director of Genesis Solutions for Omniture. To read more of Chris’ thoughts on web analytics, check out the Omniture blog.

The eMarketer study cites high shipping costs as the top reason why consumers abandon their shopping carts, as well as the desire to comparison shop, a lack of money, and wanting to search for a coupon.

These findings reinforce my rationale for frequently encouraging clients to create abandon cart campaigns. As I see it, ReMarketing should be a key part of almost any businesses’ email lifecycle program, helping maximize potential revenue during checkout.

When it comes to ReMarketing, there are a few critical rules to remember:

• You can only email people who have registered on your site or who have opted into your email program after the abandonment occurs.
• Frequency caps are recommended to limit the number of times a person receives an abandon message (particularly if there are coupons involved).

I also recommend using other site features beyond the scope of email to reduce the number of carts abandoned by unregistered users. These strategies include:

• Next to the total price and check out buttons, I recommend building a “shopping list” or “wish list” feature to store items for future purchase. Personally, I always use the shopping cart tool to bookmark what I want so that later on I can easily find the products when I am ready to buy. By giving users this functionality, shoppers can use wish lists to easily port the items to and from their shopping carts. This functionality also gives businesses another avenue to quickly acquire email addresses during the wish list setup.
• You may want to consider “pop under” windows triggered by abandoned carts. When someone abandons the site – particularly from check out – you can launch a pop under with a simple email sign up form promoting the value of your email program.

If you’d like to learn more about ReMarketing, you can have a look at our proprietary ReMarketing solution, as well as our partner integrations with the leading web analytics companies.