In 2013, cart abandonment
remarketing crossed the chasm
and became a mainstream tactic
for retailers and ecommerce companies.
So, assuming you’ve started to realize
some success with a cart abandonment
program, where can you go in 2014?
Perhaps you’ve noticed that while cart
abandonment campaigns typically yield off-thechart
conversion rates since the contacts are so
close to purchasing, the downside is that the
number of people who fill up your carts comprises
a relatively small percentage of the total people
visiting your site.
With that in mind, one possibility is to move up the
funnel to browse remarketing. For most companies,
there’s a huge number of people browsing on your
site every day who have previously established
an email relationship with you, whether it be by
subscribing to your promotional emails, registering
an account or making a previous purchase. These
people have already established that they have
some affinity for your brand, yet most companies
don’t remarket to them.
In 2014, the best marketers will be taking
advantage of this revenue-generating opportunity
and initiating browse abandonment
campaigns aimed at nurturing select Web
visitors toward a purchase. From a technical
perspective, this requires that you insert
Web tracking code on your pages that’s
integrated with your ecommerce and email
platforms. Your tracking code — such as
Silverpop’s Web Tracking, which matches
cookied browsers with email addresses — then
triggers a message whenever a known visitor’s
behavior matches your criteria.
The bottom line is that you can reach out to
many times more browse abandoners than cart
abandoners. True, you’ll typically see a much lower
conversion rate because these browsers aren’t as
close to completing a conversion, but even if you
can get a small percentage to convert off a large
number of browsers, that could still have a huge
impact on the bottom line.
Key tactics for initiating browse
abandonment efforts in 2014:
• Concentrate on a few key Web pages or categories.
Rather than having dozens of pages
on your site trigger a browse-related email,
begin with a few key categories or “fulcrum
pages” that are suggestive of an engaged
prospect that’s looking to go to the next level.
• Start simple. Don’t worry about sending
a multipart series, incorporating behaviordriven
dynamic content and using technology
integrations to pull in relevant ratings and
recommendations – yet. The goal is to get
your program up and running, and then finetune
down the line.
• Deliver educational content. Since these
contacts are typically in the research phase,
leverage existing content — such as calculators
and wizards, buying guides, how-to videos
and tips from other customers — that will help
them in their decision-making process rather
than just sending an incentive or discount.