5 Steps to Maximising the Effect of your Cart Recovery Strategy

After spending time and money to bring potential customers to a website, for a marketer or business owner there is nothing more frustrating than seeing your visitors getting part way through the checkout process and abandoning their cart. Whether it is an event, an ecommerce cart or hotel booking, these valued site visitors were at the point of making a purchase decision but didn’t complete.

Cart recovery is a common way to bring visitors back to complete their purchase, but how do you get maximum effect from your cart recovery platform? How do you increase the chances for your potential customers to click through and complete their purchase?

Be Unique – Be Personal

Your visitors have probably already seen some of your marketing, and at the very least your site and products, so you need to advance the relationship. Taking the analogy of a returning faithful customer to a physical store, your emails need to resonate the same familiar welcome. There’s a balance to play in not repeating the initial web sales patter too, but still to reiterate the key reasons the customer should buy from you.

Any email should have direct reference to the tickets, products or stay the user has opted not to complete. As an invitation to complete the purchase it should show what that purchase is.

…advance the relationship…reiterate the key reasons the customer should buy from you.

Be Conscious of Competition

…the next step is to sell you as a channel as much as selling the product.

For ecommerce, consumers have a broad choice of where to purchase their products online. For events, there can be multiple resellers, and hotels always have the challenge of the OTA’s undercutting their prices. At this point where a consumer has chosen a product it’s important to remember that the next step is to sell you as a channel as much as selling the product. The cart recovery email should be clear in the benefits of buying from your site over others. Think wider than price. Can you offer an extra, a better level of service, or expertise? Being clear on why the consumer should choose you is key.

Consider Pricing

There’s an old saying that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, or that something you have is worth double something which is only an opportunity. You probably have already spent money on promoting your site and bringing this customer to the point of checkout. Rather than loose them all together, could you offer a special discount or other added value. Savvy consumers are used to searching around for the best prices. Giving a small discount code, offering free postage or adding some other benefit can be just the push a consumer needs to complete the purchase.

Make it easy

The cart recovery tool should ideally drive the user back into the process at the point they left. Although all carts and sales platforms differ, using the right tool to get the user back as close as you can to this point is essential. Buttons on your email should be action driven, such as “Checkout Now” and give a seamless experience to the user, bringing them back to the page so they can complete the checkout quickly and easily this time round.

…using the right tool to get the user back as close as you can to this point is essential.

Start Recovering the Cart Early, While The Visitor is Still There

Your perfect opportunity to recover the cart is while the visitor is still on the page. Using urgency messages such as “last few tickets”, “last day at this price” or “72 Visitors Viewing This Ticket” will give extra impetus to complete the action. Airlines and auction sites are good examples of urgency messages, advising of the last few places on a plane, the last tickets at a certain price, or the uniqueness and limited availability of a product. Logical, intelligent urgency messages can stop a buyer moving away from your checkout to check other channels.

Your cart abandoners are a unique subset of potential customers. They are close to making a buying decision and deserve special attention to ensure they have the information needed to make that decision. By using a well-defined Cart Recovery strategy, and cart abandonment tool you can ensure that you re-engage with this valuable group.

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