Cool Customers: How Brands Can Reduce Cart Abandonment

After all of the money, time, and brain power used to put together a marketing strategy, it can be disheartening to see abandoned carts that customers have left behind. The customer lifecycle, from a marketer’s perspective, can be an intricate one. It can take a lot of effort to bring each customer into the funnel. To lose them after they’ve come within just a single step of conversion — that’s a big disappointment. And so this becomes an area of focus, a metric to track, for marketers.

Any business wants to increase conversions and grow its customer base. This can be applied to a business that offers a physical product or one that has a menu of services. If purchases, appointments, or reservations are part of the business, then abandoned carts may come knocking.

How does a marketer thwart these pesky abandoned carts?

The first step to reducing the number of abandoned carts is to take a look at the data. Pull up the numbers for the last few months of sales. Are there months or weeks in which more customers abandoned their checkouts before making their final purchase, or filled out most of the form but failing to hit submit? If there are trends or noticeable spikes or lulls to be found, marketers can then look back at what was happening during that time period. This helps draw correlations that can help solve the problem later on.

The next step in reducing abandoned carts is to do a bit of an audit on the marketing materials, websites, and any other part of the sales funnel that leads the customer to the moment they cancel their order. At multiple points throughout the funnel, there should be a clear, concise call to action. It may seem obvious, but that subconscious “buy this!” push is often what customers need to take the plunge.

Of course, for all intents and purposes, it may be safe to say that your call to action did work. After all, the customer added the product or service to their virtual cart, did they not? So, then, it’s time to look at the costs the customer sees. Perhaps the customer had some sticker shock after seeing the calculated total of price, shipping, and taxes. To help reel this customer back in, consider sending them an email offering a discount if they return.

Through many e-commerce platforms, it’s possible to automate this process. A customer must usually enter their email before proceeding to create a cart, and so the platform can use this email to send automatically triggered reminders that the customer “forgot” something in their cart. Sometimes, this prompts the customer to return and complete their purchase. Other times, they may need an additional incentive. Not every customer is the same, so it’s important to be open to making adjustments to the abandoned cart strategy.

Now, marketers have become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to help streamline and bolster their processes. These tools can be highly useful in combating abandoned carts, as data can be gleaned that tells the full story of the customer’s journey. This data can then be used to create a message that may resonate with that customer and bring them back for a conversion.