There is no doubt about it; e-commerce is here to stay. Back in the 90s, buying stuff from the internet seemed like a very obscure practice that only people with a penchant for high-tech experiences dabble in. Nowadays, everything is available to be bought online. Whether people are selling their items from large general e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Alibaba, or have a more specialized website created through the likes of Shopify or WooCommerce, people have come to realize that they no longer have to limit their selling ventures to their local market because the entire world could be a potential market.
If you are an e-commerce vendor, you are probably aware that one of the most significant sources of lost revenue is a cart that the customer abandoned. There are many reasons why a customer might abandon the item that they left in the cart, whether it is because they are having second thoughts about the products, they are not sure if the price of the product can justify the purchase, or maybe Fluffy the cat spilled some coffee on the laptop before payment could be made. Not to worry though, abandoned carts can be recovered. Here is a short rundown on the best practices your business can take to recover abandoned carts.
1. A More Personalized Follow-Up
First of all, the absolute last thing you want to do when you want to recover an abandoned cart is sending a very generic email to the customer. Often when we abandon our online shopping carts, we get an email a few days later that does not even contain at the very least our first name, let alone have any semblance to our real interests.
When you send a follow-up to your customers, you never want to seem robotic and uninterested. You want to send off a message that insinuates that you are an actual person that has a genuine interest in helping customers out with their forgotten purchases. An abandoned cart recovery sms, for example, would seem much more engaged than a generic email that would likely end up in a spam folder anyway. You get plenty of emails from bots; the same cannot be said for SMS messages. They feel a lot more personal.
2. Seamless Integration
The next big thing to prioritize when it comes to recovering abandoned carts is seamless integration with your store. It is very reasonable to assume that you have scale in mind for your business; therefore, you most likely want to use a third-party service to follow up on your abandoned carts.
However, the process can be arduous if there is no integration because you would have to constantly monitor your cart manually and send the information over to whatever software or service you use to send your follow-ups. You want to use a service that integrates seamlessly with your e-commerce store and automatically detects abandoned carts.
3. Fast and Efficient
The last thing that you want to keep in mind when recovering abandoned carts is that whatever services you are using have to send out follow-ups promptly without any supervision from you. You want to focus on getting new sales and the other operational aspects of your store; therefore, you cannot spend too much time working with the service to recover your store’s abandoned carts.
Take the word “fast” with a grain of salt, however, because you do not want the service to send out recovery emails or texts in a way that seems desperate and annoying. The recovery service should be fast because when the opportune time comes to make a follow-up, it immediately.
So there you have it, don’t let abandoned carts go to waste, but do not be so eager to send out follow-ups either. Your customers want to feel that you have their best interests in mind – be personal and never give off the impression of being automated and robotic.
