Effective remarketing enables you to bring back old customers and lost leads. On average, email remarketing sees a 57% open rate and a 30% conversion rate. Meanwhile, traditional email marketing campaigns only average 21% open and just 5% conversion. If that caught your attention, use these best practices to create your remarketing strategy.
Remarketing is the practice of re-engaging leads by using email. It's sometimes confused with retargeting, which is another way of re-engaging leads that doesn't rely on email. If you'd like to learn more about the differences between remarketing and retargeting, read our blog post Retargeting vs Remarketing: What's The Difference?
Since remarketing relies on email addresses, it's a good idea to use a few strategies to collect them. You're already collecting email addresses from people who place orders. But what about those that haven't? Here are some tried and proven ways to collect email addresses from people who haven't made a purchase yet:
A good remarketing email will include all of the following.
It comes as a surprise to many marketers that customers more than tolerate a good marketing campaign. While 75% of shopping carts get abandoned, roughly 3 in 4 people who abandon their cart plan to return later. Your remarketing campaign is the reminder they need.
A common mistake marketers make is abusing a lead's email address. Sending too many emails or waiting too long to send your emails will drastically increase unsubscribes and spam reports. Be good with timing and know how many emails is too many emails.
A study by MIT found that an astonishing 90% of eCommerce leads go cold in just 1 hour. This illustrates the need for quick, timely remarketing in order to keep your leads interested in the products they viewed.
A separate study found that sending an email within three hours of a person abandoning their cart resulted in, on average, a 40% open rate and a 20% click-through rate.
As for the 60% of leads that don't open that first email, try again. Many experts agree that sending three emails is the best approach to re-engaging abandoned carts. One recent study found that a second email will generally earn 50% more from abandoned carts, and a third email will bring the total up to 56%.
So how many emails should you send? Perform your own tests and decide. Just make sure the abandoned cart workflow is discontinued if your prospect makes recovers the cart.
It's worth pursuing every abandoned cart and cold lead. Make sure you use an automated yet personalized remarketing campaign to do so. However, realize that certain leads may warrant a special approach.
For instance, pay more attention to leads that viewed high-value items. Also, prioritize leads based on how many products they view or the total time spent on your website.
Here are some examples of remarketing from a few stores.
"Hello? Looks Like You Forgot Something..." by O'Neill
The subject line for this campaign is a variation of the popular "you forgot something" phrase. However, O'Neill put their own simple twist on it to connect it to their fun, friendly brand. You can see that the email itself evokes a sense of urgency with the "Get It Before It's Gone!" line up top.
They also include a bold "View Cart" button, making it easy for the shopper to pickup where they left off. They include large product images, cleanly displaying pricing and buttons.
Below, large buttons allow the shopper to view different categories. This is a good strategy to get the customer browsing, even if they lost interest in the featured products. At the end, O'Neill includes contact information for their customer support team.
This email from Burton keeps things short and sweet. Burton specializes in outdoor apparel, luggage, and snowboarding equipment. Seeing the Burton name in the subject will instantly call those things to mind for the shopper.
The email itself is nicely branded. The messaging reads, "You left some gear in your cart. Don't forget to complete your order. Spend over $50 and we'll send it for free!" This premium shipping offer helps drive larger purchases.
The viewed items get displayed below with a large photo, price, and buttons to "Edit Cart" or "Checkout". This streamlines the purchase process and removes as much friction as possible. They end with contact information at the bottom along with social links.
"You've left something behind..." by ISLE Surf & SUP
ISLE Surf & SUP specializes in stand-up paddleboards. This abandoned cart email uses nicely branded imagery to show viewed products. Also, it directly asks the customer why they didn't finish their purchase. The message reads: "We noticed that you didn't finish checking out and were wondering if you had a problem while trying to complete your order?"
The email then shows viewed items and a "Return to Cart" button. This smaller store could definitely improve their design. Such as larger buttons and different font choices that better match the brand.
Otherwise, the email features everything it should. Including a direct email address and phone number in case shoppers have questions.
Eniture Technology specializes in helping e-Commerce merchants grow by providing useful information, digital marketing services, off-the-shelf apps that solve common problems, and custom programming services. Please contact us if you need help growing your online business or implementing the concepts presented in this blog post.
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