According to a survey by Baymard Institute, online shopping stores experience a whopping 69.89% cart abandonment. No matter what deals they offer or how amazing their products are, a typical consumer is used to exploring all the options available before making a purchase. Now you might feel that’s something you can’t tackle, but that’s not true.
While you can’t stop them from exploring other deals available, you can recover the abandoned carts with 1:1 communication. Here’s everything you need to know about cart abandonment and how to set up a cart recovery campaign in minutes to increase your sales!
Why does cart abandonment happen?
There are several reasons why a consumer doesn’t complete a purchase. It isn’t always about the deal you’re offering or the quality of the product. Other factors that play a big part in their purchase decision-making include website experience, availability of a mobile app, payment and shipping options, and more.
No matter how good the product you’re being offered is, if you experience any of the above, you will leave too! Especially when you have other choices at hand.
What does cart abandonment lead to?
The most apparent thing cart abandonment leads to is losing more than half your store’s sales. But apart from that, it also shows you are losing out on all the potential revenue your store can generate and absolutely no brand loyalty in the market. And lost belief is like killing your future sales without reaching out to those new customers even once!
Why use push notifications for cart abandonment recovery?
Yes, you can use Facebook ads and emails to remind your customers of the products they have left behind. You could even offer them an additional product discount to lure them into purchasing. But in both cases, you’re waiting for the customer to view the ad, open the email, consume the content and then make the purchase.
But with push notifications getting delivered on mobile, you can be sure that your special offer will read on the go, driving them to make the purchase instantly.
1. Push notifications to have a higher opt-in rate
Receiving a 41% opt-in rate, push notifications are increasingly being used by even the top-grossing online stores to communicate with their customers. Since customers are expected to share their contact details with the online store to get updates, they are more willing to opt-in for push notifications.
Ps. Of course, they work the best when strategized for, hand in hand, with emails.
2. Push notifications to have a higher open rate
Push notifications receive a 30% open rate, much more than emails. Since they are delivered on mobile, the message is consumed almost instantly instead of risking the chance of being delivered to a spam box or waiting for the consumers to open their emails.
3. Push notifications to have a higher click-through rate
Per research published on Andrew Chen’s blog, push notifications to receive an average click-through rate (CTR) of about 40%. Messages get a better response than emails, with an average of 23% CTR.
4. Push notifications to have a higher engagement rate
Push notifications have proven to drive a higher engagement rate for online stores. When strategized well, they can cause an engagement rate as high as 80%. All you need to ensure is personalizing your push message, keeping it relevant, and simultaneously using a compelling copy to convey it.
All in all, push notifications to make for an effective channel for an online business to keep their customer engagement and drive them towards making more purchases – or even better, completing the ones they didn’t.
But what kind of push notifications can help recover abandoned carts?
Tips to make push notifications work
1. Offer a little something in return
The number one way to make a customer return to complete a purchase is to offer a special discount. A little reminder of what they left behind, with a bit of promo code that makes the price of the products even better, is all you need to recover an abandoned cart. Even a 10% discount seems appealing to everyone.
2. Create a sense of urgency
You could be offering them the best discounts on the products they have left behind, but it is useless if you don’t put a time limit on it. If you go the customer to choose when they want to complete the purchases, they might stall it for later and still look for something better than your offer. You need to tell them they have a day to redeem that coupon!
3. Get the timing right
When it comes to push notifications, timing is critical. When recovering an abandoned cart, you don’t want to make it too sooner or later. Too early is slightly creepy, and too late risks customers losing interest in the products they left behind. Understand your typical customer’s behavior and identify the right time to send a relevant message.
4. Help solve a problem
There is a high chance that a customer left simply because they could not understand how to make the right purchase. It could be a doubt about the product size, the quality, or the quantities available for sale. Instead of just offering a discount, another way to recover an abandoned cart is to help them make a purchase decision.
5. Remind them what they left behind
Sometimes, all it takes is reminding the customer of what they left behind and why they were looking for those products in the first place. No discounts are needed; make your push message sound like a subtle nudge instead of a sales pitch.
6. Retain your brand personality
While keeping it crisp and actionable lies at the core of an effective push notification, keeping your brand’s personality intact is essential. Like marketing experts would ask you to ‘write as you talk, your push notifications should make a recipient think about you and your store.
7. Be specific
When trying to recover an abandoned cart, stick to that goal. Don’t try to include another message in the push notification in the hope of driving a higher-value sale. Keeping it specific is as good as having a call-to-action to a blog post.
8. Ask for feedback
Sometimes, you can’t make a customer return to make a purchase. It could be for various reasons, but it is always wise to know why. Therefore, make feedback a part of your push notifications cart abandonment recovery campaign. This will also help you better the shopping experience.
9. Don’t overdo it
Yes, you want to recover all those abandoned purchases. But that does not mean that you overdo it. You need to understand that too many push notifications trying to make a customer complete a purchase can bother them and result in an uninstall. Track the performance of your push notifications campaign, and optimize your frequency accordingly.
10. Automate your push notifications
Don’t act at the last minute to recover abandoned carts. Have your push notification strategy in place right from the beginning, and that’s why you need to automate these. With your Shopify store mobile app powered by Plobal Apps, you can set up push notifications in no time. This helps you time your push notifications and track your messages’ success in real-time.
Push notification metrics you should be measuring.
Push notifications work best when you consistently measure their performance and optimize the campaigns. You need to understand how your customers respond to your push messages, identify what works and doesn’t, and make changes to the campaign for the best results.
Here are a few push notification metrics you should measure to recover abandoned carts effectively.
1. Open rates (interaction and engagement)
First and foremost, you need to track how many of the total push messages sent are viewed by your customers. You can do so by monitoring the number of clicks you receive on the push notifications and the number of notices dismissed.
2. Click through rates
The point of a push notification campaign is to recover abandoned carts. That will not happen if the customer does not click through your message to reach your app and complete the purchase. Click-through rates are to be tracked as closely as possible.
3. Delivery count
Another essential metric is the number of push notifications that are successfully delivered. This needs to be done starting when a push notifications campaign is launched.
4. App launches
This metric measures your push notification campaign’s effectiveness at recovering an abandoned cart. If the customer launches your app after a notification is delivered to them, you make them consider completing the purchase, which is a part of success.
5. Revenue generated
Your click-through rates and app launches should ideally lead to the revenue generated. Track how many sales you make after a push notifications campaign is launched. This includes the recovered carts and the additional purchases a customer makes on returning to your Shopify store mobile app.
6. Retention rate
Sometimes, it takes more than one push notification to recover an abandoned cart. It is essential to keep your customers engaged to prevent further cart abandonment and keep the channel open for recovery campaigns later.
7. App uninstalls and opt-outs
Push notifications can drive more sales from your Shopify mobile app, but there is also a chance that they result in app uninstalls or push notifications opt-outs. Keep track of any significant changes in your app uninstall rates or the number of people who turn off your push notifications. You might also want to keep the changes in push notifications on Android and iOS devices.
Reduce cart abandonment with push notifications
Online stores have used push notifications not just to recover abandoned carts but also to promote their other products to boost their sales. But only if done strategically.
This includes diving deep into data to understand who your customers are, how they interact with your Shopify store mobile app, what their expectations are, why they are abandoning purchases, what push messages they are responding to, and identifying the elements that you can optimize to better the push notifications campaign.
But all in all, the one rule you must always follow is to ‘think as the customer would. Step into their shoes, and you’ll know exactly how to drive them back to complete a purchase!
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