Marketing automation has become the “the next big thing” in high tech, or at least one of the next big things. How big? More than $1 billion in recent vendor valuations. According to GigaOM, the past six months have seen a flurry of financial activity including:
$75 million IPO filed by Marketo
$150 million IPO filed by Tableau
$35 million in funding raised by Hubspot
$54 million in funding raised by InfusionSoft
$871 million paid for Eloqua by Oracle
Behind all the activity is the undeniable advantage that companies gain by automating and streamlining their marketing processes: increased operational efficiencies and accelerated revenue growth. With marketing automation, companies can use technology to discover and qualify sales leads, foster relationships with prospective customers, enhance relationships with established customers and improve the overall performance of their marketing organizations.The big industry push to automate marketing tasks is making the automation of conversion best practices even more critical than ever. Ecommerce companies are realizing the importance of running automated conversion campaigns that can respond to shopping cart abandoners in real time, as soon as they abandon, rather than hours or days later. That kind of immediacy can’t be achieved with batch-mode operations.
While real-time responses may seem overly aggressive, studies show they best serve customers and ecommerce companies alike. If customers abandon their shopping carts and don’t return within the first hour, then the probability of completing the sale is reduced by 90%. Automation can ensure customers receive relevant messages in the first few seconds after abandonment. That’s when customers are most receptive to appropriate follow-up and companies have the greatest opportunity to convert the sale.
Of course, “relevant” and “appropriate” are key to conversion success, which is why conversion – much like standard lead generation and nurturing – must take a big data approach. (…)
In the first two parts of this blog series, we talked about how the shopping behavior of first-time visitors differ from returning visitors, and how time-to-purchase influences shopping behavior.
In this post, we will break down how even the value of the cart will affect purchase behavior.
Cart size vs. abandonment rates – The cart value has a clear impact on the shopping cart abandonment rate. Surprisingly, low-value carts can have higher abandonment rates than carts with a higher value:
$0 to $100 cart: 78% abandonment
$101 to $250 cart: 52% abandonment
$250 to $300 cart: 70% abandonment
$300 to $350 cart: 70% abandonment
$350 to $400 cart: 73% abandonment
$400+ cart: 85% abandonment
Carts at critical price points have very high abandonment rates. Below, you’ll see how a $100 cart value drives up abandonment. Once past the $100 threshold, abandonment rates begin to fall.
Cart value: Abandonment rate
$1 to $25 cart: 85% abandonment
$26 to $50 cart: 75% abandonment
$51 to $75 cart: 63% abandonment
$76 to $100 cart: 59% abandonment
$100 to $150 cart: 78% abandonment
$151 to $200 cart: 42% abandonment
Key take away: Check the ratio of shipping cost to cart value for some of your lower value abandoned baskets. Test thresholds for minimum order free shipping carefully. $99 is likely to work better than $100.
Analyzing the abandonment rates – Individual products can have very different, unexpected abandonment rates. For instance, on one ecommerce site, a $12.99 item and a $239.99 item each had a 99.8% abandonment rate. Meanwhile, the same site had a $3.99 item and a $599.00 item, each of which had a 50% abandonment rate.
Key take away: Build a spreadsheet to rank frequently carted and abandoned products. Check the description on the product detail page and the shipping costs associated with these frequently abandoned items. (…)
In the first part of this series, we talked about how first time buyers differ from returning buyers. We concluded that the more often a buyer returns, the more likely they are to complete a purchase.
This post will focus on the buyer’s time-to-purchase patterns and how time make a huge difference in determining how likely visitors are to purchase.
From first visit to purchase – The average time delay between a buyer’s first visit and purchase is 19 hours, but 72% of visitors will buy in the first 12 hours. Here’s the complete breakdown:
30% purchase in less than 20 minutes
50% purchase in 20 minutes to 1 hour
60% purchase in 1 to 3 hours
65% purchase in 3 to 12 hours
72% purchase in 12 to 24 hours
80% purchase in 1 to 3 days
85% purchase in 3 to 7 days
95% purchase in 1 to 2 weeks
100% purchase in more than 2 weeks
Key takeaway: Start remarketing as soon as the visitor abandons the site. The first 12 hours are the greatest opportunity to convert a sale. New customer remarketing following a first purchase should be an additional core capability of every ecommerce website.
Check that your shopping cart persistence is set to a minimum of 60 days.
Abandonment patterns within 28 days – Breaking down the abandoner population reveals distinct patterns relative to their previous 28 days of activity on a given ecommerce website. Specifically,
43% are “one-time” or “first-time abandoners.” The recovery rate for one-time abandoners is 18%.
42% are “serial abandoners” who have abandoned more than once. The recovery rate for serial abandoners is 48%.
15% are “recent goal abandoners” who have made one or more purchases followed by an abandon. The recovery rate for recent goal abandoners is 57%.
Key takeaway: People who abandon more than once are 2.6 times more likely to make a purchase. (…)
In our last series, we looked at who’s abandoning their online shopping carts, why they’re abandoning, and what can be done to convert abandoners into customers. Now, it’s time to improve our understanding of online buyer behavior.
The numbers below are based on SeeWhy’s extensive research and study of online behavior. While some may appear counter-intuitive, all of these figures represent real ecommerce activity of real people. In turn, we gain a clear idea of what buyers actually do when they shop online as well as key takeaways that can help further reduce your shopping cart abandonment.
In this part, we will focus on new visitors vs. returning visitors on your ecommerce website and how likely they are to buy.
First-time visitors – Let’s start with new, first-time visitors to an ecommerce site. First of all, 99% of these visitors won’t buy on their first visit. Of those who don’t buy, 25% will abandon and never return while 75% will abandon but intend to return.
Key takeaway: 81% of online merchants believe that the majority of abandoners are wasting the merchants’ time. However, the bulk of abandoners – 75% – have some degree of intent to purchase and will return to the site to abandon again or purchase.
Returning visitiors – When returning visitors abandon a second time, 53% won’t return again within 28 days. Of the 47% that will return, one in four will make a purchase.
Only 3% of new customers will buy again while 11% of returning visitors who have made a recent purchase (i.e., within the previous 28 days) will buy again.
Key takeaway: Most visitors don’t buy immediately but require a series of visits and abandons over time while considering their purchase. The more that a customer visits the site and the more that they buy, in general, the more they will buy in the future. (…)
In the first two parts of this series, we briefly covered the “who” and the “why” of shopping cart abandonment. In this blog post, we’ll talk about what areas you should focus your efforts that will help convert abandoners into customers.
What can be done to convert abandoners into customers?
In the typical eCommerce conversion funnel, the shopper starts on the landing page and then moves on to the product page, adds the product to the shopping cart and then proceeds to checkout. The first step in converting abandoners into customers, then, is understanding how shoppers arrive at the shopping cart.
In our research, email remains the dominant force in getting shoppers to ecommerce sites. Overall, we found that traffic arriving at the shopping cart breaks down into the following categories:
58% via email
17.9% via direct URL entry
10.3% via search
4.8% via SEM
4.3% via link
4.3% via social media
1.7% via display advertising
We also researched conversion percentages of the different methods by which shoppers arrive at the shopping cart. In other words, for any given method, how well did it sell? Just take look at these conversion rates:
67.7% for email
23.6% for direct URL entry
1.65% for search
2.11% for social media
1.75% for link
0.88% for SEM
0.53% for display advertising
The next step in converting abandoners into customers is to capture the email addresses of all site visitors and use those email addresses to convert customers. After all, only 3% of visitors will buy on any site visit – 97% don’t. But a returning customer is nine times more likely to buy compared with a new visitor. Email can be used to nudge abandoners to return.
Key take away: email remains an eCommerce staple. The further a visitor progresses down the funnel, the more likely that the eventual conversion will come following a click from an email. (…)
Marketing automation has become the “the next big thing” in high tech, or at least one of the next big things. How big? More than $1 billion in recent vendor valuations. According to GigaOM, the past six months have seen a flurry of financial activity including:
