Website Conversion Blog
Remarketing Emails — Like or Loathe?
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
When we first launched our remarketing service in 2009, Randy Stross wrote a piece about email remarketing in The New York Times suggesting that while remarketing might be a great idea for ecommerce websites, it’s not a great idea for consumers. He likened emails following up on abandoned shopping carts to a salesman chasing you down the street if you didn’t buy from his store.
There are major differences, of course. We’ve long argued that remarketing emails, when done well, not only drive conversions but also build brand trust.
They can deliver great service and provide customers with the confidence to return to buy—either online, by phone or in store. If Randy was right and customers universally resented the intrusion, then these emails wouldn’t work.
In aiming to answer the question more substantively, I turned to data, and specifically email marketing benchmarks.
The key metrics to look at to determine whether customers like or loathe remarketing emails are:
Lessons learned from Cyber Monday Shopping Cart Abandonment Patterns (part 2)
Friday, December 10th, 2010
In my last blog we covered how shopping cart abandonment rates vary in the run up to black Friday and Cyber Monday. The shopping cart abandonment rate is significantly higher than normal in the run-up to Black Friday. Once the majority of retailers rolled out their Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional offers shopping cart abandonment drops dramatically.
From this we can observe mass changes in customer behaviour, as customers have become conditioned to wait for promotional offers. Comscore reports that Free Shipping has grown significantly in the last month, peaking at 55.1% of all online purchases, up significantly on last year (45.6%).
Customers behave differently
Unlike the wild swings in shopping cart abandonment rate of all visitors, when we segmented out identified visitors (registered, logged in, opted-in, or have previously logged in and/or purchased) we found that they are much less likely to change their behaviour over this period.
Website Conversion Priorities for eMarketers in the Next 12 Months
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
On July 27, SeeWhy conducted an online poll among 221 eMarketers. The results reveal some potential shifts in focus over the next 12 months: shopping cart recovery, reducing landing page clutter, link building, and transactional email all emerge as top priorities.
The poll also looked in detail at four key areas of conversion to determine their priorities. The four areas examined were as follows:
• SEO
• Landing page optimization
• Email marketing
• Web conversion/shopping cart recovery techniques
Each respondent was allowed to pick only one response in each category, forcing them to choose their top priority.
SEO Priorities
Fact or Fiction? Most Customers Seek Out Deals, Discounts and Coupons Online
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
‘Have we conditioned most customers to the point that they expect discounts and won’t buy without one?’
This is a great question, and it’s worth considering in more depth. Recent research shows that coupon redemption is at an all time high, and at the same time, Ben Bernanke warns that the economic recovery is fragile and taxes will inevitably have to rise. It’s no wonder that customers are nervous and cautious. (more…)
Reasons Why Website Visitors Abandoned their Shopping Carts
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Last year, 154 million people in the U.S. made online purchases amounting to $155.2 billion in sales, or approximately $1000 each, according to recent Forrester research. But these are just the ones that made it through the process: ever since the very first online purchase in 1979, significantly more people abandoned shopping carts than complete their purchases. (more…)
