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Don’t Confuse Common Practice with Best Practice

There is a massive need to share results and best practices, since this is still an area which is not widely understood. As such, I welcome all research into shopping cart abandonment and recovery emails.

So it was with some eager anticipation that I read Epsilon’s Abandoned shopping cart email strategies report. Unfortunately, when analyzing their results for the best time to send shopping cart recovery emails, Epsilon confused common practice with best practice:

“Typically 48 to 72 hours is optimal for abandoned shopping cart emails; anything sooner may seem too intrusive. Follow-up emails beyond the three-day mark may be too late to convert a potential buyer.”

This is pure speculation – in fact Epsilon’s own research doesn’t support this. What the research shows is that there is a distribution on send times for abandoned shopping cart emails ranging from the same day to more than a week. Most retailers who send abandoned shopping cart emails do so between 48 and 72 hours.

While this is the most common send time, it doesn’t make it the best practice. Best practice is a term often mis-used, so here is an example of what I mean:

“Just because lemmings are jumping off a cliff, it doesn’t mean that we should all do the same.”

Let me clearly state that sending a real time shopping cart abandonment email is ‘best practice.’

In this case, best practice is based on multiple independent studies including one from Forrester, two separate MIT studies and a Marketing Experiments test. Each of these studies have concluded that real time responses work better.

SeeWhy, using our A/B testing module, has shown on multiple tests for customers that the same email will perform significantly better when sent in real time. Open rates, click-throughs and conversion rates are all higher when shopping cart abandonment emails are sent in real time. (…)

On average, 62% web forms are abandoned before completion – this means that organizations are losing out on a lot of potential leads, applications and quotations, which results in lost leads and ultimately lost revenues. So in this, the first of two blogs on designing web forms, we’ve pulled together a simple checklist for you to use. The next blog will look at such aspects as field order and single page vs. multi page forms, but initially, I think it’s worth recapping the basics. In order to maximize web form submissions, marketers must design their web form with the recipient in mind. This may seem obvious, but it is amazing how ‘form blind’ marketing departments can get when they are trying to capture all the information they require. Typically, the marketer passes a list of fields to be captured to the web developer and scant attention is paid to what will make the form convert. (…)

‘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. (…)

On a scale on one to ten, how weird are you?

This question is a standard new hire interview question for potential Zappos recruits. We caught up with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, recently, and he talks eloquently about hiring and firing staff based on the company’s core values. Core values may not be the first thing you think about when trying to increase your conversion rate, but they are at the heart of Zappos conversion philosophy, together with ‘fun and a little weirdness.’ (…)