A case study published in MarketingSherpa recently illustrates how to convert a percentage of shoppers who abandon your shopping cart.

Diapers.com set up a system whereby an email was sent to any registered user who abandoned their cart. The email went out at least 24 hours AFTER abandonment and featured the items left in the cart.

Why the wait? Many of Diapers.com’s customers ordered online late at night. The company reasoned that it was better to give these customers some space before contacting them again.

The emails were:

personalized, using the customer’s first name;

included three text paragraphs in order to get the key message to readers who might have images turned off in their email program; and

included a “View Cart” hotlink to allow customers to click through and complete the purchase.

As a result of this approach…

Diapers.com’s conversion rate was 129 percent higher than that achieved by any previous marketing campaign; and

The emails sent after abandonment made up 10.4 percent of the total revenue from Diapers.com’s email marketing program despite constituting just 2.7 percent of the total volume sent.

We have long advised clients to specifically follow up on customers who abandon their shopping carts. We also do this for our own sites and have been exceptionally pleased with the business we’ve received from customers who, for a range of reasons, didn’t complete their original order. (Hint: it’s not necessarily because they’ve changed their mind about buying from you…)

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Focusing on Referrals, Abandons Helps Eretailer Grow List, Bolster Sales”, MarketingSherpa, September 10, 2008

A few years ago the top priority among businesses selling products and services on the Internet was to attract as much traffic to their websites as possible. While generating traffic remains a top priority… there’s another goal that is actually more important for many Internet based businesses.

It’s building your list of optin subscribers (people who voluntarily “opt in” to accept your offer).

Studies show that around 97% of first-time visitors to your website never return. That means you miss out on 97% of your potential customers. On the other hand, if you have an “optin offer” - an offer that entices people to join your list or database, you’ll likely keep a good portion of those visitors. In fact, a really powerful offer may convince over 50% of your visitors to sign up to your list!

This means people you can communicate with - and market to - over and over again (for as long as they remain on your list).

So what kind of offer can you make to encourage people to join your list? What should you actually do with your list? Can you motivate people to join your list AND buy from you at the same time?

I’ll be answering these and other questions over the next few weeks as we discuss a range of list-building strategies. If you haven’t already, I urge you to seriously consider implementing these in your Internet marketing program.

Next time we’ll talk about the kind of offer to make in order to get as many people as possible to opt in.