Why Retarget Abandoned Cart Shoppers
71% of customers place an item in their shopping cart but end up leaving before completing the checkout process. On average, retargeting ads are 76% more likely to be clicked on than a regular display ad.
Reading stats like these is incredibly painful for me as a SaaS provider in the eCommerce space. It makes me wonder, why are people so hesitant to buy? Why, instead, do consumers often leave retailers with an abandoned cart?
Price and timing are the leading factors for cart abandonment. Thus, you should be trying to reach potential customers as soon as they abandon a shopping cart. You should base your retargeting campaign's length of time on your average length of sales cycle. If you're unsure, you can get a better idea of this time frame with a "time to purchase report" in Google Analytics.
Retarget Abandoned Cart Shoppers: What Customers Want
Sometimes it's as simple as reminding shoppers about the products they'd previously been interested in, with pictures or videos, which can lead them to convert and complete their purchase.
In 2011, 77% of consumers said free shipping would encourage them to buy more products online. In comparison, 56% cited free returns as the second most important factor. Highlighting offers like free shipping and returns in retargeting ads can often be the extra push needed for cart abandoners to convert.
Customers also love a deal and offering a discount is the simplest way to solve concerns a shopper may have over pricing. Be strategic about offering discounts; it's best to use less aggressive ads early in the retargeting campaign then ads about discounts or coupons as a "hail Mary" or last ditch effort.
Not sure what other objections you should be addressing? If you have a Sales Department or Business Development Representative (BDR) Team, start by asking them why prospective customers typically do or do not make purchases.
Retarget Abandoned Cart Shoppers Using Paid Search
The moment a customer leaves your site, you risk losing them all together. Shoppers may consider competitors to be more appealing or get distracted and not make any purchases.
Someone who abandons your check out to look for a similar product will likely buy within minutes, not hours, if they ever purchase. The best strategy here is to intercept these prospects with remarketing ads, upping the ante. Sometimes all it takes is a discount or special offer to reignite their interest in your products.
Execution of such a strategy is simple: put a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad in front of anyone who has abandoned their cart, driving them back to their shopping cart for check out. You are going to want to bid earlier in the abandonment cycle, as your conversion rate numbers will drop as time passes from initial cart abandonment.
90% of cart abandonment leads go cold after 1 hour, and many people don't check their email inboxes hourly. PPC ads are the most efficient way to reach consumers in this critical window of time. Retailers should promote different offers at various stages of a customer's journey to optimize for conversions. For example, stores could try promoting a price match guarantee in the first ad then a 10% off coupon a week later.
There are two main ad types to retarget abandoned cart shoppers with Google AdWords: dynamic and static ads. Dynamic ads use a tag from the shopping cart to collect product IDs for retargeting.
Keep in mind that you can also use Facebook newsfeed ads for retargeting, but PPC retargeting ensures that potential customers who abandon their shopping cart will not forget about your brand or how to get back to your online store. When executed in a strategic campaign, PPC ad retargeting can recover a significant amount of customers that abandon shopping carts.
As a next step, we've also written an article for Retargeting High-Value New Customers to increase your repeat purchase rate.
Get a Free Customer Journey Analysis!
Identify actionable differences in your Ecommerce customer behavior to focus your marketing efforts.
