It happens all the time: visitors come to your site, look at your products, click to buy some of them, and then abandon their shopping cart and your site before completing the purchase. It’s frustrating for a company to lose a sale at that point. Fortunately, though, the transaction may not be over for good. Thanks to the wonders of JavaScript and website cookies, more and more businesses are able to entice those potential customers with abandoned shopping carts to return to their selected items and finalize their purchases.
Many of us are probably already familiar with retargeting, even if we don’t know what it’s called. For example, let’s say you looked at an auction item on eBay, read through the description, and then decided to hold off on placing a bid. You click over to another website, only to see an ad enticing you to bid on the very item you were just looking at. It may seem like some kind of scary microchip clairvoyance, but it's not. It's just retargeting, and it’s extremely effective at reminding web users of their browsing history (especially in relation to products for sale) and attracting them back to a vendor site to make a purchase.
With email retargeting, instead of ads on news and social media sites that display products relevant to recent browsing and search history, an email is sent directly to the recipient. If you’ve ever placed items in your shopping cart at Amazon, let’s say, but never actually bought them, chances are good that you soon received an email from Amazon reminding you that you liked this item and hey, wouldn’t you like to come back to our site and buy it? Many times, that little reminder will bring the customer back to complete the purchase.
For a long time, we’ve understood what a powerful marketing tool email can be, but the ability to retarget customers and potential customers has made it an even stronger and even more crucial channel to use for keeping in touch. Retargeting customers who did not complete their purchase is just the beginning. Businesses can include coupons or discounts in their retarget emails (like, if you come back and complete your purchase, we’ll give you $5 off) or even as a thank you to customers in the hopes of getting them to make another purchase. Emails can also include product recommendations, either accessories or peripherals to a product they’ve already bought or other items that were purchased by customers who also bought something that the recipient bought. Even an email to say thanks for being a customer can go a long way in drawing repeat business.
Of course, businesses do need to make sure that they are in full compliance with Bill C-28, Anti-Spam Law before sending out retargeting emails. Messages, including retargeting emails, can be sent to customers who have made a purchase for two years, individuals who have requested information or a quote for six months, and people who have expressly given consent to receive emails from your business.
At Adeo Internet Marketing, we’re experts at building successful email marketing campaigns. We can help you with your email retargeting efforts and work to make your electronic communications enticing, engaging, and completely legal. Give us a call today at (877) 841-5386, and together we can bring back all of your site's visitors who abandoned their shopping carts.
