Email remarketing

Browse abandonment emails reconnect merchants with website visitors who quit the site without purchase action, giving chances to turn window shoppers into actual buyers. Browse abandonment is on the upper side of the purchase funnel,[3] and the next abandonment which stop customers accessing to check-out is cart abandonment. Instead of contacting everyone, marketers are more likely to send email to the people who have shown obvious interest on the products. For example, they are the ones who browse key pages of the website or who begin a process such as registering an account or downloading a white paper but then stop the action, without purchase any products or services.[4]

Usually, browse abandonment emails are edited based on the receivers' browse and search history. In this case, the emails would be personalized, more targeted on individuals, compared to marketing emails. Browse recovery emails could make approximately 36.63% revenue and rise 2.79% sales effectively.[5]

As mentioned, cart abandonment is the second prevention. Cart abandonment emails are worked as a reminder of what items the receivers have abandoned.[6] They are sent to customers who have added products to their shopping cart but failed to check-out. In order to prevent shopping cart abandonment, marketers would send remarketing email to customers.[7]

According to the research by Experian Marketing Services, simply sending an abandoned cart reminder increases purchase rate by 1.53% and open rates by 41%.[8] Compared to the promotion and advertising emails, uncompleted order reminder increases purchase rate at 19 times higher.

Some people are worried that sending cart abandonment emails will annoy people, and while that make be the case, research shows that 69% of people found the 'reminders' to be helpful in some way.[9]

Traditional cart abandonment emails require the advertiser to have contact information already in place to send the email. This requires that website visitors that abandon their carts must have previously subscribed, purchased, or otherwise provided their contact information. Newer technologies allow marketers to first identify anonymous website visitors using a cookie-based identification system,[10] and then to follow-up with those visitors directly via email to convert them.

When individuals visit a website without converting there are tools available to identify anonymous website visitors, match them with their email address and follow-up directly to convert. Similar to cart abandonment, this type of email remarketing is done prior to the cart - with follow-up sent even if the visitor hasn't provided their contact information.

After completing orders, merchants would send a review emails to consumers. Some of those emails are telling them what they have bought before, some are post-purchase survey, etc. Before consumers make purchase decisions, they are heavily rely on the customer reviews about the products. Here is an example. Sephora, a leading beauty retailer, thanks the customer for their recent purchase while simultaneously asking them to review their new products. Within the email they also give the shopper an additional reason to engage by promoting other content resources including Sephora TV and beauty news. This review campaign appears to be extremely successful. In addition, in the first quarter of 2015, the read rate for these campaigns was 58% higher than their average read rate and the deleted unread percentage was 44% lower.[11] To sum up, post-purchase emails could not only help the companies to strength the brand identity, re-engage the existed customers, but also help attract new customers with advertisements and promotion.

Order follow ups, rewards or loyalty programs, inactive customer follow ups, and so forth...

The principle of advertisement[14] is basically to give a persuasive argument for a product then put it in front of the public. With the development of technology, it makes advertising much easier. The word 'easier' means convenience and lower cost.[15] In the past time, marketers usually printed the promotion messages into brochures then delivered them to thousands of mailboxes. Nowadays, marketers just design and edit the content into emails, then send those emails to countless email addresses in one second automatically. With no shipping fees, delay, and printing cost, companies definitely have decreased much of their advertising costs in the present decade. Lower cost leads to higher revenue sometimes. Moreover, the data displayed above proves that email remarketing are bringing vendors brand loyalty, financial return, and so on.

By definition of 'remarketing', it restricts the volume of customer group that the marketers could reach. However, instead of direct emails, email remarketing are reaching the customers whose purchase intent is highest. The remarketing email receivers are existed customers and potential customers who have shown attention and obvious interests on the products and services. In this case, a persuasive argument on the items could easily drive them to buy. When to send the remarketing emails is a substantial problem. Experian Marketing Services found that emails sent closer to the abandonment is more likely to make lifts in revenue. Generally, it can be as early as 30 minutes to 1 day. For the promotion and reactivation emails and the other emails, they are suggested to be sent at 2 p.m. on every Tuesday and Thursday.[16]

What to send should be given careful consideration as well. For cart abandonment emails, the items left in the shopping cart should be shown in the email directly, as it leads to highest rate of transactions. The continue bottom to check-out should be shown in the obvious position in the emails, as well as the option for the transaction tools, such as 'via PayPal' or 'Paid by MasterCard'. For the Thank You for Purchase email, it works better if it includes a discount information for the next purchase.

Frequency is the key. Experian Marketing Services recommends that cart abandonment emails should be sent at least twice after the first attempt, because the survey shows 54% lift in revenues when the second reminder email sent.