Re-marketing to the 60% of customers who abandon carts can make or break your email campaigns - latest advice for ECMOD visitors to improve email marketing effectiveness: maximise tracking and minimise waste

ECMOD, 24th and 25th October 2007, Earls Court, stand #806–Almost half of marketers cannot track the effectiveness of email campaigns1 and 60% of customers abandon online carts – two worrying statistics for the catalogue and home shopping sector. At this year’s ECMOD show, Adestra highlights simple ways to minimise abandoned shopping carts and maximise conversion tracking.

Given that online sales will reach over £40bn this year, or 15% of UK retail sales, according to uSwitch, there is a huge opportunity for marketers to capture more market share NOW simply by improving their email marketing process.

The fact that almost half of marketers do not employ measures to track ROI from email campaigns implies it is difficult and/or expensive. In its basic form it is neither. Most ESPs can provide the ability to track sales through to your website.

For example, Adestra’s MessageFocus email marketing broadcast tools contain data analytics elements–to track pages on the client’s web site that people view when they leave the email. Therefore, marketers can see who moves through the ‘sales funnel’ allowing them to remarket to those who abandon sales processes and track a real ROI from their email marketing.

With this information, marketers are able to prove how well their marketing is working and identify barriers to purchase on their site allowing improvements and quick wins. The information can also be used to build business cases to justify more spend.

Paul Crabtree, Marketing Director at Adestra, says: “Email trigger campaigns are an excellent opportunity for home shopping/catalogue sector to provide much more relevant content, boost effectiveness and ultimately build long term customer loyalty.

“Even if you have a fantastic email campaign design, great data and great content – stats show the majority of your customers will abandon their cart – and without the ability to re-market to these people your campaign can easily be doomed.”

47% of email marketers cannot track campaigns and measure their ROI on campaigns – according to the largest survey ever undertaken of email marketers from e-Consultancy and Adestra. source: The Email Marketing Industry Census 2007, surveyed over 500 in-house and agency respondents across different industry sectors, February 2007.

2006 E-commerce Benchmark Guide from Marketing Sherpa

Remarketing is possibly the strongest use of email marketing. It is basically targeting the traditional 'wastage' that happens when you have a conversion rate of less than 100%. Using some quick maths, it’s obvious what a huge opportunity this is: with a 5% click through rate and a 20% conversion rate on your site, that means for every five people that click through only one is converting. Therefore, targeting the other four who have shown a clear interest with persuasive communications will increase your conversion rate and revenue significantly.

Using action-based systems means more relevant communications are automatically delivered as the recipients themselves are triggering the sends. Here the recipients, rather than company marketers, are choosing when it’s the right time. For example, quick wins are possible through simple steps:

• abandoned cart campaigns - encourage completion with an incentive for doing so
• incomplete action – where they have clicked-through but not bought – send a campaign offering free delivery for this week only
• reactivation – where they have not visited the site/ordered for months – send a ‘have we upset you?’ message with an incentive (here recipients are triggering the send by NOT doing anything)
• cross-selling – pointing people who have bought within the last day or two towards complementary products, eg having bought a digital camera, highlight bags, tripods, media cards, batteries etc
• anniversaries – Interflora for example has a service to remind you of birthdays and anniversaries – a simple, yet effective device.

Technically, it is fairly simple to introduce triggered email marketing. Most ESPs can integrate with your web site and trigger campaigns based upon what ever action people commit on your site without completion–those that start to buy, those that start to complete forms, those that simply browse certain pages, and fire off automatic messages. The trick is very much making those follow up promotions relevant and effective. For example, companies such as Amazon target email marketing at those who abandon shopping carts part way through the customer journey and convert these ‘lost customers’ into real customers. Another example, using Message Focus, was carried out by Indium Web Management for a gift retailer client. A follow-up campaign targeted everyone who had abandoned their basket over a 3-day period with some excellent results: a 50% open rate, of which 50% clicked through to the site, of which 53% converted. Chloe Thomas at Indium says: “As these results show emailing customers who have got so close to ordering online, but who have abandoned their purchase is a highly effective way to increase website conversion levels. It should be a key tool for any e-commerce business interested in improving their overall marketing ROI.”

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About Adestra Ltd

Fast, responsive and knowledgeable

Adestra is an email marketing agency with one aim–to be the email marketers’ first choice partner. Working closely with our clients to meet their individual email marketing needs, Adestra provide ASP email marketing tools and email marketing bureau services to UK companies operating in the B2B and B2C marketplaces.

Adestra’s Message Focus email marketing tool is today’s best email marketing system and the only one designed for advanced email marketers. Web-based, this ASP application enables users to manage all aspects of their email marketing program–message design, data management, broadcasting for optimal deliverability and detailed reporting all through a secure web interface with no software installations.

Adestra’s product and corporate information is located at http://www.adestra.co.uk

Press Contacts

Jim Buchanan, PR Consultant

Em: Jim.Buchanan@adestra.com

Tel: 07725 25 71 94

Ellen Scott, Marketing Manager

Em: ellen.scott@adestra.com

Tel: 01865 24 24 25