Reads, Customers Rise With Abandoned Cart Email Reminders

The average cart abandonment rate during the 2015 holiday season was a whopping 75.45%, according to new research released by SaleCycle on Tuesday.

By industry, the average retail abandonment rate dropped 1.6% quarter-over-quarter according to SaleCycle’s 2015 Q4 Remarketing Report, but 72.2% of all online shopping carts were still abandoned before a purchase was made.

The shopping cart abandonment rates of the travel industry were significantly higher that the retail sector, with 84.4% of consumers failing to complete the online booking process in fourth-quarter 2015. Travel abandonment rates rose 2% compared to third-quarter 2015.

Effectively, the vast majority of online retail and travel companies fail to complete a sale even after it has already been initiated by the consumer.

The behavioral marketing company studied the shopping cart abandonment and remarketing rates of 500 of its brand customers from October 2015 to December 2015. Virgin Atlantic, Hertz, Panasonic and Ikea are among SaleCycle’s repertoire of travel and retail clients.

Abandoned carts should not be seen as a foregone conclusion, and retailers should strive to continue reaching out to these customers in order to conclude the sale. SaleCycle’s report pinpoints email marketing as an especially powerful tactic.

Abandoned cart reminder emails have nearly twice the open rate of everyday marketing emails with a 40.3% open rate, according to the study. Out of these emails, more than a quarter of clicks resulted in a converted sale back on site.

It should come as no surprise then that the adoption of shopping cart email reminders has risen steadily over the past few years.

In a study of 1,000 retailers, email marketing firm Listrak revealed that retailers incorporating abandonment cart reminders into their email marketing strategy had grown from 14.6% in 2011 to 35.2% today. 

Next story loading loading..