An estimated £4 trillion worth of on-line shopping transactions were abandoned in 2014 by UK consumers according to Business Insider. One in four of these abandoned transactions were not taken elsewhere as individuals cancelled their shopping attempt altogether, resulting in £283m worth of net lost revenue for UK retailers.

Another study found that 68% of UK shoppers abandoned at least one on-line shopping transaction last year due to complexity or time taken at the point of sign up on a website.

Whilst Abandoned Baskets may always be a problem for any number of reasons, the trick is to engage these “nearly” customers as soon as possible after they leave you. Often people haven’t got time right there and then to finish the purchase process and save things for later, and then later never comes!

As a retailer you need to know as soon as I close my browser window and react to this by engaging with me immediately.

The problem with all this of course is that traditionally retailers have used email as their chosen method of contact, this often results in me receiving an email sent upwards of three hours after a consumer abandons a cart (so not real time) which sits in my already over crowded inbox and may not get looked at for a period of time again. This ultimately may mean that I never come back to finish that particular purchase.

To begin recapturing this revenue opportunity you should be using an SMS solution which takes simple logic to detect when a basket is abandoned and via a simple API call triggers an SMS responder message to the customers phone to ask them to complete the transaction.

To help drive your visitors to complete the checkout process you also have the option of offering purchase incentives that are easily configured to increase over time within your recovery SMS campaigns. Integrate SMS into your website and engage with both existing and new customers in real time as they visit your site.

Expand the customers shopping experience beyond the 9 – 5, beyond the confines of a PC or Laptop, to include the one thing they have with them all the time – their mobile phone.

Do You Know?

You can use our Application Programming Interface (API) to create a call from the website back-end whenever a CTA is performed and generate an instant SMS message response for your customer.

Imagine a consumer sitting on the train and trying to buy something from your ecommerce site.

Next thing this consumer knows, it is time to get off and so the item that was about to be purchased is abandoned in the basket.

However, you have an SMS API on your website linked to Abandoned Baskets which sends a call to SMS the consumer in realtime that reminds him that this item is still in the basket. “Click on this link to complete the order” or even “come back and finish your order for £3 off p&p”

Using SMS as a real time engagement and two-way communications tool to strengthen relationships to your user base helps create better and more targeted info to a user and helps conversion.

Thanks

themobileexpert

1. Its immediate!!

97.5% of SMS messages are read within 5 seconds of being received. SMS has an open rate of 97%;compared to email at 5%.

With SMS to Email auto responders increasing EMAIL opens when an SMS reminder is sent by over 47%

2. It’s a growing channel – (people get it and they love to interact)

42% receive a positive response from a growing captive audience, as more and more people access communications via their mobile.

SMS increases purchasing in retail, that’s a fact. Of the 29% of people who respond to SMS 49% go on to make a purchase.

3. It’s great for acquiring new customers

SMS is an ideal way to improve permissions-based outbound communication with customers.

4. It’s extremely effective

SMS over performs against other channels as a standalone marketing tool, or as part of a multi-channel strategy.

5. It’s a cross channel enabler

SMS can increase the success of other channels when implemented together. Follow up SMS to email campaigns can increase call to action within an email by up to 20%.