Timing is everything for successful abandoned-cart email campaigns

NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumers may abandon online shopping carts for many reasons: a phone call, a child's needs, scheduling an appointment. The challenge for brands is how to bring those customers back to complete the transaction, especially if they've abandoned a cart multiple times. According to Experian Cross-Channel Marketing's Q3 2016 Email Benchmark Report, customers who received multiple abandoned-shopping-cart emails were 2.4 times more likely to complete a transaction than customers who received only one. Additionally, the analysis found that customers who received multiple abandoned-shopping-cart emails had a multiple transaction rate 44 percent higher than those who didn't.

"Many brands are hesitant to send multiple emails for fear of bombarding customers with communications — and rightfully so. But it's important to bring these customers back into the loop, particularly during the holiday season," said Spencer Kollas, vice president of global deliverability for Experian's Cross-Channel Marketing, which helps brands leverage customer data to empower insight-driven marketing. "In order to find the happy medium between burdensome and effective email messaging, marketers need to take a customer's past behavior into account. By testing various suppression strategies, marketers can find the optimal cadence for email communication."

The analysis examined email marketing campaigns that had business rules in place for trigger emails. For example, it looked at the business rules for email communications to consumers who abandoned multiple online shopping carts in a short period of time. These campaigns often had suppression rules of 24 hours, two weeks or 30 days. Findings showed that the shorter, 24-hour suppression period proved more successful, as marketers were allowed to send more than one abandoned-cart email to the same email address. In fact, 10 percent of the recipients analyzed received more than one abandoned-cart email and generated 18 percent of the total transactions for these campaigns.

Email benchmarking trends
The Q3 2016 Email Benchmark Report also examined year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter email marketing trends. The analysis found that total click rates have declined year-over-year for the past four quarters, while the percentage of clicks generated on mobile phones has increased during the same time period.

"As mobile usage continues to grow, brands need to prepare for the potential of declining overall click rates for the foreseeable future," continued Kollas. "With this in mind, marketers can better position themselves for success on the mobile platform by ensuring their call-to-action buttons are clearly visible and easy to use."

Other findings:

• Fifty-six percent of total email opens occurred on mobile phones or tablets in Q3 2016, a 4 percent increase from a year ago.
• While email volume increased 19.8 percent year-over-year in Q3 2016, transaction rates, revenue per email and average order value all remained relatively steady during the same time period.
• Declines in revenue per email and average order value were driven by lower average order values for luxury brands ($539 in Q2 2016 compared with $472 in Q3 2016).
• Seventy-three percent of consumer products and services and 76 percent of multichannel retail brands had year-over-year gains in email volume in Q3 2016.

For a complimentary download of the full report, click here.

About Experian
We are the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to our clients around the world. We help businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision-making. We also help people to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft. In 2016, for the third year running, we were named one of the "World's Most Innovative Companies" by Forbes magazine.

We employ approximately 17,000 people in 37 countries and our corporate headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; California, US; and São Paulo, Brazil.

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Contact:

Jordan Takeyama
Experian Marketing Services
1 714 830 7561
[email protected]  

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SOURCE Experian

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