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Retargeting Emails - Do E-commerce customers like or loathe them? March 10th, 2011Leave a commentGo to comments By Charles Nicolls, SeeWhy At SeeWhy, when we first launched our remarketing service in 2009, Randy Stross wrote a piece about email remarketing in The New York Times suggesting that while remarketing might be a great idea for ecommerce websites, it's not a great idea for consumers. He likened emails following up on abandoned shopping carts to a salesman chasing you down the street if you didn't buy from his store. There are major differences, of course. We've long argued that remarketing emails, when done well, not only drive conversions but also build brand trust. They can deliver great service and provide customers with the confidence to return to buy-either online, by phone or in store. If Randy was right and customers universally resented the intrusion, then these emails wouldn't work. In aiming to answer the question more substantively, I turned to data, and specifically email marketing benchmarks. The key metrics to look at to determine whether customers like or loathe remarketing emails are: the recovery rate the open rate the clickthrough rate the unsubscribe rate Frankly, the evidence is overwhelming: Remarketing, when done well, is appreciated by customers. Here's the evidence: (1) The recovery rate The recovery rate is the percentage of visitors that abandon shopping carts, and remarketed visitors thatthen return and purchase following remarketing. At SeeWhy, we measure recovery rates across all our customers, and currently the average is 20 percent. So, one in five shopping cart abandoners come back and buy, having being remarketed. In some cases, the recovery rate is as high as 50 percent. Moreover, when remarketed customers buy, they spend on average 55 percent more than customers who didn't abandon their shopping carts. (2) The open rate The average email open rate for remarketing emails is currently 46 percent, m

When calculating your conversion rate, the bottom half of the fraction is visits. The lower this number is, the high your conversion rate. That's right. You can increase your conversion rate by lowering your traffic. Likewise, you can destroy your conversion rate by driving lots of unqualified traffic to your site. AdWords and SEM are designed to get only qualified traffic to your site, traffic that is likely to increase your conversion rate.

So, I'm pleased that my column on the Backward Landing Page was included in this roundup of AdWords and SEM guides. After all, the top half of your conversion rate fraction is the number of conversions. Landing pages have everything to do with that.

I hope you know your abandonment rate. Take the number of purchases you get on your site divided by the number of people who put a product in your cart. This is your cart conversion rate. Subtract this number from 1 and you get your abandonment rate, or the percentage of people who abandon their shopping cart.

If your abandonment rate is high (expect it to be over 70%) there are some things you can do about it. Here is a great infographic from Monetate that will show you some reasons people leave full carts.

The Bounce Rate is the number of people who leave your Web site after visiting one page divided by the number of people who come.

Left after one page
--------
Visits

This infographic is a great way to quickly understand why people bounce, and if your bounce rate is atrocious or acceptible. 

We've seen in email tests that subject lines can have implications far beyond the open rate. We've seen two identical emails with identical landing pages have the same open rates and the same click-through rates (CTR), but one generated more sales than the other.

What's the difference? The subject line.

In short, subject lines are important.

And they are difficult to write.

This infographic does a great job of boiling things down to help remove the indecision when you are writing subject lines.

The folks at Rejoiner were kind enough to include me in their list of conversion rate experts to follow on Twitter.

The question to ask on a landing page is, "Will WOW increase my conversions?" Some of these "WOW" features have proven to reduce conversion rates.  Rotating banners of any sort attract the eye away, and can pull readers out of the "meat" of the page where they are more likely to convert. Accordian menus and tabbed content may prevent scanners from quickly consuming the page. It's a bit of a Catch 22: they may not have the patience to click on each item until they've scanned the content... which is hidden. Social widgets can deliver social proof and increase conversion rates. However, social media chicklets that let the visitor go off to Facebook or Twitter work against the purpose of a landing page: to keep visitors on the page until they make a decision. Why send traffic that you've paid for off to Mark Zuckerberg? Lightbox popovers are universally derided if you ask people. However, they almost always increase conversion rates. 

Every audience is different, so test these WOW features with your own crowd.

 @unbounce Here is some data that we are seeing elsewhere, in which video increases conversion rates. The universal appeal of video is quite surprising -- and powerful.

Peep Laja @peeplaja has put together a great list of ways to increase conversion rate. The remarkable thing about this list is that he provides a case study for each of his recommendations, proof that these ideas have works somewhere. This lets you understand the circumstances that drove the improvements in conversion and help you choose the tactics you will use on your site. Thanks, Peep.

 @conversionIQ has a list of ecommerce sites that seem to be doing things right. These are sites that follow best practices, and thus we would assume they are enjoying high conversion rates and strong revenue per visit.

Of course, if we were to make a list of 50 ways your site could improve its conversion rate and RPV, we'd be right on about 25 of them. That's why we always back our recommendations up with a series of A/B or split tests.

Nonetheless, it's always good to look at those online athletes that are at the top of their game.

Would you like a free strategy session with a Conversion Scientist?

Wonder what your conversion rate should be? @PhillyMktgLabs takes a stab at some categories. NOTE: These conversion rates are unacceptible!

I'm always wary of any list that claims to be "complete." This list comes pretty close, and includes one of my favorite selections from The Conversion Scientist Blog.

The list is novel in that you can select the categories of interest to you and the post will modify itself to serve you best.

I'll be intersted to find out if this novel feature increases conversion rates on the page.

What do you think?

While good UX (User eXperience) does not always translate into higher conversion rates or revenue per visit (RPV), these trends point to excellent hypotheses for what MIGHT increase the performance of your site.

Single Page Sites: Simplicity is often a great way to increase conversion rates Infinite scrolling: Consider this for category pages. I haven't tested this yet. Persistent top nav: I am very curious to see if this increases CR and RPV. Let me know if you've tested it. Web 2.0 Aesthetics: I hope this includes the rotating banners at the top of so many sites. Typography Returns: Your message is the most important part of your conversion optimization plan. Typography can help... or hurt

Your conversion rate is affected by a series of "micro-conversions", and this is especially true of email. To get your emails to convert, you must get the recipient to open it, and three components affect open rates: Who it is fromThe Subject LineThe first lines of text, which are shown by many email clientsThis article focuses on subject lines that work for those of us offering training and education. These may have more limited success with other audiences. It is interesting nonetheless.

Discussion of bounce rate by Avinash Kaushik.

I find it very refreshing that "Conversion Rate Optimization" made a top ten list for a successful search startup. "Conversion Rate Optimization is Essential, not Optional." These principles are helpful for any business that depends on the Web for leads or sales.

Shopping Cart abandonment is one of the first places we look when helping e-commerce sites increase their conversion rates. Why spend time and money optimizing a site if the buyers can't get through a shopping cart? Pricing and shipping offers are two issues we have to address at a strategic level. Here is a very informative article from @SeeWhyInc. I particularly like their cart value vs. abaondment rate graphs. Check them out.

Here is another tool in the arsenal of the Conversion Scientist. PURE: The "Pragmatic Usability Rating by Experts" Who names this stuff?

 @neilpatel While it may sound self-serving to share with you an article on why you should spend money with a company like ours, a conversion optimization company, I think you'll find the points made by Neil Patel are a great guide to choosing your conversion optimization strategy.

Yes, you need a conversion optimization strategy, even if you don't hire consultants.

Given Neil's background of creating companies in the online marketing optimization space (KISSmetrics and CrazyEgg), I hope we'll see some more from him in the form of tools.

Here's a nice roundup of do's and don'ts for conversion rate optimizers. Even experienced AB testers like us need to be reminded of the "big rocks" of CRO, and this article has them. Process, segmentation, qualitative research, and mobile.