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Browse Abandonment to Drive Sales 2023 Guide (multi-channel examples)
Browse abandonment emails increase conversions.
Basic cart abandonment solutions are only triggered when shoppers make it to the checkout form. But the truth is, most potential customers never make it that far.
Browse abandonment emails solve this. This guide covers browse abandonment best practices, and specific strategies that recover customers further up your funnel. We also include specific examples and screenshots.
Let’s get started!
First, What Is Browse Abandonment?
Browse abandonment describes an internet shopping session where the visitor views product pages but does not make a purchase.
Unlike abandoned shopping carts, in browse abandonment sessions shoppers never add items to their cart. Typically, these customers are early in the customer lifecycle.
Browse abandonment emails, and more broadly multi-channel strategies, are designed to recover these shoppers, and continue the shopping session ultimately ending in a purchase.
Original Customer Lifecycle Outline by Infusionsoft
Browse Abandonment Campaigns to Increase Conversions
Successful browse abandonment campaigns follow a formula.
First, you need technology that is able to see and recognize shoppers.
Next, you track their on-site behavior. This includes which product pages they engage with, and what categories they are interested in.
Lastly, browse abandonment campaigns use the gathered information to create personal engagements. Browse abandonment campaigns are one tool eCommerce stores use in content personalization to increase conversion rates.
The Key to Successful Browse Abandonment Campaigns
Permission is the key to successful browse abandonment campaigns.
When a customer leaves your eCommerce site, it is because something else took priority. If you don’t have permission to followup, they may never come back.
So, the first step in designing a browse abandonment campaign is obtaining the permission to reengage them.
What Level of Permission do you have with Visitors?
Luckily, there are various levels of permission. And some are incredibly easy to obtain. This is why expanding your thinking beyond browse abandonment emails to a more comprehensive multi-channel strategy is helpful.
Below are a few channels you can use in your browse abandonment strategy:
Some channels, like social and search retargeting do not require permission beyond a visitor coming to your site.
However, the most powerful channels such as chat and email require an opt-in from your shoppers.
The Case For Browse Abandonment Emails
There are a number of email marketing statistics that show just how effective email is.
Here is a short list of recent stats.
In our last study on email marketing statistics, we found that one type of browse abandonment emails (email my cart) had the highest conversion rates of any campaign type.
This includes cart abandonment.
High conversion rates translate to high revenue. Browse Abandonment emails accounted for 3 of the top 4 revenue generating email types.
We can see that the further down the funnel customers get, the more revenue browse abandonment campaigns generate.
Email My Cart browse abandonment emails are the closest to purchase. They are triggered after someone has added a product to their cart, and account for 44.74% of all revenue generated.
Meanwhile, Browse Abandonment emails and Visit Summary are sent after a customer has shopped around various product pages or categories, but hasn't chosen to add an item to their cart. Respectively, they account fo4 16.76% and 7.10% of all revenue generated via email.
The Challenge with Permission Based Email (and two solutions)
While email is clearly effective, it can be difficult to implement.
This is because unlike social and search retargeting, you need a level of permission from shoppers to communicate with them via email. You need to obtain their email address.
There are two main solutions. First, create effective email capture strategies. And second, recognize would-be anonymous shoppers who you already have collected emails for.
eCommerce Browse Abandonment examples
To showcase a few strategies for gaining permission to send email, I visited a number of top performing eCommerce stores. Below are a few examples of successful eCommerce browse abandonment emails, popups, and browse abandonment social campaigns.
1. Ashley Furniture and email browse abandonment
To gain permission to send follow-up emails, Ashley Homestore uses a variety of tactics.
Immediately after landing on the site, first-time visitors are greeted with a pop-up. In exchange for your email information, visitors can "spin to win" a variety of discounts or surprise.
The bonus discount not only gives first time customers an additional reason to complete their first purchase, it also gives Ashely Homestore the ability to retarget them if they abandon their cart anyway.
Once the shopper has identified themselves, a new pop-up shows up letting them know that the discount was sent to the email provided.
As the shopper goes through the site, they are also offered a 10% off coupon along with news on the latest offers and events. The opt-in message bar is present along the footer of every page.
Again, the focus is to gain permission to follow-up via email.
2. Fashion Nova leverages discounts to gain permission for FB Messenger browse abandonment campaigns.
There are a lot of similarities between Fashion Nova's and Ashley Homestore's approach to gaining permission.
They both use a spin game, with a variety of potential discounts. The game is loaded immediately after a new visitor hits a site, and only is offered for new visitors they do not have emails for.
To claim the prize, you are required to submit your email. However, Fashion Nova also makes use of FB Messenger.
After opting in, I checked out a few items, and added one to my cart. Fashion Nova than sent me a 3 part browse abandonment campaign over messenger to try and get me to complete my order.
Below you can see the first message. It uses urgency coupled with an added bonus to try and motivate me to complete my order. However, what I want to pull out is the importance of gaining permission to send me this message in the first place.
It is extremely powerful to be notified via messenger about the shopping session I just left. The question is, are you gaining similar permission to contact shoppers? Or are you letting them leave without offering added benefits?
3. FSA Store and using educational materials in browse abandonment
The FSA Store helps customers take advantage of their flexible spending accounts.
Unfortunately, flexible spending accounts can be confusing. It isn't obvious what people with FSAs can use the funds for. As part of their browse abandonment campaign, they include a few different benefits.
First, and not so unique, they offer a one time gift card.
However, they also extend a piece of educational material they know will resonate with their audience: a guide on FSA Eligibility Items.
4. How Pawstruck uses consistency principles and micro conversions to bolster browse abandonment
Another unique browse abandonment example comes from Pawstruck. Above, they prompt an exiting shopper with a simple question - would you like a deal before you go?
Giving customers a choice takes advantage of a psychological principal called consistency, outlined in Cialdini's seminal book Influence.
Once a customer makes the active choice to see yes, they are more likely to value the deal and continue forward with their shopping experience.
Below is the second part of the form.
As with the other browse abandonment examples, Pawstruck focuses on immediacy, monetary discounts, and chooses email as the primary channel.
Browse Abandonment email examples
While browse abandonment campaigns can span multiple channels, we've found email to be the most effective at driving conversions.
Below are a few examples from cosmetic, fashion, and service industries.
1. Sephora browse abandonment email example
Sephora uses merchandizing sales to maximize repeat purchases.
In this browse abandonment email example, they make their current sale (that was previously viewed) more enticing by adding an additional 20% markdown items.
Additionally, they address key reasons for cart abandonment, adding free shipping with the code "FREESHIP".
Finally, they make sure to introduce a reason to act now by communicating the end of the sale in just a few days.
2. Zaful browse abandonment email example
Zaful has a slightly different tactic around coupons.
They frame the browse abandonment as a loss, taking advantage of their potential customer's loss aversion bias.
Like Sephora, they also highlight the ability to get free shipping, this time with a cart value hurdle. Finally, they help establish trust for new and returning customers by promising a 30 day warranty on any purchases.
3. Care.com browse abandonment email example
Our final browse abandonment email example comes from Care.com.
Here they are following up after I abandon their upgrade to premium page. As you can see, the email is straight forward, leading with a hero image of their service followed by a concise summary of benefits.
They end the email with an additional discount to finish the upgrade.
Browse Abandonment Best Practices: How You can Improve You Campaigns
While these browse abandonment examples are helpful, in our opinion there are a few optimizations that can be made.
The vast majority of eCommerce sites we tested focused on one type of browse abandonment offer - welcome messages. Further, most relied on price discounts and monetary incentives to get permission.
With Barilliance, you have the power to be much more personalized in your engagements.
1. Use site behavior to trigger "Save My Visit" messages
For shoppers who haven't entered any items in their cart, we recommend "Save My Visit" opt-in messages. This type of offer acknowledges that shoppers browse, and gives them convenience to to keep track of their shopping session.
In 2017, we found Visit Summary campaigns accounted for 7.1% of revenue generated by all triggered emails.
2. Incorporate "Email My Cart" triggered messages
As customers go further down the funnel, this messaging should be changed. At the point where customers add items to their cart, they should be offered a convenient "Email My Cart" opt-in campaign.
For Barilliance customers, these campaigns generate 44.47% of all revenue generated by triggered emails. The reason is simple: most shoppers never make it to the checkout page. But, they do add items to their cart, and they do value convenience.
While new customers are a vital customer segment, it is even more important to serve returning customers.
Returning to both Ashley and Fashion Nova, I was not presented with additional offers to save my visit or email my cart. We've found both of these campaigns highly effective for returning visitors, especially when paired with personalized recommendations.
3. Personalize the email body with product injection
All email communication should be personal and relevant.
You want to include the exact products that your shoppers were considering. There are a number of ways you can do this.
The email subject line can include the product name. You can place the exact product images, and leverage dynamic content to make specific headers and email bodies depending on which products were viewed.
4. Use personalized email recommendations
Personalized product recommendations supercharge email conversions.
Typically, we see a 289% lift in conversions when you personalize recommendations (compared to non-personalized recommendations). With browse abandonment emails, you can base these recommendations on which categories and products customers spent the most time one.
5. Utilize urgency in copy and images
Urgency works.
If there is no true urgency in your product, you can create a sense of urgency by letting customers know that their cart is about to expire , or provide a limited time coupon (this is what Fashion Nova does).
Exit-Intent Popup Examples
Finally, I want to showcase a few other examples of exit-intent/browse abandonment popups.
Exit-Intent Popup Example #1: Doyoueven
Pictured above is Doyoueven's browse abandonment popup form.
They do a great job with copy. The "10% Off!" is bold, sized up, and colored. And, they use some great urgency language in "better hurry", "time is running out", "now" and "yet!".
Next Steps...
How well do you gain permission to followup with anonymous shoppers?
We've created a great guide on advanced tactics to gain email contact information here. While the guide was written for email, the same tactics can be used to gain permission for any channel, including FB Messenger.
Lastly, if you would like to see how an advanced triggered email system can benefit your store, request a demo here.
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