Email's Vital Role In Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

January 2016 Innovative Retail Technologies

Here’s how a specialty retailer relies on an email marketing platform to convert abandoned carts into completed purchases.

For specialty retailer Unique Vintage, direct, personalized contact with its customers is a key component to its growth. To scale from mom-and-pop eBay seller to multichannel retailer, Courtney Lear Wallace, Unique Vintage’s director of digital marketing and e-commerce, stresses the vital importance of a flexible, robust email marketing solution. In fact, email is one of the retailer’s top three revenue drivers.

As Unique Vintage evolved, the need for sophisticated retail technologies became a major priority. In 2013, the retailer implemented an email marketing platform, but, to Wallace’s chagrin, it did not meet the retailer’s expectations. “We just weren’t seeing the traffic or revenue growth we expected from the solution, and cart abandonment was a problem,” explains Wallace. “We wanted to go further with segmentation — we wanted to send loyalty and past purchase emails, and we wanted to do product recommendations. Yet we were held back by the inflexible technology.”

As a result, Wallace learned of Bronto Marketing Platform and researched the solution by talking to existing Bronto clients about their experiences as well as familiarizing herself with the solution’s features and functionality. The retailer implemented Bronto’s platform, which Wallace describes as a seemingly limitless, all-inclusive platform with a user-friendly UI (user interface) that allows her team to experiment with design, messaging, promotion, etc. “We like to experiment with our promotions,” says Wallace. “Our previous email marketing platform gave us very few opportunities to test our ideas because we would need additional budget for solution add-ons. What if the campaign did not work, or we could not report a positive ROI? That’s a hard concept for most CFOs to stomach. We no longer have that issue. Now, we build what we want. If it’s successful — great. If not, we will try something else — at no additional cost to us.”

Slick Email Campaigns For Both Novice And Seasoned Designers
Unique Vintage employs a talented designer who designs the retailer’s promotions using the Bronto platform. For retailers who do not employ or have access to experienced designers, the Bronto solution offers templates that are easily customizable.

“The entire program is very innovative,” says Wallace. “You don’t have to be a techie to learn the system, as it provides drag-anddrop, plug-and-play functionality to create your own workflow.” Indeed, customization matters, as Unique Vintage sends four standard promotional emails each week as well as emails regarding abandoned carts, welcome series, loyalty, and lapsed purchase/never purchase/lapsed engaged — all triggered by user behavior. The emails are unobtrusive, as Bronto has sending and receiving caps for each email. In addition to having the flexibility of delivering the right message at the right time to the right customer, Wallace notes the company has seen remarkable improvement with deliverability. “We’re no longer worried about deliverability, specifically around our abandoned cart messaging, which has seen undeniable, knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark improvement. We’re seeing, on average, 100 percent growth year over year.” Going forward, Unique Vintage plans to improve segmentation based on its most engaged customers, and browse abandonment is a short-term focus area as well.

In addition to reducing cart abandonment, Wallace explains that email campaigns help keep Unique Vintage top of mind for their customers, especially with the industrywide trend in increased mobile traffic. “Digital marketers have become very spoiled over the years by being able to track click-perclick action and click-per-click revenue,” says Wallace. “Many of our customers view our emails on their mobile phones. While they may not click the buy button with every single interaction, it’s about brand impression. Who doesn’t look at their phone every single morning when they wake up or when they’re standing in line for coffee? Now, we’re able to reach and connect with our customers well beyond the laptop.”