How to Create Urgency in Cart Abandonment with Web Push
Web push has proven to be an effective means of engaging customers in “real real-time” and creating a sense of urgency in your marketing messages. For this reason, it’s often used for time-sensitive notifications.
Web push has proven to be an effective means of engaging customers in “real real-time” and creating a sense of urgency in your marketing messages. For this reason, it’s often used for time-sensitive notifications like flash sale alerts, reminding customers about events or broadcasts, or notifying customers about specific product inventory or price changes.
While such use cases are very obviously time-sensitive, there are other, less obvious, but higher-impact ways to leverage the power of web push. Consider cart abandonment and browse abandonment – when 65% of shopping carts are abandoned and 88% of shoppers leave after merely browsing, marketers must be engaging shoppers in real-time while engagement is still at its peak. In fact, following-up within minutes of disengagement is 3x more effective than waiting 24 hours and 7x more effective than waiting a week. And given that even the most immediate follow-up email is still dependent upon your customer checking their inbox, web push can be just the tool marketers need for the job. However, customers rarely feel the same sense of urgency that you do as a marketer, and a web push message alerting them of an abandoned cart that they’d saved for later could not only be ignored, it might be considered irrelevant if the customer isn’t immediately ready to consider purchasing.
But when used in the right way, web push can introduce a ticking clock that drives customers to recover their merchandise as soon as possible. By leveraging a web push campaign to be delivered in real-time, you can create urgency in cart abandonment and encourage customers to complete their purchases.
What’s the most effective way to deliver web push messages about cart abandonment and browser abandonment? Consider:
1. Using language that indicates a ticking clock
Sending customers a quick warning that “Time’s running out!” is one of the best ways to urge them to revisit their items before it’s too late. But even otherwise, using language like “Hurry back!”, “Before it’s gone,” and “Quick!” introduces time-sensitivity into a situation that doesn’t inherently have a deadline, in a way that encourages customers to finish their purchase ASAP.
2. Offering a time-sensitive discount on their merchandise
Many marketers will attempt to incentivize a purchase by giving customers a coupon on their abandoned shopping cart – why not deliver that same offer via web push? Discounts are one of the most effective way to re-engage customers while thanking them for their business – and with the addition of a timestamp (“Today Only!”), you can encourage customers to revisit their merchandise more immediately.
3. Pair abandonment notifications with alerts on inventory changes
Combine forces whenever possible: if you can reach out to customers about forgotten/abandoned merchandise in the context of a low-stock notification, by letting shoppers know that they might not have the opportunity to revisit their products if they don’t act quickly, your messages will have double the impact and double the urgency. And even items that aren’t in danger of running out can still benefit from similar messaging: merely reminding your customers that their items could run out will do the trick.
Web push’s real-time nature creates opportunities for more immediate engagement, even in situations like browse abandonment and cart abandonment where a push message might not seem appropriate or necessary – when leveraged in a way that allows abandonment to be considered within a time-sensitive context. By mindfully considering how to best speak to your customers’ needs, you can deliver real-time messages that are still contextually-relevant but that invite a more immediate response, and that encourage customers to complete purchases more quickly.
This post originally appeared on the Zaius Blog.