Today I’m excited to have Ben Jabbawy on the show. Ben is the founder of Privy and we randomly met at the Shopify Unite conference several years ago.
At the time, I had no idea who this guy was and what he did. And likewise, I’m sure he’d never heard of the number 1 hankie vendor on the Internet.
But we kept in touch and today, I’m a loyal user of Privy and he’s been a great email marketing resource for me. In this episode, we’re going to do a deep dive into shopping cart abandonment.
What You’ll Learn
- Ben’s backstory on why he started Privy
- The difference between abandoned cart and abandoned checkout emails
- The biggest mistakes merchants are making with cart recovery
- Best practices for cart recovery
- How implement a cart saver popup
Other Resources And Books
Klaviyo.com – Klaviyo is the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store. Created specifically for ecommerce, it is the best email marketing provider that I’ve used to date. Click here and try Klaviyo for FREE.
Privy.com – Privy is my tool of choice when it comes to gathering email subscribers for my ecommerce store. They offer easy to use email capture, exit intent, and website targeting tools that turn more visitors into email subscribers and buyers. With both free and paid versions, Privy fits into any budget. Click here and get 15% OFF towards your account.
GoBrandWin.com – The fastest and most effective way to grow your email list for free using group giveaways. Click here to signup for free.
SellersSummit.com – The ultimate ecommerce learning conference! Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level BS, the Sellers Summit is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an ecommerce business. Click here and get your ticket now before it sells out.
Steve: You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrapped business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I’ve got a special guest with me on the show Ben Jabbawy who is the founder of Privy. Now, you’ve probably heard me talk about Privy on this podcast before because it’s one of the tools that I use in my ecommerce store. But today, we are going to go into great depth about cart abandonment. And to give you a heads up, there are actually two strategies mentioned in today’s episode that I’m actually not doing with my online store that I will definitely be implementing for the holidays.
But before we begin, I want to give a quick shout out to Privy once again. Privy is the tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. And you know what’s funny is after talking to Ben today, it turns out that I’ve only been scratching the surface of what Privy can do. Right now I’m using privy to display a cool Wheel of Fortune pop up. Basically a user gives their email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store. And customers love the gamification aspect of this and when I implemented this form email signups increased by 131%.
But you can also use Privy to reduce cart abandonment with cart saver pop ups and email as well at one super low price. So bottom line, Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers and recover lost sales via pop up, and email as well. So, head on over to preview.com/Steve and try the tool for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features, use coupon code MWQHJ For 15% off. Once again that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.
I also want to give a quick shout out to Klaviyo who is also a sponsor of the show. Always blessed to have Klaviyo as a sponsor because they are the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store, and I depend on them for over 30% of my revenues. Now Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for ecommerce stores, and here is why it is so powerful.
Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week, easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special auto-responder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there is full revenue tracking on every single email. Now, Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used and you could try them for free at mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O, now on to the show.
Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.
Steve: Welcome to My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I’m excited to have Ben Jabbawy on the show. Now, Ben is the founder of Privy, the tool that I use to manage all my email capture forms. And I actually randomly met Ben at the Shopify Unite conference several years ago. I think Ed Hallen of Klaviyo introduced the two of us and at the time I had no idea who this guy was and what he did. And likewise, I’m sure he had never heard of the number one hanky vendor on the internet.
Well, we kept in touch and today I’m a loyal user of his tool. And he’s actually been a big help for me for anything email related. And looking back, it was just one of those chance relationships that turned into something more. Anyway, with the holidays right around the corner, Ben and I are going to talk about some advanced cart abandonment strategies. And with that, welcome to show Ben, how you doing today?
Ben: Hey, Steve, I’m doing great. Super excited to be here.
Steve: So we’ve chatted a lot. We got a chance to meet up at the Klaviyo conference a couple months ago, but I actually don’t even know the back-story of Privy, like when did you decide to start this company and why?
Ben: Woo, man. So when did I actually start the company or when did I launch the ecommerce?
Steve: When did you launch the ecommerce product and what were your motivations? Like how did all this stuff get started?
Ben: Yeah. So we launched the product that people know us for in 2016. We had been tinkering with this idea of direct to consumer was going to need a different set of tools, than what B2B marketers were using. B2B was using HubSpot and Marketo and those are great solutions. But if you’re marketing directly to consumers and selling transactionally online, it was just going to require a different set of brands and workflows that are built specifically for those vendors in mind. And at first, we actually we didn’t really start on ecommerce, we were in retail. But in 2016, we really found our footing when we entered the Shopify market.
Steve: So that’s actually when we met right? I think you just launched then when we just met.
Ben: Yeah, you and I met in 2016 at Unite. That’s right.
Steve: Right. Okay, and you probably just — wow, okay, I got you at the early stages, awesome.
Steve: So Ben, we all know that cart abandonment is a huge problem for ecommerce store owners. Let’s actually start with some stats, I know what the stats are for my store but in your experience with Privy, like what percentage of users have you seen abandon their cart?
Ben: Yeah, so we’re seeing upwards of 60, 70% of carts going abandoned. So you’re spending all that money driving the traffic to the store, getting the word out, you’re getting excited, they’re further down the funnel adding products to the cart, and then seven out of those 10 people will actually abandon the cart before completing purchase. So it’s a huge, huge opportunity.
Steve: And I don’t know if you know the answer to this question, but what are some of the primary reasons for that happening?
Ben: Yeah, so it’s not always price, right, especially it goes down on browsing. Certainly that’s a big part of it. People are just kind of tinkering, but price is definitely the number one reason that we hear, also…
Steve: Is it shipping price or because they should in theory, already know the price when they’re looking at the product and adding it to the cart.
Ben: Yep. So in many cases within price, we hear shipping price or tax like the all in price once that’s calculated and checked out, that is the number one reason that we hear. There’s also a ton of reasons that people leave around, they have questions about the product. So, thinking about guarantees, or reviews or whatever it is, how it actually is going to function, that that drives a ton of abandonment as well. And in some cases, there’s a small percentage that’s actually like the payment isn’t accepted, or errors at check out that cause a portion of abandonment as well.
Steve: Mm-huh. I’m just thinking that if one of these three things that you just named was actually the factor for not checking out, then would an abandonment strategy help because you’re not going to fix some of those things, right?
Ben: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, look, part of it is just people get distracted on the web, right? So attention spans are short. And so, I think that’s why you hear so many people placing an emphasis on an abandonment strategy. Certainly price is something you could work on, answering questions is something that you could work on. But yeah, there’s going to be just like in any business, there’s a certain percentage of these abandoned carts that happen that you probably can’t address. But that’s a smaller percentage compared to the ones that are leaving for price or because they have questions etc.
Steve: Yeah, and then I know what my abandoned cart percentage is, it’s roughly 20 something percent, but what are some of the…
Ben: That’s not bad.
Steve: Oh, it’s not bad. I think I read on one of your posts that people are getting 30 to 60 and so that’s why I kind of wanted to ask what those people are doing differently.
Ben: Oh, you mean in terms of recovery?
Steve: Recovery yeah, recovery yeah.
Ben: So you’re saying if you send 20 abandoned cart emails or 100, 20 will actually…
Steve: That’s correct.
Ben: No, that’s pretty good. I mean, we actually are seeing a lot of people that are in the three and 4% in terms of recovery.
Steve: Are you talking about three or 4% off of a single email. I’m talking about across three emails cumulative.
Ben: Oh, okay. So then yeah, I would expect closer to 20 then that seems in line, yeah definitely.
Steve: I think I read one of your articles that people are getting between 30 and 60, though. How do you achieve that? Or maybe it wasn’t one of your posts; maybe it was someone else’s post. I was doing research last night.
Ben: Yeah, that doesn’t sound like it was ours, so that may have come from somewhere else. But you could imagine that if you’re combining a couple of different tactics and I’m happy to talk about them, but if you’re thinking about cart saving pop ups over check out but then look for cart value and the exit signal; I can talk about some of the numbers there. If you’re also sending multiple abandoned cart emails, and then if you’re also doing something like through Shoelace retargeting, you could definitely imagine how the numbers get up above 30%.
Steve: Okay, you just named a bunch of things there. And let’s kind of just start with all the different aspects and kind of break it down to the people listening. It’s harder on a podcast, because they’re just listening and it’s not visual. So let’s just start with the different strategies that you’ve implemented with your clients.
Ben: Sure. Yeah. So first things first, while someone is actually on the checkout in process, you can tie that with this widely used concept of exit intent, right? So if I know that someone’s on the checkout page, and they’re exiting and there’s still value in their cart, then I can actually predict before they ever leave the checkout that they’re about to abandon their cart. And so at Privy, we’ve developed this concept of what we call a cart saving display. It’s exactly what you’d imagine; you can target it just to those people as they’re leaving your checkout process with that money still in the cart, you can design and target a last minute offer.
Steve: What are some metrics that you use to predict that they’re actually going to leave?
Ben: So we’re looking for exit intent. So on desktop, that’s going to be their mouse accelerating towards closing down the browser tab, or moving their mouse to type in a different destination and the URL bar. And on mobile, if you’re thinking about exit intent, it’s either switching between browser tabs on mobile like you can think of just that double click or on the checkout exit intent, we would look for clicking the back button.
Steve: Okay, and so when you detect one of these factors, oh, you’re talking about like a pop up?
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. So you could choose how to display this. But it could be a fly out, it could be a pop up, it could be a spin to win wheel. That’s really up to the merchant. But what you would do is you would use those triggers in your campaign and marry that with a minimum cart value and the fact that they’re still on a URL that contains checkout.
Steve: Interesting and you would you — what are some offers that have worked? Is it usually like some sort of discount offer?
Ben: Yes. So what we see is that a very simple cart saver that targets exactly that people on checkout leaving with either a 5% offer free of shipping offer or maybe 10%, that’s going to help you prevent 10% of carts that would have otherwise gone abandoned before they even leave the site.
Steve: Interesting. I always have a conflict when it comes to just giving coupon codes this way, because you kind of train people, right?
Steve: So how do you prevent that from happening?
Ben: Yeah. So one of the interesting techniques that a lot of our marketers use is this concept of not just a generic cart saver but a tiered cart saver, right? And so maybe you know your average order value very specifically, right? And maybe if someone has less than average order value, let’s say it was 50 bucks, you know what, you don’t want to train bad behavior. So if they have less than that in their cart, you’re going to let them abandon, but if they have three times average order value, let’s say they had 150 in their cart, then you may want to get a little bit more aggressive and maybe you just target that segment of cart abandonment with a cart saver. So that’s one thing.
The other is just around loading like a fly out that’s asking for, hey, it looks like before you go, did you have any questions about this product? Let us know, we’ll get back to you. You can use a number of different kinds of mechanisms to just try to do everything you can before you let them leave your site. I think that’s like the number one takeaway that shocked us before we launched, the concept of a cart saving display was how comfortable we as merchants are letting everyone leave the site before we try to do anything.
Steve: Let me ask you this question. At least for my store, I know that people in check out they’ll go back and look to see what’s in their cart, and continue shopping. They’ll go to check out but then they might go back and add something extra. Is there a way to just flash this pop up when I know they’re going to leave the site to a different URL versus staying on the site?
Ben: Yeah. So, there’s a number of different kind of triggers you can think about, right. And so maybe exit intent on mobile is treated differently than exit intent on desktop. Certainly it’s something that a lot of our users do anyhow, that is segment different campaigns. So, in terms of this scenario that you’re talking about, there’s no way to necessarily like understand if the back button in this case is going to fire them back to like Facebook, versus back to your site. We don’t really have that level of detection, but that’s an awesome, awesome idea.
Steve: Okay. And so how do people set things up then? You talked about desktop versus Mobile. What are some examples of how you could set it up?
Ben: Yeah. So on desktop, a lot of people like to use our full screen overlay option. So this is a pop up maybe with a background image that literally takes up the entire page, you’ve probably experienced those. And that can be hugely powerful on desktop for a cart saving display. But on mobile, that’s not really anything we would recommend. So maybe on mobile instead of a pop up, you’re using a fly out, that’s kind of just takes the bottom third or the top third of the screen, right? So you may care about the design based on the device.
You may also look for different signals, right? So certainly on desktop, a mouse leaving is a good signal, but maybe on mobile, there’s just a time right? If someone’s on the checkout page with a certain amount of money in their cart for two minutes or a minute, maybe that’s a good signal to load a last minute kind of offer.
Steve: Interesting. Do you know how people mostly set that up with timers exit intent?
Ben: Yeah, so with cart savers, almost all of our users use exit intent for a cart saver looking for that signal, and they marry that with how much money is in the cart. So they may be presenting larger offers to people that have higher values of product in the cart.
Steve: Okay, and what does it exactly mean for exit intent on a desktop, is it when your mouse hovers away from the window or when it clicks the back button or?
Ben: On desktop, we look at mouse movement and acceleration. And so if your mouse is quickly accelerating to close the browser or to the URL bar at the very top, then those would be the two signals we use based on the mouse location and pace essentially.
Steve: Okay, and so if I were to move my mouse quickly, just outside the window to click on another window, it would not come up then?
Ben: No it shouldn’t.
Steve: Okay. I always wonder if the term exit intent, it seems like a lot of people have different implementations. I was just kind of curious how you guys did it.
Ben: Yeah, I mean there’s a number of different ways to handle that.
Steve: So we had the cart saver, what is another method to recover a cart?
Ben: Yeah. So historically, I think everyone talks about checkout abandonment emails. And so, what that means for those that are new is that like Shopify actually has a free tool that does this inside the Shopify admin. If someone gets far enough along in the checkout process to have included their email address, then if they leave before completing purchase, Shopify lets you send a checkout abandonment email and that is hugely powerful. I think MailChimp says that checkout abandonment emails drive 30 times the revenue of other emails that are sent. And there’s no doubt that that’s hugely powerful.
But the challenge that we’ve seen is a lot of your abandonment that happens on your site actually happens on the cart page with people who have added to cart or on the checkout with people who have added to cart, gone to check out, and have not gotten far enough along in the checkout to include their email address. And so it’s kind of like this dirty little secret of checkout abandonment emails where right now even all the ESPs that piggyback off of the checkout abandonments in Shopify actually aren’t able to recognize a large portion of who is abandoning their cart.
So, even though checkout abandonment emails work very well that can be very effective, Stephen your case it sounds like you’re recovering 20% of carts through that mechanism. That’s awesome. Imagine if you were able to send those same exact emails that are working so well to a larger percentage of the pie that was abandoning their cart.
Steve: Walk me through the process.
Ben: Yeah. So let’s say you’re already using something like Privy to convert first time visitors into email subscribers with a pop up, right? So that’s probably converting about 10% of traffic to your store, or somewhere around there. So some of those people, the moment they register there, they become known entities to your database. And then Privy continues to track those people when they browse and add, and let’s say we’ve done exactly that. We filled out a form in this visit and we added a red t-shirt to cart, but at that point, Privy knows who you are, and your abandonment email system or Shopify does not know who you are, right?
Ben: So at that point, if I leave the site with that red t-shirt in my cart, the only system that A, has proper opt in and B, has the ability to identify who that email address is that just left the site would be Privy in that case, right?
Ben: So versus if that same person filled out the form, added to cart, moved to the checkout process and started filling out my email and check out, at that point your normal checkout abandonment system would be able to send that abandoned checkout email.
Steve: So for most people who are doing email capture, there’s really no way to communicate with your shopping cart that you have an address right?
Ben: That’s correct yeah. I mean you could certainly sync the email addresses to Shopify or MailChimp, but that’s not — that’s considered offline data. That’s just an email address. It’s not the email address tied to the visitor behavior.
Steve: Right. And so the piece that I’m missing here is traditionally, the way I’ve used Privy was as an email capture form. But if I’m going to do an abandoned cart with Privy, I would also want knowledge of what’s in the cart, right? Is all that information past as well?
Ben: Yes, yeah. So we know which products are in the cart. We know your previous browsing history, what products you looked at, all of that stuff we are storing alongside your form submissions inside Privy.
Steve: Okay. And so what are some of the rules then, in terms of sending this email and what would you contain in this email? Like, what does the email look like and when do you send it out exactly?
Ben: Yeah. So in the same way that we would recommend for your cart saver it’s thinking about that tiered approach, right? We would recommend something similar here for cart abandonment. So in the Privy cart abandonment solution, probably the first email should be set for an hour after abandonment. And at that point, we actually wouldn’t recommend including a coupon. I would recommend keeping that short and sweet and saying, hey so and so, I’m reaching out from Ben’s t-shirt store and we noticed you left some products in your cart. Did you have any questions about how that red t-shirt fits or the sizing or anything? If you have any questions whatsoever, let me know. If not, here’s a link to complete your checkout.
So just that soft reminder with the offer to kind of answer any lingering questions that they have preventing them from purchase can be hugely impactful. Then you might consider a second email that’s maybe six or 12 hours after abandonment and maybe at that point, there’s some more information about the product. This would be an appropriate time to think about a small coupon if the purchase is still incomplete, and then perhaps like you did in yours Steve, you actually have a third email in your series as well. So definitely keeping it to kind of two to three is where we’ve seen a lot of success for our merchants, and that’s where their kind of recovery rates climb from three to 4% to something much higher than that.
Steve: How do you determine how much time to wait before sending out each email?
Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s kind of for starters; it’s a guessing game, right? We see every merchant just start with that one hour email or a 24 hour email. In my view, waiting 24 hours is a little bit too long just given the way that we engage as consumers on the web. So, definitely starting with one hour for the first not necessarily including an offer in that, and then I think it’s really a question on then the next two. And I would kind of decide on when to send the second and third based on anything else you may be doing like are you using retargeting ads. And if you are, then there’s a chance that that person will see a retargeting ad the same day, so maybe two emails in one day is too much. But if you’re not doing anything to supplement your checkout emails, then one at one hour and the second at six or 12 seems appropriate.
S; I know for mine, I think my third one actually converts higher than my second one. I think I had that set at 48 hours and the second was that at 24 hours. It’s weird. I can’t explain it though.
Ben: Yeah. And this is for the linen store, right?
Steve: That’s correct. Yes.
Ben: Okay, and [inaudible 00:24:58]. So, you have three emails, what is kind of the message of each? And is there an offer in each?
Steve: There is not an offer, I don’t because — after talking to you today, I think what I’m going to do is go back and create a separate abandoned cart that is only for high ticket item purchasers. Like if they have a cart that is over like 100 bucks or so, I’ll probably going to try to give them a coupon and keep my existing one for people with carts that are maybe like below 50 bucks or something like that.
Steve: But I’m not doing that right now. So what I do is the first one is just like a gentle reminder. The second one says something like, hey, we still have your cart saved for you. And the third one is your cart is going to expire soon.
Ben: Nice, that’s cool.
Steve: And so that’s how I have it set. I’m kind of against coupons in general, but I can see the value in giving that out to someone who’s going to be a big customer because we actually reach out to these big customers later and try to make them long term customers that buy over and over again. Because the larger customers at our store tend to be event planners with a lot of buying power. So that’s just a unique case obviously for our store.
Ben: Yeah but I look, I think like one of the reasons we’ve grown a lot is because people want to bring a level of specificity or relevance or personalization whatever buzzword you want to use to how they display messages on their site. And we feel that that’s exactly what they should be doing in their checkout abandonment emails and cart abandonment emails as well. So, I think your instinct around treating high value ticket abandoners and lower cart value abandoners differently is like that’s where you can start to chip away at each of these segments differently because they kind of are acting very different.
Steve: How do you make sure that your abandoned checkout emails don’t interfere with your just abandoned cart emails?
Ben: Yeah, so we’re actually rolling out integration. So basically, just to clarify how most people in the industry do this, if you use something like MailChimp, what they’ll do is they’ll actually piggyback off of the Shopify checkout abandonment API to understand which draft orders have been abandoned essentially. And if eligible, they’ll help you send that email. So it’s all based off of the Shopify checkout abandonment, and we do the same thing, right. So we’ll basically piggyback off of that and our recommendation is if people are going to adopt the Privy cart abandonment solution is that they just simply turn off that email from Shopify.
Steve: I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about my brand new service that will help you grow your email list for free through group giveaways. This service is called Gobrandwin.com, and we’ve had amazing results so far. In one of our last giveaways, we gathered almost 12,000 emails and grew the email lists of participating ecommerce stores by over 56% overnight. Now, does getting more customers and more emails for free sound interesting to you? Here’s how it works.
If you own your own e-commerce brand, and you have a following, you contribute a gift card from your store valued at $200 or more. We will then assemble gift cards from other participating brands with a similar customer demographic and turn it into one massive sweepstakes giveaway. Now, everyone is going to send this giveaway email to their entire customer base, and drive them to a special landing page on Gobrandwin.com. We will acquire email addresses. Now consumers enter their emails, we send them special offers from your store and select a grand prize winner.
And after the sweepstakes is over, you will receive the full list of entrants and instantly grow your email list. And because my co founder and I have a pretty big network, we will also send the giveaway entry form to related influencers within the same niche and instantly augment any sweepstakes that we run. So bottom line the concept is very simple, we all help each other promote each other’s businesses, get free promotion from bloggers, and share the customer base. Now, if you’re interested in growing your email list, then head on over to Gobrandwin.com. That’s G-O-B-R-A-N-D-W-I-N.com, that’s Gobrandwin.com, and it is 100% free. Now back to the show.
Okay and here’s just something that just popped into my head just now. Is there a way to send special pop ups or emails if I recognize that a certain person with a certain email address is hanging out in our store?
Ben: Yes, definitely possible. How would you want to do that based on how many orders they’ve made or?
Steve: Like if I know that there’s someone who’ve spent a lot of money in the past, and their cart might not meet my threshold right now but I want to give them special treatment.
Ben: Yes. Yeah. So we offer a whole slew of targeting rules, so we call them for displays on your site. And one of those is how many orders they’ve made, or how much money they’ve spent on your site.
Steve: Oh, so you keep track of that?
Ben: Yeah. So, that would be kind of how we recommend it. We don’t let you actually input a user’s email address to target but we do let you run all sorts of advanced targeting rules and pair those together so hitting a very specific segment with a specific message.
Steve: Yeah, I mean, obviously, that’s the better way to do it, right? Otherwise, you have to maintain this email list that you have to manually update.
Ben: Right. We want to take the heavy lifting off of you. So as long as you have an idea of what that message should be, then you can design that in Privy and add the proper targeting rules to hit that audience. Just keep in mind that the more advanced you get on the targeting rules, the smaller the audience becomes that matches all.
Steve: Sure. I mean, obviously these would be very specialized abandoned cart solutions specifically targeting a small subset of people that are maybe high ticket item people similar to what we already discussed right?
Ben: Right. Yeah.
Steve: Can you comment on email abandoned cart versus the cart saver pop up versus Facebook ads and push notifications as a means to recover abandoned carts?
Ben: Yeah. So and it’s good. It’s good, right. Like the holiday season is coming up. One of the things that we’ve seen in general and then I’ll dive into that is that over the holiday season, you should expect about 100% lift in traffic. That was what we saw across all our merchants’ stores last holiday season. So, all that means is if 70% of your carts go abandoned normally, and you’re going to double your traffic over the holiday months, then that 70% is going to reflect a much larger amount of carts that go abandoned.
So, if there’s two things that you can do that are incredibly low cost, one would be to set up a cart saving display, and if you’d like targeted just to the people that have a certain amount of money or higher in their cart, big spenders about to leave. That is incredibly low cost; you don’t need to pay to do that. The second thing is whether it’s just the free checkout abandonment email from Privy — sorry, from Shopify, or a solution like Privy, I absolutely recommend that you have some sort of abandonment email funnel set up before the holiday season.
And lastly, if you do have some budget to spend, I think for the holiday season, I would recommend focusing on driving the traffic to your site from your existing list, and then focusing any sort of paid marketing dollars you have around retargeting on Facebook or Instagram the people that are leaving your site without completing purchase. And a lot of the audience probably doesn’t have huge budgets to drive pay on social and that’s fine. So I would look at that as kind of like a third really important stat if you have some budget.
Steve: Okay, I mean traditionally Facebook retargeting of abandoned carts, the audience size for that is going to be large and I can’t imagine you’re going to be spending a whole lot of money on that. It’s not going to be that expensive, right?
Ben: Exactly, and those are the people that are such high value and so high intent that are literally at the bottom of your funnel, and perhaps if they didn’t leave because of an issue with your product or a question, then at least this is just another way to stay top of mind without having to send six abandoned cart emails let’s say.
Steve: Great, let me ask you this question and it just kind of popped into my mind again. When you’re using the cart saver during checkout, you probably want to deliver the coupon code right away, as opposed to having them leave the site and maybe check their email and then come back?
Ben: Yes, yes, definitely so 100% recommend in any case that you always reveal a coupon code on the site if that’s the point of what this person signing up for. So in a cart saver, if they’re on checkout, and leaving and you load something that says, hey, wait, complete your purchase now, join our email list and we’ll give you free shipping code, then you would want to reveal it right there on the confirmation of the pop up as opposed in an email.
Steve: Actually, now that I think about it, we already had their email because they’re in checkout right. So would you just want to display the coupon period?
Ben: Yeah, so there’s two camps here, and both can be incredibly effective. In some cases, if they’re on checkout, you actually don’t have their email yet, right? So we do see some of our users target a form that reveals the coupon code.
Steve: I see. That makes sense.
Ben: And then we have other users that that say, hey, I want to run the same exact campaign, but I want to target the people whose email addresses I actually already know. And I don’t want to ask for their email again, and I just want to reveal the code. So you can actually do both of those things inside of Privy. And we definitely like the more sophisticated the marketer, the more we see that branching. If we know the email address, obviously just reveal the code and if we don’t, we still want to try to capture the email just in case they still leave.
Steve: So when you reveal this coupon code, can you have it automatically entered?
Ben: Yes, so for Shopify we call it the magic coupon script. So whether it’s a master unique code but the same coupon code is what everyone gets. Or if it’s a unique coupon code, we can have it so that it automatically is entered into checkout, whether that’s on desktop or mobile. There’s huge value in that. We know how frustrating it can be. If you’re on a mobile device, you sign up, you get a coupon code and then you have to like remember this long thing. That’s not a really great experience. So we built the coupon script to do exactly that.
Steve: Nice. If we can move back to just email real quick, what are some subject lines in email copy that have worked the best in terms of conversions?
Ben: Yes. So you’re talking about like general email or…
Steve: I’m talking about abandoned cart emails in particular.
Ben: Yeah, so I think this is where own brand adds a lot of value, right? So if you have like a very human casual tone in your brand, weaving that into the subject lines is a great time to do that. I think with distractions and everything like that, a lot of times, just like a subject around, hey, don’t forget, you have this in your cart. That can actually be more effective than you might imagine, especially when you weave that kind of tone into it that they would expect. I think avoiding the offers in the beginning, in the subject line especially, is just going to help with deliverability and avoiding the promotional inbox. So I think we typically recommend that you stay away from that.
Steve: What about the second email assuming there’s no coupon?
Ben: Assuming there’s no coupon in terms of what we would recommend for subject.
Ben: So in this case, this might be a good opportunity to educate people, right? So, maybe the subject is still centered around like, you still have product in your cart or your cart is expiring soon, something to that effect. But the body of the email may just be pertinent to include a bit more information about your business. A, they may have forgotten about who you were in the last six or 24 hours and B, certainly they may have forgotten what’s in their cart. So, reminding them of those two things in that second email would be important.
Steve: Okay, so Ben, we’ve actually covered a lot of stuff. I was hoping that what you could do is if someone who’s running a store is actually not doing any of these things today, how would you recommend that they proceed, and what needs to be implemented before Black Friday?
Ben: Yeah, so A, we’re doing a free webinar about cart savers and abandonment over the holiday season. Our goal is to walk away with definitive steps you can take no matter how close to Black Friday. So, I highly recommend checking that out. Second, I would do two simple things. I would turn on a cart saving pop up from Privy that loads based on how much money is in someone’s cart and them being on the checkout experience with the exit intent trigger. I would also flip on…
Steve: So, this is only for checkout – sorry, the cart saver pop up is only for checkout?
Steve: Okay, got it.
Ben: Yeah, and that should help reduce about 10% of carts before they ever leave, a huge value right there. The second thing I would do is I would — whether it’s the Shopify free checkout abandonment email or the Privy $10 a month abandonment email, I would immediately get at least one email set up with or without an offer.
Steve: Okay. And then the advantage obviously with using a service like Privy is that once you have the email, you can show this send this email for any sort of abandonment whereas the Shopify only solution is there’s only standard checkout right?
Ben: That’s exactly right. Yeah, so we will help you send those abandonment emails to a larger percentage of people that are actually leaving products either in their cart or in checkout.
Steve: And on the cart saver pop up, the mobile should be a smaller portion of the screen real estate whereas do you recommend like the full screen takeover for desktop?
Ben: Yeah, for desktop cart savers we do recommend big involved, so full screen takeovers with messages, wait, before you go, reveal code now if there’s an offer, that has huge value. And for mobile definitely sticking with the fly out ideally positioned on the bottom is going to be best for the mobile experience.
Steve: Okay, that’s it, anything that I’m missing Ben, it seems pretty straightforward. Oh, so do you recommend using the timer in conjunction with the exit intent or just the exit intent?
Ben: I don’t know, the timer is kind of it seems to work really well. But as a consumer it feels a little bit kind of gimmicky. So, I think certainly feel free to experiment with it. But we found in a cart saving experience on the site, you don’t need a timer to really have a massive impact on reducing abandonment.
Steve: Okay. And then, of course, if you want to go the extra mile, you’ll have a separate abandon sequence for high ticket purchasers where you can actually give out a coupon and drastically improve your abandoned recovery rate.
Ben: That’s exactly right. So, if you’re just getting started, just make sure you have these concepts in place. And for those that are more advanced, definitely think about a tiered structure based on the value of someone’s cart that is leaving behind.
Steve: Well, Ben, if anyone has any questions for you about cart abandonment, you already mentioned your webinar. I apologize; I already forgot what it was, if you want to specify that again and where people can reach you online.
Ben: Yeah, so you just head to Privy.com, P-R-I-V-Y.com. We have very clear call to actions on when the webinars are and a checklist for preparing for Black Friday. That’s going to be up through the holiday season.
Steve: Cool. And if anyone needs any help implementing all this stuff, you guys have a support team that’ll help out right?
Ben: Oh, yeah, we have live chat support, we have customer success. We are staffing up quite a bit for the holiday season.
Steve: Cool. Well, I know that I am actually not doing many of the things that we discussed today. And so I’m going to put on my implementation hat and get this stuff done before the holidays for sure. But Ben thanks a lot for coming on the show. It’s really valuable.
Ben: Thanks Steve. Yeah, my pleasure, great to be here.
Steve: All right. Take care.
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Whenever I talk to anyone on this podcast, I always leave with yet another action item for my store. But the tips in today’s podcast are actually simple to implement and I’ll definitely have them ready by Black Friday. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode233.
And once again I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants and you can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post-purchase flow, a win-back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So, head on over to Mywifequitherjob.com/ K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again that’s Mywifequitherjob.com/ K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.
I also want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use to turn visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture, exit intent, and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it’s so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop ups for any primer that is tied to your e-commerce store. If you want to give it a try, it is free. So head on over to Privy.com/Steve, once again that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.
Now, I talk about how I use all these tools on my blog, and if you’re interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email, and I’ll send you the course right away, thanks for listening.
Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.