5 Strategies to Combat Cart Abandonment Using Push Notifications

Mobile Marketing

Cart abandonment is one of the biggest pet peeves for ecommerce brands. The average cart abandonment rate ranges from 69% to 81% across different industries, according to SalesCycle.

Irrespective of exciting deals and great products, customers have a tendency to research multiple options before making a purchase. As a result, they end up window shopping and adding products to their cart. You can’t stop them from doing this.

The good news is that you can set up a cart recovering program to bring people back. Push notification is an effective strategy brands use to re-engage with customers who have abandoned their shopping carts.

What is a push notification?

A web push notification is a pop-up message a subscriber receives on their desktop or mobile browser. This notification allows the brand to interact with the customer even when the user is not on your website.

Apart from sending personalized reminders about abandoned carts, push notifications are used to deliver promotions, purchase confirmation, and order delivery.

Combined with the right offers and sent at the time when your users are the most active, push notifications can compel your customer to go back to the cart and finish the purchase.

Here are 5 actionable tricks to combat cart abandonment with the help of web push notifications.

1. Send timely push notifications

Push notifications are sent real-time and land directly in the notification bar of the web or the mobile browser. The success of your campaign will depend on the time at which the subscribers receive the push notification. If your users are located in different time zones, schedule the notifications according to their location.

Well-timed push notification can make the difference between an effective and obstructive experience.

For example, a “Happy Hour” discount notification should reach the user’s desktop or mobile browser in the second half of the day and not at 8 am on a Sunday morning.

2. Create a sense of urgency

“We, humans, are more motivated by the idea of potential loss than of potential gain,” observes Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Creating a sense of urgency taps into the “fear of missing out” among the customer to make an impulsive purchase without missing out on the deal.

If you have a sale coming up, messages that convey urgency can help you bank on this psychological principle. Consider phrases like “stock running low” or “X hours left to purchase.”

You can create urgency even by showing the recent purchases done by another customer. Let the customer know the stock is running low. This shows that the product is already popular among users. The user is relieved of any apprehension about making the purchase and builds confidence.

Such notifications result in conversions from users who have genuinely liked your product.

3. Segmenting your users

A user may subscribe to your push notification for multiple reasons, ranging from product updates to getting discount codes. Your subscribers would have different preferences, so sending all the users the same web push notifications could lead to a high unsubscribe rate.

In one of the PushEngage studies, we found the click-through rates for web push notifications to increase by 2X with segmentation. Simultaneously, we observed a decrease in push notification subscription rate when the notification is sent to a targeted segment.

Segment users and place them in different buckets. For instance, this helps you identify your most loyal customers whom you could send personalized discounts. Here you could encounter higher engagement and a lower bounce rate. To the most unengaged visitors, you could send follow-up campaigns.

You can segment the subscribers on the basis of:

Browser language and browser type
Region and time-zone
New vs. old visitor
Frequency of purchase
Actions performed like pages visited, products searched for, previous purchases, and cart or browser abandonment

4. The impact of copy and images in web push notifications

You have a limited space ranging from 40 to 120 characters to fit the title and description of your push notification.

It’s vital to decide on the most important value proposition and create clear and concise copy that reflects that value proposition. Don’t forget to add a CTA to guide the user to the next step they should take in the customer journey.

Be sure to consider:

Adding an image to the push notification. The image makes your push notification stand out, thereby increasing the conversion rate and customer engagement. At PushEngage, we analyzed the impact of large images on web push notifications, industry-wise. The results are summed up in the chart:

Localize the content of the push notification. According to a 2017 Statista report, English users represent only 25.3% of the global internet users. Based on the geography or country you’re targeting, localize the copy of the push notification to increase the engagement. Nothing excites a user more than receiving a notification in their native language. This is the best way to build a loyal customer base while globalizing your brand.

5. Send a series of push notifications

Send a series of push notifications instead of a single one. The first notification can be a simple reminder about the product abandoned. The next notification promotes the limited-time discount offer and creates urgency. The last notification will instill FOMO by informing the user about the offer expiring soon.

If the customer purchases the product, make sure you close the campaign for that user.

Wrapping Up

With intense competition in the digital marketplace, you cannot afford to lose out on valuable customers. It is imperative for marketers to build cart recovery programs with effective push notifications.

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