Having a customer add items to their cart only to abandon it later is frustrating. Every time this happens, you miss out on a potential sale, and it may feel like there’s not much you can do to prevent it. Yes, there’s no other way to put it: cart abandonment simply sucks.
On the contrary, you can use many different marketing strategies to reduce your abandoned cart rates and increase sales. By offering incentives such as opt-in discounts, flash sales, and even loyalty points, you can encourage your customers to hit purchase and keep coming back in the future.
In this post, we’ll cover what cart abandonment is and why it can be harmful to your wholesale business. Then, we’ll lay out six offers you can implement to prevent cart abandonment. Let’s dive in!
An Introduction To Cart Abandonment (And How It Can Harm Your E-Commerce Business)
Cart abandonment is when an online shopper adds an item to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase (ever). Unfortunately, this is pretty common, making it a big hurdle for lots of online stores, including wholesalers.
In fact, studies show that cart abandonment rates fall between 60-70 percent. Depending on your industry, you could see rates as high as 94 percent. What’s more, since wholesale orders tend to be larger, one sale can make a huge difference in your bottom line.
If someone leaves items in their virtual bag, you might think it’s simply because they changed their mind about buying the product. However, there are many complex factors that contribute to customers abandoning their carts. Some of them are:
- Hidden fees
- Unexpected shipping or tax costs
- A complex checkout process
- Insufficient payment options
At the end of the day, cart abandonment means a lost sale for your e-commerce store. While you can’t force potential customers to purchase something from you, there are certain strategies you can put in place to help encourage sales.
Research shows that discounts and offers incentivize people to buy more when online shopping. If you run a wholesale e-commerce store, in particular, Wholesale Suite can help you increase sales and lower cart abandonment:
Using our plugin, you can enforce order and product minimums. Moreover, you can manage pricing through fixed costs or percentages.
Many of Wholesale Suite’s features are designed specifically for wholesale store owners, thus making streamlining your workflows and processes easier. As a result, you’re more likely to improve the customer experience in your store, which can free up your time to tackle issues like cart abandonment.
6 Offers To Prevent Cart Abandonment In Your Online Store
Now that you know what cart abandonment is, it’s time to look at some tactics you can use to mitigate it. Here are six promotions that will help keep customers from leaving unclaimed products on the virtual table!
1. Opt-in discounts
An opt-in discount is a deal that users get in exchange for “participating” in some way. It is most commonly used when companies ask visitors to enter their email addresses to receive a discount code.
When customers know they will get a valuable deal in return for something so simple, they’ll likely be more willing to share their email addresses. Once you get this information, you can send visitors crucial marketing materials such as newsletters and promotional offers.
The good news is that pretty much any business can use opt-in discounts as an incentive, regardless of the type of product or services they offer. For example, Edible Arrangements offers 15 percent off an order in exchange for email signup:
This type of deal will likely help you build your email marketing list.
If you’re looking for a tool to help you register new wholesale customers and collect emails, you can get the Wholesale Lead Capture plugin in one of Wholesale Suite’s bundle options:
Our tool lets you recruit wholesale customers using customizable forms. This way, you can ask buyers for their email addresses and then send them a discount reward for signing up.
2. Abandoned cart email offers
An abandoned cart email sequence is when you send an email to a user after they leave items in their cart. This can be a highly effective way to get customers back on your website.
While the average e-commerce email open rate hovers around 20 percent, abandoned cart email open rates skyrocket to approximately 40 percent.
This example from Homage demonstrates this type of message:
You can implement an abandoned cart email sequence by sending a series of messages:
- The initial email. This is the first email you send out to your customers as a reminder that they have an item in their cart. Timing is important, so you should ideally send it within a few hours of cart abandonment.
- The follow-up email. This will follow your first message and should go to the customer within 48 hours after the initial one. It can contain an attractive offer such as a discount, deal, or free shipping. In addition, you may want to include a call-to-action (CTA) button to help streamline the checkout process.
- The final email. If the first two emails didn’t work, you can send a third and final message to your buyer. This might offer to answer any questions and repeat your CTA or discount offer.
Leveraging Wholesale Suite plugin’s email sequence feature can help you accomplish this. Using our What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, you can easily modify email templates and subject lines.
You can even style your messages with WooCommerce email headers. This way, you can more effectively encourage your wholesale customers to go back to your site and pick up where they left off.
3. Flash sales
Flash sales are special offers that only last a certain amount of time. They are effective because they grab users’ attention and can generate hype about deals.
To do this, flash sale marketing may use techniques such as countdown timers, as seen in this example by the wholesale store DHGate:
In a nutshell, this kind of deal creates a sense of urgency and may trigger consumers to grab the deal quickly. That’s because they might be more inclined to make a purchase when they feel they are at risk of missing out on a good offer.
4. First-order discounts
Let’s say a site visitor is new to your e-commerce store. They might have just heard of your brand but aren’t sure if they want to make a purchase or not.
A first-order discount can help incentivize them to take the plunge and make the first order. With wholesale customers, this is especially important, as they may be making a big (and potentially intimidating purchase).
This type of discount is usually advertised in the form of a popup, as seen on the Dagne Dover website:
If you have a visitor that has never made a purchase from your wholesale business before, this kind of offer can be what turns them into a loyal customer.
What’s more, creating this type of deal is simple. You can pair our Lead Capture plugin with a tool such as Advanced Coupons to maximize the effectiveness of your promotion:
Then, after their first purchase, you can add your new buyer to your email list and send them more irresistible deals later.
5. Buy One Get One (BOGO) deals
A buy one, get one (BOGO) offer means that when customers purchase one item, they get a second item for free or at a discounted price:
Giving your customers extra products encourages them to go ahead and make a purchase. Bonus points if you promote it as a limited-time offer.
Furthermore, you can use Advanced Coupons to create BOGO deals with single products, groups of products, or entire product categories. The tool even lets you create tons of other offers, such as URL, bulk, and shipping coupons. All of these promotions can help reduce cart abandonment for your wholesale store.
6. Loyalty points
When you create a loyalty program or offer loyalty points, you reward buyers who repeatedly make purchases from your brand. A classic example of this is the Starbucks Rewards program:
With loyalty programs, the more a customer buys or engages with your brand, the more rewards they can earn. This encourages them to continue buying from your business over your competitors.
To offer loyalty points to your consumer base, you may want to create a tiered loyalty system. Basically, this will allow buyers to progress through the rankings, earning better benefits and perks as they earn more points.
Our Loyalty Program plugin takes minutes to set up and your buyers can start earning points instantly:
As loyal members reach higher tiers within your program, they are more likely to feel like valued customers. This in turn can encourage them not to leave items in their virtual shopping bag.
Additionally, since the Loyalty Program plugin works hand in hand with Advanced Coupons’ WooCommerce store credit feature, your customers will redeem their loyalty points to store credit which makes them want to stick with you long term to use it up.
Conclusion
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest causes of lost sales. While you can’t eliminate this entirely, there are strategies you can implement to cut down on its frequency. By providing special offers and discounts to your customers, you can reduce cart abandonment and boost conversion rates for your wholesale store.
To recap, here are six customer deals to prevent cart abandonment:
- Opt-in discounts. Offer users a promotion for signing up for your email list. Lead Capture can help you register customers and grow your email marketing list.
- Abandoned cart email offers. Send users follow-up emails reminding them about the items they left in their cart. This way, you can gently nudge them to make the purchase.
- Flash sales. Create a sense of urgency for your promotions by running a flash sale.
- First order discounts. Provide new shoppers with an incentive to make their initial purchase. This can be free shipping, a percentage discount, etc.
- BOGO deals. Give customers a two-for-one deal. You can easily create BOGO deals (and much more) using Advanced Coupons.
- Loyalty points. Entice buyers to regularly engage with your business in order to earn points and gain rewards. You can easily set this up using the Loyalty Program plugin.
Have you tried any of these strategies for your wholesale store? Let us know in the comments section below!
