[CASE] How we earned 2.6 million rubles in 3 months on abandoned baskets

The online store of seeds and seedlings has been operating in the Russian market for more than 10 years. This niche is characterized by pronounced seasonality, so it is very important to get maximum sales and profits during the high season.

This year, our client decided to prepare for the high season in advance, introducing all the available opportunities to increase conversion rates on the website and encourage repeat purchases.
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For the generation of repeat purchases previously used only manual regular mailings, so it was decided to add more personal automatic letters. We decided to start with abandoned baskets - since this is one of the important stages of email marketing automation, which the client had previously refused, and finally agreed.

By this time we have been working with this online store for more than a year, this year we managed to implement almost the entire range of email marketing:

• We began our work with weekly promotional mailings,
• connected the welcome auto series
• added a few “pseudo” trigger chains (they were launched after visiting certain pages on the site)
• updated the transactional letters (they worked on the design, wrote good texts, made the letters adaptive).

All this lacked only the correct trigger letters, which would not only be launched on time, but also stopped in time (after performing the target action).

AUGUST 2015. TEST PERIOD.

For testing, only 2 trigger mailings were set up - this is an abandoned and canceled basket, in which there were 3 letters each.

The TriggMine service defined the cart as abandoned / canceled 20 minutes after the client closed the site window.

PS Abandoned basket - the client added goods to the basket and left the site without placing an order.

Canceled shopping cart - the client added goods to the cart, then deleted one / several / all and left the site without placing an order.

What did the letters look like on an abandoned basket?

We took our templates of transactional letters as a basis. We borrowed some of the chips and ideas from the built-in TriggMine templates (for example, letter headers, as well as ideas for presenting motivational text in a letter).

But still, we have worked hard to create all the letters in the same tone that we endure in our other letters (respectful and trustful - this is very important for our Central Asia).

Letter number 1

Sending Time: 1 minute after the basket has become abandoned.

Subject of the letter: It seems you have forgotten something # Client name #?



Letter number 2

Dispatch time: 23 hours.

Email subject: Only 2 days left for your purchase!



Letter number 3

Dispatch time: 3 days.

Subject of the letter: Place your order today and receive a gift!



The third letter did not indicate a specific gift. It was a surprise for the customer who we added to the order and sent with him.

PS It is also interesting that about 30% of “returnees” bought from the first reminder letter.

This means that 30% of our customers lacked only a small push to make a decision.

In our opinion, this very eloquently refutes any fears of those who consider abandoned baskets as an aggressive method of working with the client base.

Using an integrated approach, not only in email marketing, but also in the overall marketing system of your company, will give maximum returns and increase the effectiveness of each of the channels.

Statistics on the letters.

During the testing period, we obtained excellent results in terms of discoveries and clicks from a letter.

54% - discoveries and 21% - clicks. Indicators of the formal reply, at the same time, amounted to only 1%.

According to the results of 14 days of testing, we returned 93 baskets in the amount of 346 904 rubles.






PS The letter on the canceled basket looked exactly the same and was sent at the same time, so we will not dwell on these letters in detail.

The only difference is the subject of the letter. Here it was a question that some goods were removed from the basket and it was proposed to restore them and place an order.

There are usually not many such baskets in online stores, but they still bring a small result (+7 orders for 14-day testing).



* Transaction data from Google Analytics for the same period that TriggMine was tested.

The share of sales from the restored baskets amounted to 6.4% of the total number of orders for this period, and 7.1% of the total income.

Such figures amazed and inspired us, and the client paid for using the service a year in advance!

In September, the store turned off the letters on the Canceled basket and decided to focus on those who brought the main income.

Filling of letters, the subject and time of sending did not change.

SEPTEMBER 2015.

We planned to connect other categories of triggers, but we could not do this for technical reasons (problems on the side of the site).

While the developers were struggling with these problems, only the trigger for the return of the abandoned basket worked.



Despite this, in September we returned 207 baskets in the amount of 881,934 rubles.

That amounted to 8.3% and 12.6% of the total number of transactions and sales for this period, respectively.

Statistics on the letters.

Significantly increased the number of sent letters, while the rate of discoveries increased by 4%, and the clicks decreased by only 1% - a rarity with an increase in sent letters almost 4 times.

Also added was the “Conversion” indicator - purchases from a letter that customers made by clicking on the logo in the letter, and not on the button “ORDERING” .

Thus, the results of the 14-day test drive expectedly doubled in a month and the store received a significant increase in orders.

PS We do not provide the October data, as for technical reasons the service was partially disabled in this period.

NOVEMBER 2015.

The longer the service worked and the customers were sent letters reminding them of an abandoned basket, the higher the results. Customers quickly got used to receiving such letters, began to actively return for shopping.

And in November, the conversion rates of abandoned baskets into purchases increased by 3 times, compared with August, when we started.



As a result, we returned 313 baskets in the amount of 639,819 rubles in November 2015.





This amounted to 10.4% and 9.6% of the total number of transactions and sales for this period, respectively.

Statistics on the letters.

In November, the number of emails sent was even higher, while the open-rate and click-rate indicators remained at a stable level.

The level of unsubscribing from the newsletter, also remained stably at the level of 1%, which could not but rejoice :)

TOTAL for the period from August to November, thanks to the trigger letters using the TriggMine service, we were able to additionally attract about 1000 orders in the amount of 2.6 million rubles.



It is quite significant that the share of traffic was 0.48% of the total, and 8.56% and 7.64% for transactions and income, respectively.

What does this mean in our case?

With all the other sources of traffic worked by 2.6 million rubles better! These are orders that would not exist if we did not use forgotten baskets.

Such trigger letters not only increase the amount of money on hand, but also help to increase the effectiveness of all other advertising channels, and this is very important if you use your advertising channels to the maximum.
In January, the high season begins in this niche, and we have plans to add even more personalized automatic letters.

First of all, we will connect letters on resuscitation of customers, as well as introduce action on the second, third and fourth purchase.

We are sure that after the introduction of all the triggers, we will have something to share, therefore - see you in the next case!

Case author: Nata Pavlyk, Tucan.