Masterclass: Reducing Cart Abandonment

Approximately 74% of all online shopping carts are abandoned. That figure has risen from around 60% since 2006. And much to every retailer’s frustration, there’s every chance we’ll see even higher rates in the future. 

In the US, Baymard cites the no. 1 reason for cart abandonment as ‘extra costs’ from shipping, taxes, and fees (48%). Needlessly demanding account set-up processes (26%) and slow delivery (23%) are two other big reasons, according to similar studies.   

At Awin, we’re focused on solutions, not problems. We help advertisers find the right partners and technologies to solve common challenges like abandonment. And when that happens, we’re always keen to share their stories.  

Recently, Awin sat down with Tanita Dickson, Ecommerce Specialist at telecom provider Vodafone, and Margaux Montchamp, Ecommerce Specialist at VOXI, which is owned by Vodafone, to discuss how their use of intelligent remarketing campaigns prevents thousands of carts from being abandoned every month.  

The episode profiles some of the solutions of Awin tech partner SaleCycle, so we also invited Will Hill, Senior Account Manager at SaleCycle, along for the ride. 

Listen to the episode for a full overview of their partnership or grab the notes from the write-up below.  

Is abandonment worse in telecom than in other industries?   

Looking at SaleCycle data on abandonment rates across different sub-sectors, we can see that telecom leads the pack – in the worst way. Its average rate of 90.8% is far higher than the drop-off for department stores (71.2%), gardening and DIY (79.2%), and electronics (50%). 

There could be a few factors at play here, such as hidden costs and a higher tendency to compare prices. Overall, given there’s an inherent pressure on telecom shoppers to make sure their multi-year contract represents value for money, it’s no wonder their deals are harder to close.  

Tanita verifies the struggles with cart abandonment at Vodafone.  

Tanita: “Yeah, it's a highly competitive space. There's so many sharks in the sea… Us consumers, we're looking for the best deal, right? It's not about, ‘I'm just going to stick with the same network that I've had since I was a teenager’. People are changing. They might be building a whole package of what phone they want and the airtime plan they want, but they might just be able to park that and say, ‘Right, let me go and see what somebody else is going to offer me for the exact same thing…’ Everyone's very price sensitive.” 

The issue extends to other Vodafone brands like VOXI. Launched back in 2017 to target a younger audience of tech-savvy subscribers, 80% of the customers who fill a cart on its site don’t check out.  

It’s in these scenarios where you feel the pressure on remarketing solutions like SaleCycle. If you want a partner for increasing conversion rates in general, Awin has plenty of options. But SaleCycle’s role in an abandonment context is slightly more unique. 

Far from a side partner, its job is to interact with 80% of cart fillers and change their minds. It’s a “huge” pool of customers, as Margaux points out.  

Thankfully, it works. When we checked in with Vodafone in 2024, SaleCycle was delivering: 

• 2,000 incremental sales every month from customers at risk of abandonment  

• +36% CVR vs Vodafone’s previous email abandonment solution  

• +44% CTR (click-through rates) vs Vodafone’s previous email abandonment solution  

SaleCycle is now used wholly by Vodafone for all promotional communications, cart abandonment included, but it had to prove itself to get there.  

The ‘control-group’ approach or ‘soft’ launch is arguably one of the biggest benefits of an affiliate tech partnership. Rather than paying a big upfront cost and having SaleCycle interact with every customer, Vodafone implemented the technology rapidly via the Awin MasterTag in a specific area of its experience and paid a small commission on each cart it saved. 

The solution first launched on Vodafone’s eShop for small hotspot devices. Once successful, it moved into engaging home broadband and mobile customers and then onto Vodafone brands like VOXI and Top Mobile. 

Learnings: 

• Tech partners can save thousands of carts even in the toughest of scenarios  

• ‘Soft’ launching a tech partner allows you to see how many carts it saves 

What’s an example of an affiliate remarketing campaign? 

One of SaleCycle’s most successful campaigns for Vodafone has been a three-cycle cart abandonment email, which flows like this: 

Cycle 1: Reminds customers of products left in their cart along with brand USPs covering why they should choose Vodafone.  

Cycle 2: After a day had passed, Vodafone dials up the urgency with a time-limited ‘10% off’ unique voucher code to increase click and conversion rates  

Cycle 3: A final reminder checks in on the customer, reminding them of their cart. 

Although Will considers email remarketing SaleCycle’s “bread and butter”, the approach differs from brand to brand. Customer engagement is where remarketing specialists really show their value, regardless of the industry and audience. 

Will: “Our design team are really great at interpreting brand guidelines given from the clients, but also what we know works well. VOXI's a much more youthful brand, so how do we change that content from Vodafone? Also, with some of the purchases we’re retargeting with VOXI, the average order value might be between £10-15 (€11.50 - €17.25) because it's a sim-only deal. Whereas with Vodafone we're sometimes looking at tablet deals, smartwatches, expensive handsets… It's how we can try to make that content as engaging as possible.” 

Copy, branding, tone of voice, and communication methods all have to be nailed for a tech partner to truly act as an extension of a brand. For example, VOXI’s emails have a vibrant, fun feel, and SaleCycle is liberal in its use of emojis in subject lines. 

Vodafone, on the other hand, treads a more conservative path. Its emails are minimal, playing largely on the brand’s rich heritage, but highly effective. 

Will: “Things like subject lines and even within the email body... It's a very simple, stripped-back approach. There's not a lot of copy, and the colors are very on-brand to match with that journey that you'd see on Vodafone… With VOXI, the website has a lot more going on. The colors are much darker, much more vibrant… If we had an image of both emails, they look completely different. Within the subject lines of VOXI, they're much more playful and youthful. We try to make them trend related.” 

Learnings: 

• Expect your tech partner to deliver a fully branded solution 

• Three-cycle abandonment emails have proven to be effective  

How many remarketing emails should you send? 

There’s a fine line between being persistent enough to elicit a response from a customer and putting them off for life. Most brands send 2-3 emails over the space of a few days. SaleCycle’s usual approach is a two-step process, which kicks in virtually as soon as the cart is abandoned. 

Will: “That would be your first reminder somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour after you [the customer] leave the site. And then with a second follow-up around 20-24 hours after that. More recently, we've found a lot of success in adding a third reminder in, maybe two, three days after. We can remind them of their basket… Show them any other products or suggestions, or even let them know about new product launches or incentives... It's trying to get those initial two cycles right and then look to add to it, once we know that's working well.” 

The iterative approach is something Vodafone has embraced, too.  

Tanita: “Something I really enjoy is testing… Seeing test results, playing around with things, trying to optimize journeys, optimize the emails we're sending out to the customers… That's the part I've enjoyed – getting those results in and saying, ‘Right, we sent them this version to this group of customers, and we sent another version to another group. Which one performed better?’ That's what keeps it exciting. That's what keeps us evolving.” 

To give an example of a positive result, Vodafone discovered that changing the call to action from ‘Continue Shopping’ to ‘Checkout Now’ resulted in a +3% uplift in click rates and a +18% increase in CVR (conversion rates). Another takeaway? Reducing the time between email #1 and email #2 from 24 hours to 20 hours – that’s a +17% increase in click rates and a staggering +100% increase in CVR. 

These tests have challenged perceptions around approaches, designs, and even entire channels. The last time SMS was trending in marketing circles, its audiences were wielding Sony Ericssons and Nokias, not iPhones and Samsungs.  

Even marketers at the very facilitators of SMS messages had questions about their relevance. But sure enough, SaleCycle’s tests have earned them a place in Vodafone’s abandonment arsenal. 

Tanita: “Can I be honest? When Will said to us, ‘We should really focus on SMS, I was like, really? Are we going backwards here?’ We've been focusing so much on email and Will was championing SMS and was saying to us, ‘We've got to get this plugged in, it's going to do really well for you’. And it's done amazingly. He was right, he's the expert. But yeah, it's something that we were not prepared for.” 

SMS retargeting works similarly to email. Customers that leave their phone number while filling out their details but do not end up purchasing receive a text.  

The simplicity of their design makes SMS quicker to send than email. According to Will, it’s also stronger for conversion and click-through rates, and recent studies show an underlying effectiveness, with 74% of shoppers making a purchase after receiving a text from a brand. Message received.   

Learnings:

• Small tweaks to your CTA could double your CVR 

• Try to complete your abandonment cycle within three days 

• Don’t overlook SMS when planning your abandonment strategy 

How much personalization should you include in email remarketing?  

Like its parent brand, VOXI loves a test. Margaux credits SaleCycle for fine-tuning its approach to email remarketing, right down to the intro.  

Margaux: “I was thinking, ‘What kind of tests have I been surprised by?’ I would say personalization of the subject lines. I was expecting customers to like for us to be more personal with them and call them by their name. But no, it wasn't really the case. And actually, we were better off not doing it. I would not have expected that.” 

Personalization does have a place in remarketing, though. It’s just a little further down the line than you’d think.  

First touchpoint 

Will: “It seems that first touchpoint is so close… They understand the email. They know very much what it's about, and they probably don't focus on the subject line that much. It's more about getting [the customer] back to the site.” 

Second touchpoint 

Will: “The second and third emails are much more of a personal communication as a follow-up, to try and say, you know, ‘Are you still interested? Would you like to come back?’ And I think we've seen a lot of success. We did the same for Vodafone, and that second cycle test performed really well, whereas it didn't work in the first. You'd expect them to both work, but maybe they're not comfortable too soon.” 

On-site overlays: stopping abandonment before it happens 

Vodafone’s evolving partnership with SaleCycle has seen it introducing the solution earlier in the journey to spot tell-tale signs of abandonment.  

One exit-intent campaign displayed relevant offers via native overlays in certain areas of the Vodafone site when customers showed signs of leaving. These behaviors, which tend to be the same across many retail sites, include: 

• Lengthy dwell times  

• Moving cursor outside the boundaries of the window 

• Moving cursor toward the ‘back’ or ‘close window’ buttons 

• Opening new tabs, potentially to compare prices 

Most retailers serve an offer to keep the visitor on-site, but Vodafone has taken things up a level with a feature it calls ‘The Problem Solver’. Here, SaleCycle replicates Vodafone’s in-store service by presenting a number of common scenarios (e.g., ‘I’m looking for a deal’, ‘I’m looking for a handset’) and supplies guidance on their best option. 

Having recently deployed overlays itself, VOXI has engineered its on-site messages to trigger when site visitors are idle for 20 seconds or show similar exit-intent signals.   

Considering SaleCycle’s journey from an email remarketing solution for small hotspot devices to acting on Vodafone’s behalf across its very own site, it’s a compelling example of how an affiliate partnership evolves if the results back it up. 

Will: “The on-site overlay was something that we originally tested with Vodafone. Vodafone need to plug a gap where customers who were earlier in the journey, hadn't quite added to the basket, but were still dropping off… We've seen a lot of success, especially with existing customers, trying to push second-line sales. Things like adding a new SIM or family members and things, if you're feeling generous. It's nice to see how we've taken some of that work across one brand within the group and helped to roll it out to others as well.” 

Whether it’s launching new channels, tweaking a design, or adding an emoji to a subject line, there is an overarching theme. If you are recruiting an abandonment partner via your affiliate program, let the specialist do specialist work. Dive in; trust; learn; scale.   

Margaux: “The affiliate marketing partner that you're going to be working with is the expert in their field. My advice would be trust and work hand in hand with this partner... Do what's best because they know what's best from their side. They'll be able to advise… The collaboration aspect is really important. I think trust them to do the right things for your brand.” 

Want to bring down your abandonment rates? Partner with SaleCycle today.