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The success of retail channels hinges on converting potential customers into actual buyers, making it crucial for retailers to engage effectively with those who initiate but fail to complete a purchase. These visitors are often referred to as “Cart Abandoners.” Various tactics can be employed to target cart abandoners both on-site and off-site, such as personalized prompts, email follow-ups with unique offers, or a combination of both. BlueConic provides a platform that aids marketers in executing this strategy by enabling them to identify and exclude users who have already made a purchase or completed the conversion funnel.

To effectively address abandonment, marketers must consider three key pillars during planning and implementation:

• Speed is essential in reaching abandoners to maximize conversion opportunities, particularly as cart data may only be available for a limited period.
• Targeting as many abandoners as possible within the appropriate context is crucial, given the substantial percentage of cart abandonment among shoppers.
• Crafting relevant and personalized messaging is paramount to increase click-through rates and enhance the likelihood of completing the transaction, leveraging the high rate of abandonment as an opportunity for tailored engagement.

Value-Based Outcome

All BlueConic use cases are associated with one or more Value-Based Outcomes, which are defined areas of focus that help you measure the value of a CDP to your overall business. This use case can be closely related to the Value-Based Outcomes of smarter customer engagement and increased agility and flexibility.

Case Studies

• RevZilla Uses Cross-Channel Orchestration to Boost Revenue by 35%
• Signify Delivers Customer-Centricity at Scale
• Retailer Orchestrates New Digital Experiences and Drives Growth Among Expanding Customer Base

Before You Begin

Before you begin implementing cart abandonment mitigation tactics, make sure you are familiar with what a CDP use case is and all of the components that will make yours more successful. Once this is done, you can start defining your “Before You Begin” requirements, which includes identifying key stakeholders and target audiences, gathering data sources and credentials, and defining what success looks like.

For this use case, example “Before You Begin” requirements may look something like this:

• Key stakeholders: Marketing teams (Email or programmatic display)
• Target audience: All visitors to your e-commerce channels, but this can be further refined based on known users, users with a certain level of engagement or specific interests, and time (i.e., users with items in their cart after 24 hours)
• Data types: Event tracking
• Platforms: Email service providers and website analytics
• Measurement and ROI: Conversion rates, revenue

Use Case Configuration Steps

Step one: Collect data

When it comes to collecting cart abandonment data within BlueConic, there are two options for execution: the Funnel Listener or the Cart Abandonment Tracker Connection. The Funnel Listener will give you insight into how visitors are moving through your customer funnel and will identify exactly where they drop off. The Cart Abandonment Tracker Connection keeps track of open cart events and stores the associated product information, which can be used for creating retargeting content (i.e., an email that shows exactly what products are sitting in the cart).

Therefore, when choosing an option, you will want to consider your objectives for executing this use case. In some situations, it also makes sense to use both options together depending on how you want to activate your data.

Option #1: Funnel Listener

Among BlueConic’s many out-of-the-box listeners is the Funnel Listener. If you have funnel flows on your website and want to quickly identify how users move through it, this is an excellent option for executing this use case.

1. Start by heading to the Listeners tab, and clicking the Add Listener button. Search for the “Funnel Step Listener” in the gallery.
2. Once you are brought to the configuration page:
   • Give your listener a name, it can be something like “Cart Abandonment Use Case Listener.”
   • Define Where the listener should function.
     • Here, you can drill down to a specific part of your channels depending on the needs of your use case. If you are listening for activity on a single checkout funnel, all pages on your website will suffice.
   • Enter a Funnel ID. This identifier will be used for the population of several profile properties associated with this listener.
     
   • Configure your Funnel flow that consists of all individual funnel steps. Each of these steps will represent a moment in your funnel, including the conclusion (i.e., a “Confirmation” or “Thank You” page), and will have the following properties:
     • Step name: The custom label for your funnel step.
     • URL: The unique URL where your funnel step is occurring.
3. Click Save to finalize your listener settings and toggle the listener to On.
   
4. Now that your listener is configured and active, it will relay funnel activity in real-time to BlueConic profile properties.
5. To identify which visitors are entering but abandoning a funnel, you will need to create a new BlueConic segment. Navigate to the Segments tab and click the Add segment button. Before adding conditions to your segment, make sure to give it a name like “Cart Abandoners Segment.”
6. For this use case, the following profile property conditions should be created:
   • “Funnel entrance” profile property occurred in the last X days/hours. This will check for users who have started the funnel within a certain period but have not yet completed it.
   • AND
   • “Busy with funnel” profile property must be empty. This will exclude any user who has completed the funnel successfully.
7. Click Save to finalize your segment settings.
   

Option #2: Cart Abandonment Tracker Connection

If you have cart events that are registered on a data layer and want to use them for activation, this is an excellent option for executing this use case.

1. The first step is to understand how your data layer works and what activity it is collecting. The data layer is a JavaScript object that collects information onsite in a standardized way. It often contains a variety of useful information about users and user behavior. Some of this data may be populated the moment a user arrives onsite; some of this data may be populated in real-time as they browse; some of this data may only become available when a user takes a specific action, like logging into their account.
2. To take a look at your data layer, you can right click in your browser and choose the “Inspect” option. Then, navigate to the “Console” tab and type in “datalayer.” This will allow you to step into the contents of this JavaScript object.
   
3. If you keep this tab open and navigate around your site, you will notice that additions, removals, and updates to the cart register automatically in the data layer. For example, if you visit a product page and click “Add To Cart,” the ‘add_to_cart’ event is then broadcasted to the data layer.
   
4. In addition to the basic event information, a variety of cart product information is also stored in the data layer, including the product SKU, the name of the product, the image location for the product thumbnail, and more.
   
5. Once you are familiar with your data layer and the information that exists there, you will want to intake these cart events to your BlueConic tenant to be used for activation. There are two options for doing this:
   • The Google Analytics 4 cart events global listener - This listener can only be added to your tenant by installing it manually or reaching out to BlueConic Support, as it is not available in the Gallery. Once it is added, the plugin will capture the “add_to_cart” and “remove_from_cart” events in your data layer. It will also track purchase behavior. In the event a user completes a purchase, it will check in the data layer for a “checkout” or “purchase” event.
     • Note: For this listener to work properly, the structure of cart events and data must comply with Google Analytics 4 naming standards.
   • The Cart Abandonment Tracker Connection - This connection can only be added to your tenant by installing it manually or reaching out to BlueConic support, as it is not available in the gallery. Once it is added to your tenant, you can create one by navigating to the Connections tab and clicking Add Connection. When the pop-up window appears, enter "Cart abandonment" in the search bar and click the Cart abandonment connection.
     • On the Set up and run page, you can:
       • Select channels to collect data from. By default, the connection will run on all pages on all of your channels. If you would like to restrict this, for instance, by brand, you can do so here.
       • Schedule runs in the Run history section. This is a connection that should be scheduled to run frequently in the background. By clicking the cogwheel icon, you can specify this cadence.
         
     • On the Configuring inactivity measurement goals page, you can:
       • Select a BlueConic segment. By default, the "All visitors" segment will be selected. If you would like to restrict this, you can choose a BlueConic segment, and only the profiles within that segment will be taken into account.
         
       • Select a time frame. Enter the number of minutes that would qualify a cart to be abandoned. This will be compared to the last timestamp of visitor activity.
         
       • Select profile properties. Select the profile properties where the following data will be stored:
         • Cart data - Information about the products that have been added to a profile's cart
         • Cart change timestamp - The timestamp of a profile's last cart activity (additions, removals, clears, etc.)
         • Abandonment timestamp - The timestamp of when a profile's cart is considered abandoned
           
       • Run the connection.

Step two: Activate data

Now that you have cart abandonment data being collected and stored, it is up to you to determine how and when you want to activate that data. By activation, we mean using messaging or personalization to target this new abandoner segment that has been created to achieve higher conversion rates. This can be done through email marketing, paid search, social media, etc.

BlueConic has a variety of connections that can be used for reaching your cart abandoner segment. Below is a sample list of activation channels alongside their corresponding BlueConic connections. This is not an exhaustive list, as you’ll need to leverage details gathered during your use case discovery to determine which is the best fit.

Step three: Measure outcomes

A critical element of executing any use case is understanding the KPIs against which the results will be measured. For a cart abandonment use case, the most common metric is Conversion Rate, but this may also accompany other diagnostic KPIs like Bounce Rate, Time on Site, and Page Depth.

To measure the cart abandonment use case results, oftentimes brands will leverage outside reporting/analytics platforms to assess the performance of abandoner segments. There are several reasons why this is the case:

• These results may want to be shared across the organization in a “source of truth” platform to be used in deliverables like business reviews.
• Brands may also have preconfigured views for reporting funnel metrics in platforms like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics.
• Brands may have pre-existing best practices as it relates to testing new frameworks that must be followed as part of tactic deployment.

To accommodate this, BlueConic has a variety of connections that can be used to export critical cart abandonment use case data. A few of the most common include:

• Google Analytics 4
• PowerBI
• SFTP
• Azure