Save My Basket Best Practices

What is a Save My Basket Campaign?

Save My Basket refers to an eCommerce email and SMS strategy that reduces abandoned carts by letting abandoned shoppers save their basket and email or send it via SMS so they can return and complete their purchase later.

Several eCommerce platforms will retain shoppers' baskets for a certain length of time. E.g. Shopify saves the contents of a basket for 30 days. This campaign involves sending automated reminders or promotional incentives across channels pointing them to their basket to encourage shoppers to complete their purchase.

Shoppers often need time to think before committing to a purchase and will utilise the option to save their basket for later.

Why Build a Save My Basket Campaign?

Nearly 70% of online shopping baskets are abandoned before checkout is complete (Reference 1). An automated Save My Basket campaign helps to bring back potential shoppers who were close to completing their purchase by saving items to their basket for future reference. These shoppers typically have high buying intent.

By encouraging shoppers to finalise their purchases this campaign helps businesses recover sales that would otherwise be lost if a Save My Basket campaign wasn’t in place. Building an automated Save My Basket multi-channel campaign also helps companies reach shoppers at a much larger volume.

Save My Basket Reasons

There are many reasons behind shoppers emailing their basket to themselves for later, here are some of the most common reasons:

Price comparison/Comparison shopping (recommend offering an incentive to encourage shoppers to complete their purchase)
Distractions
Buyer hesitancy

Benefits of Save My Basket

Abandoned carts present a huge challenge for eCommerce companies as they directly impact conversion rates and ultimately revenue loss. Save My Basket automated campaigns can tackle these problems and result in the following benefits:

Improved revenue
Increase opportunities for upselling and cross-selling
Uptake on incentives or promotions offered
Increase conversion rates
Positive impact on customer lifetime value
Increase customer trust
Enhance user experience
Positive impact on data and insights

Save My Basket Logic

To trigger the Save My Basket campaign retailers must set up a Save My Basket Overlay on-site. This will capture email addresses or phone numbers if a retailer wants to receive their basket via email or SMS.
The Save My Basket logic works across all eCommerce platforms.
The difference between a Save My Basket campaign and an Abandoned Order campaign is the fact that you have the basket value information which can be used for targeted campaigns.
The first send is transactional and the rest of the automated campaign is marketing.

What are the Benefits of Creating a Save My Basket Campaign?

Recover lost revenue:

A Save My Basket email and SMS journey can remind customers of their intent to purchase and encourage them to complete their transaction.

Increase customer retention:

Creates an opportunity to build and strengthen relationships by showing shoppers that you care about their shopping experience.

Improve marketing ROI:

Money has already been invested into bringing shoppers to your website. Instead of focusing solely on new customer acquisition, you can recapture lost opportunities with automated Save My Basket communications.
Saves time by setting up an automated campaign instead of manually sending communications across channels. Provides regular ROI.

Improved customer insights:

Analysing the performance across channels (email & SMS), allows you to look at potential barriers or issues in your sales process. Using real-time data allows you to improve your website and look at which products drive the most revenue.

Increased cart value:

This campaign provides cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Apart from the saved items, you can recommend complimentary products based on what the shopper has added to their basket.

Increase impulse purchases:

Implementing scarcity marketing and the fear of missing out on product(s) for shoppers can help capitalise on impulse buying behaviour.

Better shopping experiences:

Offering abandoned shoppers the opportunity to save their basket makes it easier for them to return and purchase at a later point.

What are the steps to building an effective Save My Basket campaign?

Create a Save My Basket Overlay:

Ensure the Save My Basket Overlay campaign is set up correctly to collect email addresses and/or phone numbers.
Ensure the Save My Basket Overlay triggers at the optimum place for engagement. If the eCommerce platform is integrated with Salesfire, it will save the basket to the platform.

Set trigger points:

Basket thresholds: Define the conditions that trigger your automated Save My Basket flow such as the value they have in their basket or if they’ve completed their purchase.
Tracking: Ensure that tracking is set up correctly for links that are used across SMS channels.

Secure cart:

Ensure that saved carts are accessible to returning shoppers or shoppers who chose guest checkout functionality.

Create a multi-channel flow:

75% of shoppers prefer to interact with companies across multiple channels vs one channel (Reference 2).
Ensure that the messaging across all channels matches the brand’s tone of voice and is consistent. Optimise messaging for each platform.

Message/Incentive personalisation:

Use dynamic fields to insert images, prices, and product names directly from the shopper's basket into the email.
Use customised incentives/promotions. If a shopper has a more expensive basket value offer a more significant discount/incentive in one flow.
For smaller/less expensive basket value then a smaller discount/incentive can be offered on a separate flow.

Design across channels:

Mobile responsive design. Ensure that emails, SMS, and LPS render well across all devices.

Optimise timing:

Test and refine timing
Create time-sensitive promotional offers that instil a sense of urgency and encourage the customer to act quickly before they lose out on the offer.
Consider that more expensive purchases may require more consideration than less expensive items.

Alongside setting up your Save My Basket campaign we recommend reviewing your checkout process:

Minimise the number of steps during the purchase process.
Allow guest checkout and offer multiple payment options
If a shopper saves their basket, direct them back to the checkout page with all their information pre-filled.

Use social proof and urgency messaging:

Social proof examples could be testimonials, reviews, etc.
You could create a sense of urgency and show trending products.

Monitor metrics:

Consistently monitor metrics across channels.
Regularly optimise automated programs based on metrics. We recommend only making one modification at a time to understand what has worked and what hasn’t worked.

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