Survey Shows that Frequent and Occasional Online Shoppers Find Shopping Cart Reminder Emails to be Helpful

Marketers are always looking for new ways to drive sales by examining data and trying different strategies. One piece of data often looked by marketers who work for businesses with ecommerce websites is abandoned shopping carts. A recent survey shows that some consumers find reminders about these abandoned carts to be helpful. So, as an online retailer, do you send out shopping cart reminder emails to customers? If not, you may be missing out on a good opportunity.

This August, 1,003 consumers in the United States who had purchased something online within the last year were surveyed to determine how they feel about receiving such emails. Did they find them to be bothersome or helpful? These shoppers were classified into three groups, frequent shoppers, occasional shoppers and infrequent shoppers. Read on to learn more, or check out the full article from Marketing Charts here.

The question asked for this survey was whether or not the consumer expected to receive a reminder email about their abandoned cart:

Of all survey respondents categorized as frequent shoppers, 59 percent said shopping cart reminder emails were helpful. Of this group, 31 percent thought this type of email was annoying and 26 percent felt they were intrusive.

With occasional online shoppers, 51 percent felt that these reminder emails here helpful. Just 29 percent said they were annoying and 23 percent found them to be intrusive.

When it came to infrequent shoppers, the results changed a bit. Of those surveyed and categorized in this group, 35 percent found shopping cart reminder emails to be helpful, 37 percent said they were annoying and 29 percent thought of them as intrusive.

When it comes to email marketing, the last thing a business wants to do is be perceived as intrusive or annoying. This is applicable to more than just shopping cart reminder emails. While too many emails or emails that do not provide value may result in a consumer marking inbox items from a business as spam, the results of this survey show that those who shop online frequently or occasionally respond well to shopping cart reminders. So, for a business that has an ecommerce website, take advantage of this marketing opportunity. Consider segmenting your email lists by frequent, occasional and infrequent shoppers and send out reminder emails accordingly.