By Mary Kearl

If you work in ecommerce, then a top challenge for your business is likely shopping cart abandonment. And you’re not alone: the average documented shopping cart abandonment rate for online retailers is 69%, according to the Baymard Institute. What’s more, customers who add items to their online baskets without following through with their purchases account for $4 trillion in lost revenue annually.

So what can you do in the face of this known hurdle? Take a cue from these best practices 1-800-FLOWERS.COM implemented to tackle this problem and increase in-app purchases.

LEVERAGE PUSH NOTIFICATIONS TO INCREASE CONVERSIONS

When used strategically, push notifications are a powerful marketing tool, but when used without a game plan, they can backfire, potentially offering lapsing customers another reason to uninstall your app.

This kind of message is most effective when short (24 characters or fewer), sent at the right time, specific, personalized, and used sparingly overall. And for companies looking to attract indecisive shoppers who have selected items to be purchased without checking out, these notifications are strongest when they create urgency, help solve a problem, and remind customers what they’re missing out on.

Download the full case study.

HERE’S THE THREE-STEP STRATEGY THAT WORKED FOR 1-800-FLOWERS.COM

Segment: Using Appboy’s CRM, the leading gourmet food and flower retailer sent targeted messages to customers who recently left items in their mobile shopping carts, specifically communicating with customers who were close to making a purchase but hadn’t finished the process. Skipping a less impactful one-size-fits-all approach, the company increased its odds of converting customers to a sale by focusing in on likely buyers.

Test: 1-800-FLOWERS.COM used A/B testing to narrow their campaign down to the strongest message variant to send to the segment of abandoned shopping cart customers. Using testing, their team found that including a promotional offer—in this instance, 15% off—upped abandoned shopping cart conversions.

Iterate: This ecommerce business didn’t stop at one round of testing. Before one of their busiest days of the year, Valentine’s Day, the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM team had already tested using personalization and had identified the ideal window of time to send the message after customers had abandoned their carts (30 minutes), leading to a 5% increase in abandoned shopping cart recovery rate.

THE RESULTS?

Knowing that the holiday season is a peak time for mobile commerce, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM conducted this campaign during November through February 15th, covering all the major holidays at both the end and start of the year. And they delivered—an increase in converting shoppers to retrieve their shopping carts and complete their purchases, 350% above the industry average of a 3–4% recovery rate, based on a recent study.

SHARE WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED

Regardless of your company’s ecommerce vertical, marketers can learn from 1-800-FLOWERS.COM’s experiment (and the results). If you or a colleague wants to learn more from this campaign, download the complete 1-800-FLOWERS.COM Case Study.

This piece originally appeared on Relate as "How 1-800-Flowers.com Upped Conversions 350% Above Average"