Klaviyo has amazing built-in A/B, split testing capabilities so we wanted to test our strategy against theirs. As I mentioned earlier, they used the same email template for all 3 emails in their sequence. Not only that, but they were quite generic, had no voice or personality, didn’t connect with the clients, and had a very long disclaimer apologizing if they received this email by accident or because of a technical glitch. We recreated these emails exactly in all of the “A” versions.
We went in and created magic with the B-versions by analyzing their customers and creating an ideal customer avatar, stripped the Ben Stein monotone voice, adjusted for today’s financial and pandemic climate, were not apologetic for them receiving the email, and most of all, we removed the 10% coupon for coming back and completing their purchase. “WHAT?! Remove an incentive?!” Yes.
Split-testing results and more refinement
After just 1-week, the results were so conclusive that we were losing money by continuing to test any further. The A-versions were performing so poorly that anyone that was receiving them could have actually converted if they would have received ours instead.
At that point, I also implemented a split in the flow based on the total value of the cart. If talking directly to your ideal customers is good, talking directly to those that are spending a lot vs. those that are spending a little is even better! The mentality of someone buying a $9 pair of drumsticks is different than the mentality of someone buying a $5,000 drum set.
Abandoned Cart Success
Recovering $15,337 in 2 weeks
The first thing we can see is that our abandoned cart sequence has obliterated the control metrics. We needed to recover $4,800 at a rate of 1% in a month.
We’ve already exceeded that by over $10,000 in just 2 weeks and increased the recovery by an additional 7%!
I hesitated to claim the $15,000 as a victory for LGS because sales do not always paint the full picture. However, I realized that the exact same products with the exact same probabilities of being abandoned existed before we started too. It’s not like they were only offering low priced products before we showed up, and then they started offering high-priced products. No. The previous abandoned cart sequence had the same opportunities and the same probabilities of recovering these exact items as well. Therefore, the amount of sales is one of the true metrics (especially when you remember that we tailored our emails and copy specifically for high-valued customers).
Abandoned cart recovery rate increases by 7%
Even though sales are great, the true value of an abandoned cart is the recovery rate. Shopping behaviors can change from month-to-month and greatly depend on income levels, especially in the current global climate. Sales are also affected by traffic. The more traffic you have, the more sales you make, the more money you can claim in your success.
But recovery rate is independent of all that. It is quite literally a simple calculation of the number of people that receive your emails and the ones that end up buying because of it. Whether you have high-priced products or low, high traffic or not, recovery rate only focuses on the effectiveness of your emails.
An average recovery rate is between 3% and 5% depending on several factors. But our current rate after two weeks is an astonishing 8%. I’d even claim it’s better than that because if you look at the first email, they’re recovering over 11%. It’s normal for them to drop with each subsequent email in the sequence in general, but especially if you’re capturing 11% in the first one, no one needs to see the second.
The Rest of The 2-Week Email Marketing
Abandoned Browser
After the abandoned cart series, the abandoned browser series is next in line for most important. These emails go out to people that have looked at products in your online store, but then decided to not do anything else. If your customers’ contact information is in the Klaviyo system, Klaviyo can identify when they’re browsing, what they’re looking at, and then send them emails.
Because they didn’t have this capability before, we have no benchmarks to beat. Any additional sales because of this flow (or any flow hereafter) is 100% additional value being provided by Low Gravity Solutions.
In 2 weeks, that was an additional $3,000 just for “doing nothing.”
You can also see the recovery rates aren’t quite as good as the abandoned cart, but 6% is still well above the industry average. Not to mention, the open rates and click-through rates are ridiculously high. That might not lead to direct sales right now, but it is growing the brand’s reputation for having kickass content and in the background, growing the domain’s trustworthiness (to stay out of people’s SPAM folders).
Purchase follow-up thank you
At the time of these screenshots, this flow had only been activated for about 5 days. Not only that, but we purposely do not try to upsell or cross-sell to the customers at this point. This is just another touch-point to stay top of mind with the customers. If they buy something, great. If they don’t, we have other opportunities coming. Lastly, these flows are not even completely built out yet, but I didn’t want to miss any chances to talk to our customers and wanted to get this implemented quickly.
