Abandoned carts: How to recover 15 out of 100 customers?
Most online store owners look at the statistics and hold their heads. People enter, choose goods, but finally buy nothing. At Impuls Poznań Consulting, we checked this on 423 clients and we know that the problem isn't the offer, but the lack of a reminder at the right moment.
Why are you losing money on the last stretch?
Statistics from the last 12 months are ruthless. On average, 69.4% of people visiting online stores in Poland add a product to the cart and never finish the transaction. In Greater Poland alone, where we serve 84 local e-commerce businesses, this indicator is sometimes even higher, especially in the clothing and furniture industries. Usually, the reason is not a high price, but simple distraction. The courier knocked on the door, a child cried, or the boss walked into the office. The customer closes the tab and forgets about the shoes or the new drill they wanted to buy.
Analyzing data from Shoper and PrestaShop platforms for our clients from Poznań and the surrounding area since March 2018, we noticed a certain dependency. The longer you wait to remind about a product, the smaller the chance of a sale. After 24 hours, the chance of a customer returning drops by 82%. Only numbers count, and they say clearly: you must act fast. Waiting for the customer to remember on their own is throwing the marketing budget in the trash because you've already paid for their entry to the site through ads on Facebook or Google.
Instead of counting on a miracle, we implemented a real-time behavior tracking system for 56 companies. We see exactly the moment the mouse cursor escapes toward the 'X' sign in the browser. This is the critical point. Most stores do nothing about this, hoping that an email sent the next day will handle the matter. This is a mistake that costs an average store with a turnover of 50,000 PLN per month about 7,300 PLN in lost profit every month. No more manual work – here, a mechanism that works on its own is needed.
Waiting for the customer to remember their shopping on their own is throwing money in the trash. Only numbers count.
The 15-minute rule and the SMS advantage
For years, everyone sent emails. However, in October 2023, we conducted a test on a group of 1,247 abandoned carts in an auto parts store from Poznań's Jeżyce district. Half of the customers got an email, the other half an SMS exactly 15 minutes after leaving the site. The result? Only 14% of people opened the emails, and just 2% clicked the link. In the case of the text message, the open rate was 97%, and 15 out of every 100 people returned and finished the payment within an hour. It simply works.
Why 15 minutes? It's a time when the customer still remembers what they wanted to buy, but the shopping emotions haven't faded yet. If you send a message after 5 minutes, you'll be too pushy. If after an hour – the customer might already be on a competitor's site. At Impuls Poznań Consulting, we set up automation so that the system itself sends a short message saying: 'Hi, your order is still waiting. Click here to finish'. No unnecessary graphics, no fluff. Just specifics and a payment link.
It's worth adding that the cost of sending such an SMS is about 18 groszy. With an average cart value of 240 PLN, recovering even one customer per hundred messages sent gives a gigantic return on investment. In November 2023, one of our clients, Mr. Mariusz, who runs a fishing store in Wilda, spent 42 PLN on such a campaign and generated 3,850 PLN in additional revenue. These are hard data that cannot be ignored in today's battle for the customer.
An SMS is opened by 97% of people. An email ends up in the offers tab or in the trash.
How to implement recovery without a developer?
Many entrepreneurs fear that automation requires an army of programmers and a month of work. That's a myth. At Impuls Poznań Consulting, we use ready scripts that we connect to your sales system within 4 to 6 business hours. You don't need specialized knowledge for this. We set a scenario: if the cart has a value above 50 PLN and has not been paid for within 15 minutes, send an SMS with a unique 5% discount code valid for only one hour. This creates a sense of urgency that closes the sale.
From our observations, such a simple mechanism works best for local suppliers who have a steady customer base. In December 2023, we implemented this for a local coffee producer from Luboń. Before implementation, they were losing 78 carts per week. After turning on SMS automation, this number dropped to 52, and the additional net profit was 2,140 PLN in the first week of the system's operation. Everything happened in the background while the owner was busy roasting beans, not checking orders.
Don't look for excuses that your store is too small. The systems we use scale together with your business. Regardless of whether you have 10 or 1000 orders per month, the principle is the same: recover what was almost yours. Our team in the office at Półwiejska 42 has prepared ready message templates that are tailored to the Polish customer. They don't sound like a bot, but like a helpful store employee who makes sure the order arrives on time.
Measuring results: What exactly do you need to check?
In marketing, there is no place for hunches. We look at the conversion rate from recovered carts. If after a month you see that 12% to 18% of people return after an SMS, it means the system is well calibrated. If the result is lower, we change the content of the message or the sending time. For example, for one Poznań online drugstore, we had to move the time from 15 to 30 minutes because their customers often shopped during a coffee break and needed more time to return to their desks.
Another important parameter is ROI, or the return on every zloty spent. At Impuls Poznań Consulting, we strive for every zloty spent on automation to bring at least 15 PLN in profit. In 2024, the average result of our clients is 19.4 PLN. This shows that investing in simple tools is many times more effective than burning the budget on new Facebook ads, which are getting more expensive and less effective every month.
In summary, cart recovery is the simplest way for a quick injection of cash into the company. It doesn't require changing the website or hiring new people. It only requires connecting the appropriate tool that will watch your interests 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At Impuls Poznań Consulting, we've been doing this for years because we know that in business, only numbers count. If you want to stop losing 15 out of 100 customers, start with a small step and see how automation works.
In 2024, every zloty spent by our clients on SMS brought an average of 19.40 PLN in profit.
