Think Partnership, Inc., an international leader in interactive performance-based marketing and related Internet technologies, has announced the official release of Second Bite, an automated solution which recovers abandoned Internet transactions through targeted e-mail campaigns. Second Bite offers online merchants the ability to recover lost sales and revenue attributed to online shopping cart abandonment.
According to a recent study conducted by MarketingSherpa, the average e-commerce shopping cart has a 59.8 percent abandonment rate. Preliminary use by Think Partnership's marketing partners has shown that Second Bite can be successful in helping merchants recover abandoned carts and increase online sales by up to six percent.
Second Bite enables merchants to motivate consumers to complete previously started online purchases through a real-time data collection system and personalized e-mail campaign. If a customer does not complete the entire order process, an automated series of personalized e-mail messages are triggered in real-time by a simple JavaScript embedded in a shopping cart Web page.
The personalized e-mails include incentives like coupon codes and a direct link back to the abandoned shopping cart that automatically reinitiates the checkout process. Second Bite has demonstrated e-mail click-to-sales rates of up to 22 percent, which is significantly higher than the industry standard 1-2 percent conversion rate.
"We're seeing an increasing number of online customers who add items to their shopping carts, only to abandon them before completing the sale," said Nick Martin, affiliate marketing manager with Personal Creations and one of Second Bite's early adopters. "However, Second Bite allows us to automatically reach out to these consumers with personalized emails that are informative and timely, encouraging them to complete their purchase, and we set this up with minimal IT requirements. We're now looking to improve upon our results by incorporating options like promotional coupons and other incentives."
"Second Bite takes the guesswork out of behavioral marketing by targeting shoppers based on a specific event like an abandoned cart," said John Linden, chief technology officer of Think Partnership. "Second Bite enables merchants to increase the relevancy factor of a specific e-mail message by making a personalized connection with the recipient based on their recent online shopping experience. This results in dramatically higher than average e-mail open rates, click-through rates and click-to-sales rates. As an important new addition to Think Partnership's full line of affiliate marketing, click fraud prevention and search engine marketing solutions, Second Bite helps organizations increase the return on e-marketing investments."
Features & Benefits
Second Bite provides retailers and online merchants with a number of features and management tools designed to recover lost revenue, including:
· Campaign Management & Branding – Merchants can work with Second Bite or use pre-designed templates to create an unlimited number of customized and branded e-mail marketing campaigns around special promotions. They can set rules to specify when automated e-mail messages are delivered and to whom. Second Bite also provides users with A/B testing to maximize optimization and conversion.
· Reporting & Metrics – Second Bite provides a comprehensive revenue "dashboard" that helps users quickly measure the effectiveness of Second Bite. The dashboard displays and organizes response rates by e-mail, campaign trending and clicks-to-conversion rates. It also provides insight into the number, timing and delivery of e-mail messages, helping merchants determine when an abandoned shopper is responding to a specific campaign or incentive.
TeleCPA, Think Partnership's recently introduced abandoned order recovery solution based on live telephone follow-up, will be rolled into Second Bite to form a multi-channel order recovery system. This comprehensive solution is made available to merchants on a pay-for-performance basis. Second Bite works through the merchant's existing affiliate program to track closed sales and account for performance-based fees/affiliate commissions.