How Acer Inc. reduced Cart Abandonment Rate through marketing automation

Acer Inc. is a Taiwanese hardware and electronics corporation, headquartered in Xizhi, New Taipei City. It was founded by Mr. Stan Shih in 1976. This multinational tech giant began with 11 employees, US $25,000 in capital and eventually grew to be the world’s top ICT organizations with a presence in more than 160 countries. For almost half a century, Acer Inc. has been on the forefront of innovation with a mission to break down barriers between people and technology.

It is the fifth largest computer manufacturer in the world with a vision to become a leading branded company enriching people through cutting edge electronic gadgets and prompt customer care. Its products include desktops, laptops (convertibles and chromebooks), tablets, servers, storage devices, virtual reality devices, monitors, smartphones, peripherals, as well as gaming PCs and accessories under its Predator brand. Mr. Jason Chen is currently the organization’s CEO and President. The brand strives to empower the lives of people around the globe through advanced technology in an attempt to build a better society.

Acer Inc. adopted the services of NotifyVisitors primarily to minimize the cart abandonment rate, maximize revenue gains and boost its customer base. Furthermore, the organization intended to leverage both the long-established as well as the latest messaging channels to engage its current and prospective customers in order to advance conversion rate. The NotifyVisitors marketing automation software proved to be the pertinent tool to address the brand’s aforementioned concerns.

Additionally, the brand urgently required implementation of effective advertising and marketing strategies. NotifyVisitors deployed a dedicated Client Account Management team that provided ad-hoc strategic support, offered marketing advice, devised advertising policies and customized event-based omni-channel automated campaigns for the tech giant in order to promptly intimate customers exclusively about those specific products which they intended to buy or expressed interest in purchasing by adding them to their online shopping cart.

NotifyVisitors fervently aided the brand in the process of scrupulously identifying marketing inadequacies within their campaigns and consequently worked with the organization to implement and effectuate the requisite corrective measures that eventually helped Acer Inc. to enhance its revenue, reduce cart abandonment rate, promote brand awareness, improve app/website engagement and as a result grow its customer base.

Acer Inc. reviewed an array of marketing automation platforms and ultimately adopted NotifyVisitors to address its marketing quandaries. The brand learnt that NotifyVisitors provides flexible omni-channel journey design, detailed statistics such as click rate, open rate, click through rate etc. for all types of campaigns, in addition to rendering ad-hoc strategic support via a dedicated Client Account Management team to all of its customers. The tech giant realized that it required the aforementioned blend of services in order to address its ongoing concerns.

Being a multinational company, Acer Inc. had ambitious goals of minimizing its cart abandonment rate, maximizing revenue gains and it thereby sought intricate and precisely calibrated advertising strategies. The marketing experts at NotifyVisitors delivered exactly what the brand had expected. Acer Inc.’s internal marketing team and the Client Account Management team at NotifyVisitors collaborated together to conduct a meticulous research on the pre-existing marketing strategies of the organization.

The Client Account Management team began with a comprehensive audit of the brand’s SMS and email campaigns, systematically searching for content gaps, UI and UX deficits that caused the prospective customers to lose interest in the products added to the online shopping cart, which consequently led the brand to slack on conversions. As part of the advertising optimization, discount coupons were included within campaigns to attract the attention of potential customers towards the abandoned cart and thereby implicitly encourage them to materialize the purchase.

Moreover, the textual content of SMS and WhatsApp campaigns was revamped in a manner to better resonate with client’s requirements and to be more persuasive as well as compelling for the potential customers to return back to their abandoned carts. Furthermore, fresh & aesthetic content design for email campaigns was recommended accentuating key product categories viz. laptops, desktops, dedicated gaming PCs and peripherals.

The NotifyVisitors Client Account Management team recommended Acer Inc. to employ the latest, in vogue messaging channel viz. WhatsApp to dispatch marketing campaigns to a multitude of its potential customers. The implementation of this strategy proved to be beneficial since it considerably lowered the odds of campaigns getting overlooked or being ignored.

Nowadays, WhatsApp is being used by over 2.44 billion people worldwide and this very fact makes it a powerful means of advertising for any brand, since by utilizing this channel to communicate with prospective customers, organizations can enhance the probability of receiving instant responses or feedback to their marketing campaigns which in turn can directly impact and significantly lower the cart abandonment rate and as a result help organizations boost conversions. That being stated, a brand is at a tremendous disadvantage from a marketing standpoint, in case it doesn’t leverage this communication channel to engage, retain and expand its customer base.

The provision of WhatsApp as an advertising channel helped the brand exercise its marketing caliber to the fullest extent. The brand harnessed this channel to orchestrate automated user engagement, customer retention, cart abandonment campaigns and delivered them seamlessly via the NotifyVisitors dashboard. The availability of this service expedited brand’s awareness, diminished cart abandonment rate, increased signups & purchases and led to enhanced app/web engagement.

The implementation of the advised marketing strategies along with the incorporation of the WhatsApp channel within journeys resulted in the brand achieving a 35% reduction in the cart abandonment rate in a matter of 3 months and augmenting its overall revenue by 12% within a short span of 2 months. Here’s how Acer Inc. leveraged the NotifyVisitors marketing automation software to minimize the cart abandonment rate and boost conversions.

Acer Inc. tactfully motivated its prospective customers to fulfill their purchase via the implementation of the following strategies:

The revamped content of the series of dispatched omni-channel campaigns was germane, resonated with the specific requirements of the niche audience and was presented aesthetically incorporating relevant pictures, banners, catchy details of the products added to the abandoned cart, so as to enthrall the prospective clients and rivet their attention back towards the products they formerly desired to purchase. The potential customers were timely and creatively made aware of the lucrative offers and discounts on the products they abandoned in their shopping cart.

Banners implemented within email campaigns

Incorporating multiple channels to engage prospective customers significantly decreases the probability of messages being overlooked, notifications being ignored and campaigns going unnoticed. It is essentially for this reason that organizations intend to contact potential customers via multiple channels to ensure that they view and read the dispatched messages, since it is through these messages that organizations are able to convince customers to return back to their abandoned carts and materialize purchases.

Acer Inc. leveraged all the available channels including WhatsApp to remind potential customers about products they abandoned in their online shopping cart. Here’s how a typical cart abandonment journey incorporated by Acer Inc. looked like:

The content of the messages in the series of dispatched campaigns within the cart abandonment journey was strategically devised in such a manner that each previous message served as a foundation for the forthcoming or successive message in the series i.e. each message although distinct in content, was closely intertwined with the previously dispatched message in such an adroit manner, that as a whole, the entire series courteously and gently, motivated the prospective customer to return back to the abandoned cart and finalize the purchase process. In other words, the overall journey tactfully persuaded the potential customer to consummate the purchase process.

The initial message of the campaigns simply intimated the prospective customer that the brand is aware that he/she has abandoned products in the online shopping cart and thereby he/she is being reminded about the same by the organization as a responsible gesture of being heedful of his/her needs & product preferences. Kindly note, that the prospective customers were notified exclusively about those specific products in which they expressed interest.

In this particular message the brand provided its customer support contact details to deliver necessary assistance, since it is quite possible that for some genuine reason the customer ultimately didn’t materialize the purchase, such as experiencing technical issues during the payment process or not having a credit card while surfing the organization’s website.

In the second message the brand provided a discount or a coupon code, realizing that although the customer might have been initially interested in purchasing the products but could have hesitated later because he/she might have found the products to be expensive or a bit overpriced. It is for this reason that the brand offered a reasonable concession in price, so as to pique the customer’s interest in the abandoned products once again.

In this specific message the organization accentuated upon the catchy details of the products, that might have originally engendered the customers’ interest. The brand also mentioned that the discount is being offered exclusively to the receiver of the message, in order to kindle a sense of specialness and to tacitly convey that the brand actually understood the receiver’s concern regarding the products’ pricing.

This particular message also implicitly conveys that the brand had temporarily saved the abandoned cart for the convenience of the potential customer, so that in case he/she returns back to the brand’s website then the purchase process can be continued from the point where it was abandoned.

In case the customer isn’t tempted to return to his/her abandoned cart after receiving the second message, then a third message is dispatched informing the customer that his/her abandoned cart will soon expire along with the available discount. At this point, bona fide potential customers usually rethink about returning back to their carts and most of them actually avail the lucrative discount.

In this particular message, the brand tactfully incorporated tag lines or catchphrases such as ‘Still thinking it over?’ along with emphasizing upon the available discount and then stating the fact that the cart will expire soon. By doing so, the brand aspired to invoke a sense of urgency in the mind of the receiver to avail the ephemeral discount before it expires.

In addition to this, the brand provided a map of stores located near the prospective customers’ residence and then mentioned that one can get the purchased products delivered at the doorstep free of cost. This strategy was implemented, bearing in mind that a few customers might be hesitant to finalize the purchase because they might have assumed that there could be no stores located nearby their residence or simply because they might not have the time to collect the goods bought online.

In case the customer didn’t return to his/her abandoned cart even after receiving the third message, then the brand dispatched a final message informing the customer that the abandoned cart cannot be sustained forever and will expire shortly within hours.

In this specific message, the brand incorporated all the strategies implemented in the previously dispatched messages viz. inclusion of catch phrases, discount coupons, product details, relevant banners along with mentioning the availability of additional services such as doorstep delivery etc.

Furthermore, the customer was informed that the checkout process won’t consume much time, since it is quite possible that although the prospective customer intends to continue with the purchase process but is unable to find time to do so because of his/her busy schedule.

The journey got triggered for all the visitors who registered on the brand’s official website and consequently added products to their online shopping cart.

The first email and SMS within the journey got dispatched an hour after the customer abandoned his/her cart. Next, the first web push, the first WhatsApp message, the second SMS and the second email got dispatched simultaneously after 1 day had passed since the customer first abandoned the shopping cart.

In case the customer didn’t respond to the initial email and SMS, the subsequent campaigns were timed in the aforementioned manner so as to ensure that the customer doesn’t miss out on the communication sent by the organization.

Web Push Campaign Illustration

The same process got reiterated after 2 days had passed i.e. the organization tried to contact the customer via all the available channels, in case the customer still didn’t return back to the abandoned cart. Lastly, the brand dispatched the final email and SMS after one week had passed since the customer first abandoned his/her cart.

SMS & WhatsApp Campaign Illustration

In case a customer didn’t finalize the purchase even after receiving the final email within the cart abandonment journey, then his/her shopping cart got expired or terminated.

MNCs such as Acer Inc. sell a wide range of electronic products and have multiple visitors from all around the world surfing a myriad of webpages on its official website. Inferentially, each visitor is unique in the sense that he/she might view a different combination of products. However, businesses aim to dispatch only relevant and appropriate notifications to each visitor i.e. remind each potential customer exclusively about those specific products that he/she viewed or intended to purchase.

NotifyVisitors enabled Acer Inc. to design omnichannel workflows incorporating strategically and adequately timed web push, SMS, email and WhatsApp campaigns in such a manner that each potential customer got automatically notified exclusively about those specific products which he/she expressed interest in purchasing by adding them to his/her online shopping cart, and at the same time enabled the brand to ensure that customers don’t perceive the dispatched messages as a dedicated effort by the organization to promote and sell its products. To learn more about this facet of the NotifyVisitors marketing automation software, kindly read the article titled ‘Populate products from events’.

While performing an audit of the brand’s marketing endeavors, the NotifyVisitors Client Account Management team noticed certain flaws in the interface of the email campaigns that apparently caused inconvenience for the receivers to promptly contact support, locate nearby stores, view the products added to the shopping cart or quickly consummate the checkout process.

In addition to incorporating relevant pictures, banners, catchy details of the products, NotifyVisitors suggested the brand to include various CTA buttons such as ‘Contact Us’, ‘Locate Us’, ‘Check Out Now’, ‘View My Cart’ etc. wherever necessary for the convenience of the potential customers.

Previously, the limited availability of such buttons and their inappropriate positioning within the campaigns, negatively affected the cart abandonment rate. The proper arrangement and correct organization of such CTA buttons within campaigns enabled customers to readily contact support, instantly locate nearby stores and expeditiously return back to their abandoned carts. This approach too in turn helped in minimizing the cart abandonment rate.

Email Campaign UI/UX Illustration

NotifyVistors overhauled Acer Inc.’s advertising strategies and consequently the brand began to witness an abrupt decline in the cart abandonment rate and experienced rapid gains in revenue. Furthermore, being equipped with NotifyVisitors’ marketing acumen, latest advertising channels, ad-hoc customer support, organized data and the flexibility to easily customize campaigns made the brand feel confident and secure in terms of prospective growth. Acer Inc.’s decision to adopt the NotifyVisitors marketing automation software to power their advertising campaigns brought impressive results: