Last week, I asked on Twitter if you had any eCommerce questions that I could answer.  I was inundated with email replies. Here are the first three:

Jessa from Austin asks: “I walked in late at a speech you were giving in Chicago and heard you scold someone on your panel about remarketing but I didn’t understand why. Are you not a fan of remarketing? We’re making about $35k a month from it which is a lot for our company.”

Short answer: I am a fan of remarketing as long as the costs are attributed appropriately.

Long answer: I LOVE Remarketing.  Ok, that’s a lie.  Personally, I despise it. (One glance at my search history and you’d understand why. Ha!)  Professionally, I think it’s fantastic.  HOWEVER, what I do NOT love is that most marketers grossly overestimate the “profit” of their remarketing efforts. For example, many folks will wax poetically about how lucrative their abandoned cart remarketing program is but they’ll only take out the ad cost/agency fees and they’ll completely ignore the original source cost.  Newsflash: those abandoned carts had to come from somewhere and that “somewhere” cost something.

I realize that many remarketing agencies and consultants disagree with my logic – they want their numbers to be as BIG and juicy as possible. The challenge is that there comes a point where it’s difficult to just “do more remarketing” without increasing the original sources/leads/starters.  More important, triggered emails are often A LOT less expensive – and frankly, boatloads more effective – when it comes to retargeting.  (Yes, the combination of email and banners/ads does work best.)  Bottom line: Do it but do it wisely.

 

Kyle from Delray Beach asks: “I heard you on a mobile webinar recently and you said to capture mobile numbers even though you may not use them. We’d have to pay about $2k for this field to be added to our system, is it really worth it?”

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Even if you never send out a text message in your life (which you will, and before you say you won’t, remember in 1993, nobody thought they’d send out emails either), mobile numbers are amazing for profiling.  They can also be very useful when you’re doing ECOA (Email Change of Address) and e-Append (both things I recommend.)

Please remember: if you are collecting mobile numbers, you need to tell the user that message and data rates may apply.  (Yes, you need to do this now, just in case.) I also recommend you list approximately how many messages you send a month along with a Text STOP message.  (A link to your Terms and Conditions won’t hurt either.)

 

Ruth from Seattle asks: “We implemented a carthopper at your recommendation and it’s working like crazy for the people whose email addresses we don’t have but it’s a waste of space for people we do.  How do we fix this?”

Short answer: Have more than one carthopper.

Long answer: Carthoppers are the catfishes that crawl along the bottom of your screen.  (Some people call them bottom pops.)  They’re designed for people who return to your site who have items in their basket from the last time they were there. (You can also test taking people who have active carts directly to the View Cart page.)  If you don’t have the user’s email address, the carthopper should remind them that they have items in their basket and ask them to give you their email address so you can send them their cart.  (Read: put them in your trigger series immediately!)  If you already have their email address, don’t waste the space and ask for it again.  Instead, show them a special TODAY ONLY offer and then send them directly to the cart with a big RETURN TO CART NOW button.  (If you don’t offer financial incentives/promotional codes, you can feature a new or bestselling product instead.)