by Jess Nelson, February 24, 2017

Carts Guru expanded its marketing platform, focused on shopping cart abandonment, to social media on Thursday — enabling its customers to optimize recovery campaigns across email and Facebook.

Almost 70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned, according to the Baymard Institute’s January calculation of 37 benchmark reports released by technology companies in 2016 — equating to a substantial loss of $4.6 trillion in revenue last year, according to BI Intelligence.

Email marketing can be an effective solution for converting potential buyers, and Experian estimates that a shopping cart reminder email increases purchases by more than 19 times the average conversion rates of traditional promotional campaigns. But email marketers can’t email would-be customers if they do not have their contact information.

Enter Carts Guru, a San Francisco-based marketing startup founded in 2016 that helps marketers rescue abandoned shopping carts across email, text messages, automatic calls and now, Facebook.

“By focusing solely in shopping cart abandonment, Carts Guru allows email marketers to automate their basket recovery strategy with a solution that is designed and optimized for that purpose,” says Conrado Lamas, CMO of Carts Guru.

Lamas says email marketers in particular can benefit from Facebook retargeting when the consumer in question has not provided any contact information to the retailer. By having the record of the products that consumers looked at and abandoned, Carts Guru can retarget individuals who have not subscribed to email lists.

Carts Guru also offers detailed analytics by campaign and channels for marketers to peruse, which Lamas says enables email marketers to monitor their performance and optimize marketing strategies.

Lamas says marketers should consider diversifying their recovery channels beyond email marketing to reach consumers by their most preferred communication channel and to break through the noise of a crowded inbox. The high volume, Lamas says, is the cause of email’s reduced effectiveness in cart abandonment recovery.

Carts Guru claims that its Facebook beta testers have seen an average increase in recovery rates of about 10% via the social media channel, while Carts Guru recovers an average of 20% of abandoned shopping carts through multichannel targeting.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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