I’m sure you’re familiar with a browse abandonment flow. It triggers when a customer peeks at a product but doesn’t buy.
However, not all customers look at your products when they visit your site. And some customers may have received your browse abandonment too recently to receive it again.
The Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow fills that gap. It automates outreach to leads and customers who, like I said, have been on your site but don’t meet the criteria for other “abandonment” flows.
Fun Fact: As far as I know, I invented this flow. Haven’t seen it anywhere else.
Check out my full guide to the Active on Site Flow below.
Understanding the Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow
An Active-On-Site Abandonment flow triggers when a person has visited your site X times in Y days. X and Y will vary based on various factors, such as:
- Your niche
- Your brand
- Offer price
- Average order value
- Where it’s used (front end vs. back end, for example)
The goal is to start a conversation with the customer to answer questions, overcome potential objections, and close the sale.
These flows work best for companies with a single front-end offer that is fairly customizable. Subscription boxes and coaching businesses can do well with this.
For example, I developed this flow for a client who sold subscription boxes. Customers couldn’t look at what was in the box until selecting quantity/size options. From a technical standpoint, a browse abandonment didn’t work for the main offer.
However, eCommerce brands could tweak these to send to customers who:
- Haven’t viewed a product page at all
- Received (but didn’t buy) through a browse abandonment flow too recently to be included in the browse abandonment flow again
You can use these flows on the front or back ends. Front end captures new customers, whereas back end builds a bond with existing customers and/or nudges them toward other products.
The best part about all this?
Active-On-Site flows are quick to implement.
How an Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow Helps Your Business
The Active on Site Abandonment flow helps your business in several ways:
- Closes “on the fence” customers: Someone visiting multiple times but not buying is interested, but something’s holding them back. This flow lets you start a conversation to overcome those objections.
- Strengthens customer relationships: Adding another personalized yet automated touchpoint starts new customer relationships on the right foot and strengthens bonds with existing customers.
- Enhances deliverability: Replies boost deliverability by showing email clients (like Gmail) that people want your stuff. You aren’t some spammer or “sleazy salesman”. The high open rates (since these customers are engaged) may also help deliverability.
- Automates (some) market research: Notice a pattern in customer replies? Do specific questions or objections arise repeatedly? That’s valuable info for writing copy, building other flows, designing offers, overhauling UI, and more.
- Improves email metrics: You’re targeting an engaged audience segment with a personalized set of emails/SMS’s. They are likelier to open, respond, and even click on something.
The Key Components of the Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow
Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow components and length can vary by all the factors discussed earlier in this article.
Thus, we’ll cover a good “starting point” based on my experience that you can add to or edit to fit your needs.
The First Message — SMS
SMS’s give you a tight character limit, but that’s fine. Your first message should simply:
- Greet the lead/customer
- Ask them if they have questions
- Let them know they can reply back with questions
The Second Message — An Email
The email gives you more room. Use that room.
Subject Line
The subject line here is easy. Use a first name liquid field and ask if they have questions.
For example, “Need help, [firstname]?” That gets tons of opens and good engagement because it’s a relevant question, and the body copy pays it off.
Body Copy
I like to say “noticed you were on our site” before asking if the reader has questions. That’s up to you, though.
After you ask the “questions” question, you can mention a few common questions or objections about your offer.
For example: “Whether you’re curious about our Product X, Feature Y, our return policy, or anything else, ask away.”
The Third Message — An SMS
This one’s a reminder and sends the day after the first two. Go with an angle such as “Still need help?”
Other Messages
You can experiment with a longer Active-On-Site Flow. Some ideas for additional emails include:
- Overcoming individual objections
- Product recommendations
- Educational content
You can also throw in a few SMS’s if you can get good messaging into the limited space available.
Best Practices For the Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow
Here are some tips and best practices to keep in mind when building your Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow:
Site Visit Count and Timeframe
First, determine your desired site visit count and timeframe to consider someone “engaged” enough to receive this flow.
For example, three site visits within 30 days is a good starting point. Think about it: Anyone who visits your site once every 1.5 weeks, three times in a row, is likely on the fence and just has some questions they need answered.
Time Delay
I recommend setting a time delay of 45 minutes to one hour. Enough time for the customer to browse (and potentially leave)… but not so much time that the “buying thoughts” have completely left their mind.
As for time delays between subsequent messages:
I’d give it a day between each one. If you’re doing two messages in one day (email + SMS), 30-45 minutes between each is a good time delay.
The Copy — Focus on Getting a Response
The goal here is to get a response, so urge a reply and don’t include a link. Minimize design elements. Remember that this isn’t an abandoned browse flow.
Dean Jackson’s famous “9-word email” framework can work well in one of your emails and one of your SMS’s here. Depending on the flow length, you can try a few 9-word emails/SMS’s with different formats and themes in the copy.
If you use a templatized signature block with a link to your site automatically, leaving that link is fine. It’s more for show than anything. One of my clients made a sale through that link.
Just make the questions the main focus… not the click.
Have Adequate Sales/Customer Service Personnel to Respond
One way to gauge if you need more sales/customer service reps for this flow is to create a segment using the flow’s metrics before creating the flow itself.
Monitor that for several days to estimate how many people enter that segment daily. Think about the rate at which people reply to your “reply” emails. Estimate the customer service reply/response workload with that info.
In my experience, one person can handle these flows for big brands. I had a client with a few hundred Active-On-Site flow recipients a week, and one sales rep added these duties fairly easily to her other work responsibilities.
Measuring Success for the Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow
Here are some key metrics to track for the Active-On-Site Abandonment flow and how to improve them:
Replies
The most important metric to track for Active-On-Site Abandonment is more of a “soft metric” — it’s your replies.
You want the highest possible rate of replies coming in, and you want them to be good replies. That means questions and objections that you or your sales team can answer… and that you can note down for market research.
How to improve: A/B test different copy and sometimes design elements.
Opens
Opens is crucial for this flow after nailing the copy. The more of your “engaged” leads/customers open this, the more questions you can answer and “on the fence” sales you can close.
(Note: You may need to mess with Apple Privacy Open triggers/segment criteria to get a more accurate view of opens).
How to improve: A/B test subject lines, preview text, sender name, sender email, and send times/time delays.
Sales
Yeah, yeah. Sales is always the most important metric. But this flow won’t beat your welcome sequence any time soon.
In fact, the flow itself doesn’t do the heavy sales lifting. That’s on whoever handles the selling at your company.
How to improve: Equip your sales team with what’s needed to close as many leads as possible, such as sales scripts or standardized answers to FAQs.
Active-On-Site Abandonment Pitfalls to Avoid
Watch out for these mistakes when crafting your Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow:
Triggering the Flow Immediately
You don’t want the flow to send immediately after the customer hits the criteria. A few reasons for this:
- It might slow the sale: There’s always a chance a customer purchases on their own during the triggering site visit. An email/SMS could slow them down and lose the sale.
- Waiting can help engagement: Giving enough time for the customer to check out the site and then go do something unrelated can boost opens/engagement. Too soon, and they might not notice, and then they may never see it later on.
Using Too Much Design/HTML
You can use an “HTML” template if you want your logo at the top. But keep it simple. Just your logo, copy, and a signature block with an image of the sender.
Anything more, and it’ll feel way too salesy. The customer knows you’re trying to sell them, but the point is to look helpful.
The Bottom Line on the Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow
The Active-On-Site Abandonment Flow is a nifty way to engage and convert those “on-the-fence” customers while gathering vital data on objections and front-end friction points. It can be as short as 1-2 SMS’s and emails, but you can stretch it out depending on your brand, offer, and niche.
Keep the emails simple (design-wise) and focus on answering customer questions, not pushing the sale hard. The selling comes as you answer their questions (like any good sales conversation). Track your replies, note any patterns in questions or objections, and work to improve open rates and tweak the copy as necessary.
Overall, this flow is excellent if, for technical reasons, you can’t get the browse abandonment flow to work… or if your offer is structured so as to make browse abandonment ineffective.
What to Do Next
- Implement this flow into your business if you don’t have it/Optimize your flow with insights from this post if you DO have it.
- Get on my email list using the signup form below.
- Share this post with someone who would find it helpful or insightful.
- Work with me if you want to earn more revenue, widen your margins, and improve retention through email and SMS… so you can quit worrying about acquisition.
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