The Shopping Cart Abandonment solution allows your property to capture additional leads and booking opportunities for online shoppers. This tool captures contact information and trip details from your checkout pages to create leads for potential guests who begin the shopping process online, but do not complete it. This information is then passed from your booking engine to Revinate in the form of a new lead type called Abandoned Cart. Depending on which Revinate products you have, you can have your call center agents follow up on the lead in Reservation Sales* via an outbound call and a robust email automation campaign running via Revinate Marketing to increase your conversion and engage these previously anonymous shoppers.
If you are changing your booking system, let support know as the switch will cause the code to break and stop SCA.
Ask your Customer Success Manager for more details if interested in the Shopping Cart Abandonment package.
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Process and Settings
For a lead to be created, the potential guest must provide an email address while in your booking engine. Additional contact information (name, phone, etc.) and trip details (dates of stay and room type) may also be included in the lead, but the extent of the information provided is dependent on the booking engine used by your property.
With Reservation Sales, Revinate then takes this information and converts it to a lead so you can follow-up.
Settings & Assignment Rules
For properties using Reservation Sales, an abandoned cart lead will be created and can be configured to appear in the action center. Each property can choose to auto assign those leads just as you do for email and RezForce leads. There is a group of settings in the ELM Preferences that dictate how leads are routed and assigned when received. Discuss with your Customer Success Manager to determine the best account configuration for your team.
Visibility
You have the option to hide unassigned leads. By default, leads will not be hidden.
Reservation Sales → Account Settings → Default HUB Configuration
Booking Time Frame
Abandoned cart leads are not immediately created when booking engine details are captured for two reasons: booking time frame and duplicate leads.
Some individuals may progress more slowly through the reservation process as they research rates and room options. In order to allow potential guests ample time to complete their online reservations and avoid a situation where an agent follows up before the individual has had the opportunity to complete the reservation online, a lead creation delay is used. Each property must specify a time (in minutes) for how long to wait before sending shopping cart details into Reservation Sales as a lead. This delay provides time for individuals to complete the reservation online and helps avoid unnecessary follow-up.
A best practice is to start with a 60 minute delay as the more timely the follow-up, the higher the chance of converting to a booking, but you also want to allow ample time for most individuals to complete the booking before a lead is generated.
After 60 minutes, the lead is created in Reservation Sales and triggers Campaigns in Revinate.
The amount of time to wait before the system creates a new abandoned cart lead is in the Reservation Sales ELM Preferences screen. Account Settings > ELM > Preferences.
This can be adjusted based on the property and the market where the property is located. You will also be able to see the abandoned cart channel that eventually did complete the booking, even after the expiration of the time. You will be able to determine if you need to extend or shorten the delay time frame based on the volume of leads that are still turning booked after the lead is created.
Auto Assignment in Reservation Sales
Best practice is to Auto Assign Shopping Cart Abandoned leads to agents on the SCA team.
Agents can also open each lead in the Action Center > Unread Abandoned Cart Replies and scan through and review the details of what the guest had in the booking engine when they abandoned including dates of stay, unit type and more to determine the best way to follow-up.
Booked Interface Function
In addition to the configuration tools in your account, SCA has one additional setting that can be configured by Revinate Support. When active, this feature utilizes PMS bookings and automatically changes and leads to ‘Booked’ lead status, if there is a booking in the PMS. If you choose to utilize this functionality, agents will receive the booking credit for the lead. This may not be best for your organization as the attribution is inflating agent revenue. Utilizing this feature will typically require less lead management saving time for agent follow up. If you are using this feature, we advise adjusting the booking time frame delay to 90-120 minutes.
Leads
Duplicate Leads
Potential guests may begin their accommodation search online, but then choose to call in to finalize their reservation with an agent rather than submit it via the web or vice versa. If a reservation is found, a new Abandoned Cart lead will not be created. If a lead is found after cart details are submitted, the details are appended to the lead, rather than creating a new one.
Lead Status
Agents will work active leads to a ‘Booked’ or ‘Not Booked’ status. Add a ‘Not Booked’ reason of ‘Shopping Cart Abandon’. To learn how to add a not booking reason, please see this article. All SCA leads will enter the system in ‘Follow up’ status and will behave as any other lead in the system and ‘Auto Complete’ rules will apply to SCA leads.
Agents will only use the ‘Booked’ lead status if they collect payment. Any bookings made on the booking engine will be marked as ‘Not Booked’. Choosing the accurate lead status is helpful for triggering Automated Sends to your SCA contact list.
SCA Follow-Up Strategies
The follow up contact method is unique for each property and is dependent on your property's follow-up policy, however, customers have found that an agent placing an outbound call to a guest after an abandoned cart is well received by potential guests and implies a high level of customer service.
Outbound Calling
Outbound calling is positioned as a high level of service. A sample script may be “Hello Mr. Smith, this is Ben from Bend Resorts. I noticed you were attempting to make a reservation on our website. Are there any questions I can answer for you prior to booking?” Or “Hello Mrs. Smith, this is Sara from Bend Resorts. I was passed a note you were interested in coming to stay with us. Are there any questions I can answer for you?” For the highest conversion of SCA leads, encourage your agents to call.
SCA Email Marketing Campaign Best Practices
When a potential guest abandons their cart on your booking engine, this will trigger an email utilizing the campaign to send to the guest reminding them of the stay they left in their cart.
When to send a Shopping Cart Abandonment
Setting up your First campaign to go out one minute after the cart is abandoned is our best practice. By default, it takes an hour for the cart to change to the abandoned status. But, depending on the hotel's specific setup and needs, you can change your configuration for what works best for the property.
Set your second send (If sending a drip campaign) for 48 hours- 72 hours after the 1st send.
The more timely the follow-up, the higher the chance of converting to a booking, but you also want to allow ample time for most individuals to complete the booking before a lead is generated.
When your Shopping Cart Abandonment campaign is configured, it can be set up as a single campaign or a drip campaign. A drip campaign is our recommendation to allow for multiple touches with guests.
Marketing Shopping Cart Abandonment Set Up
Open All Campaigns → Create Campaign → Automated Campaigns →Shopping Cart Abandonment. If you would like your SCA emails to be on a drip, you can select this option on the settings section of the campaign composer. Design your Shopping Cart Abandonment email as desired.
Designing Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Campaign
Use Enticing Subject Lines
- Hey [Guest name], don't leave us this way!
- Still thinking about it? Your room is waiting for you at [hotel name]
- We saved your room! Finish your booking and enjoy an unforgettable stay.
- Hey [Guest name], it's not too late!
- Time is running out! Redeem your selected room at [hotel name] today.
- Your dream stay is calling! Finalize your booking before it's gone.
Ensure Imagery Speaks to Your Customer
We recommend using simple, beautiful, thoughtful, images. Use high-quality images that showcase your hotel's rooms, views, and amenities. If your hotel has a unique selling point or experience, find pictures that will remind the guests of the amazing experiences at your hotel.
Make sure to use the correct balance of images and texts. Avoid overwhelming the email with too many photos, as it may impact email load times or cause the message to be flagged as spam.
Use Merge Tags for Personalization
Using merge tags for room type and check-in date gives you the ability to ensure a more personalized experience for your potential guests, and ultimately results in higher booking rates and more revenue.
Abandoned Cart Segmentation
Using the segment builder, choose the basic criteria:
- Contact list is Cart Abandonment
And check off the option to Exclude Guests with Future Stays.
Abandoned Cart Campaign Schedule
SCA campaigns can be scheduled to deploy any time after the potential guest has left their email address on your booking engine. If you have Revinate’s Reservation Sales solution, you may decide to schedule this campaign to send immediately after the cart is abandoned. If you do not have Reservation Sales, you could schedule the Marketing SCA campaign as a drip campaign that will send out after the guest leaves their cart and then again 2 days after the cart was abandoned.
Setting up your first campaign to go out one minute after the cart is abandoned is our best practice. It takes 60 minutes for the cart to change to the abandoned status. If you have Revinate’s Reservation Sales, you have the ability to adjust this time. If you do not, 60 minutes is the default.
Set your second send (if sending a drip campaign) for 48 hours-72 hours after the 1st send.
The more timely the follow-up, the higher the chance of converting to a booking, but you also want to allow ample time for most individuals to complete the booking before a lead is generated.
When your Shopping Cart Abandonment campaign is configured, it can be set up as a single campaign or a drip campaign. A drip campaign is our recommendation to allow for multiple touches with guests.