The Best Levers to Activate Non Buyers
Non buyers are like a blank canvas for your marketing team: They represent so much potential, but activating that potential often proves intimidating. Much like when you stare at a blinking cursor on a blank screen, it’s hard to know where to start.
Non Buyers Represent Enormous Untapped Value
First, let’s talk potential. At any given time, 39% of your known customer base is typically non buyers. That’s a big chunk of your customers, and they wield a lot of spending power. For example, after running a customer lifecycle analysis, one apparel retailer discovered that converting just 5% of its non buyers would lead to $225k in near-term revenue.
How to Activate Non Buyers’ Potential
Now let’s talk activating that potential, since the stakes are high when it comes to converting non buyers. That’s because, on average, you have about 47 days to win these shoppers over before they unsubscribe. So how do you do it? Here are the best levers you can pull to activate non buyers.
The Best Types of Email to Activate Non Buyers
While you typically have to start by sending non buyers batch emails so that you can get to know their product and category preferences, you should get more targeted as soon as possible by paying attention to the specific products with which they engage.
Once you have enough information to get more targeted, there are three types of emails in particular that deliver the highest conversion rates and revenue per email for non buyers:
- Search Abandonment
- Cart Abandonment
- Low Inventory
Search and cart abandonment emails perform especially well with non buyers because these triggered emails allow you to target shoppers with a very specific message about a product or category with which they’ve already engaged.
For example, let’s say these shoppers are in the market for a particular item and are mulling their purchase options. Your browse abandonment emails remind shoppers that they were interested in your specific product(s) and they keep your brand front and center in shoppers’ minds throughout their purchase consideration.
Meanwhile, low inventory triggered emails build on the specificity of abandonment emails by not only resurfacing a specific product in which shoppers demonstrated in an interest, but also by creating a sense of urgency that they need to buy now or lose out on the chance to do so.
The Best Types of Offers to Activate Non Buyers
You can optimize your emails even further by including a targeted offer to sweeten the deal. So which offers are the best ones to activate non buyers?
Several studies show that one of the top reasons shoppers abandon their carts is unexpected shipping costs. This fact makes offering non buyers free shipping on their first purchase an easy lever to pull to get them to buy.
But what if you could be a little more strategic? Instead of offering free shipping to all non buyers (after all, it’s only free for them — it costs your business money), why not use predictive technology to segment your audience of non buyers and only offer free shipping to those with a high likelihood to convert?
Our data reveals that non buyers with a high likelihood to convert will spend nearly 2x more than those with a medium likelihood to convert and nearly 10x more than those with a low likelihood to convert. As a result, segmenting your non buyers in this way can help you get the best offers in front of shoppers who are most likely to buy and most likely to have the highest value orders.
Your Non Buyers Made a Purchase: What to Do Next
What happens once you succeed in activating your non buyers and they make their first purchase? It’s time to rinse and repeat.
