NEW YORK, Dec. 05, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IgnitionOne, a global marketing technology and data analytics provider with a focus on the retail industry, announced the release of data insights related to cart abandonment following an unprecedented Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Even as online retailers like Amazon hit company records for Cyber Monday sales, consumers across the web abandoned $24 billion worth of goods in their shopping carts during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to the IgnitionOne study.
While this represents lost revenue, retail advertisers still had reason to smile this year, as their campaign efforts converted at a higher rate on Black Friday this year than in 2016. Nearly all tracked categories saw a lift in conversion rate (+56% on average) during Black Friday 2017, while only about half of categories saw a lift in conversion rates on Cyber Monday.
“The sales records set by Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year show that retailers and consumers are both growing more accustomed to the online shopping experience,” said Christopher Hansen, Chief Product Officer of IgnitionOne. “However, there’s clearly a huge opportunity for retailers to extract even more revenue from visitors already on their sites and to continue to improve the conversion rates of their ad campaigns. In some retail segments, capturing just 5% of abandoned merchandise would result in more than $100 million worth of incremental revenue. IgnitionOne will continue to work with these retailers to help them improve their holistic ad experience and convert these lost opportunities.”
Methodology and Summary of Findings
The IgnitionOne estimates are derived by applying proprietary cart abandonment benchmark data tracked across more than 10 major categories, against internal and industry wide sales figures.
Apparel ($3.7 billion abandoned) and home goods & furniture ($4.3 billion) saw the highest total value of abandoned merchandise. Had apparel retailers optimized their digital strategies to capture even 5% of cart abandoned revenues, using techniques such as onsite, website personalization and triggered email, the incremental sales opportunity would total $183 million. IgnitionOne’s analysis also found that:
- Shoppers abandoned their carts 7% more often on Black Friday than Cyber Monday, as they likely waited until Monday to make a purchase.
- 40% more visitors put items in a cart on Black Friday compared to a typical day in November. That jumps to 50% on Cyber Monday.
On the advertising side, Black Friday fared better than Cyber Monday when comparing year-over-year growth. Again, while performance was good nearly across the board, there was plenty for advertisers to learn when deciding how to invest in media and which audiences were best to pursue with discounts and offers. IgnitionOne found that:
- Discount apparel retailers, financial firms, hospitality, and services (including energy, moving, and internet services) had higher Black Friday ad conversion rates year over year, with increased spend.
- Financial institutions (including banking and insurance) were the sole category to see higher ad conversion rates while increasing spend on both days, indicating they have more room to pursue these once-a-year opportunities more aggressively.
- On Cyber Monday, home goods saw a growth in conversion rate while ramping up ad spend. The same companies saw a drop in Black Friday conversion rates despite a YoY spend increase.
- Luxury apparel and the services categories saw decreases in conversion rate on Cyber Monday, despite lower spend, showing a clear opportunity for better optimization strategies.
“The trends across our study reveal consumer patterns but more importantly an opportunity,” said Dave Ragals, SVP Customer Success, at IgnitionOne. “Knowing what we know about cart abandonment factors, consumer intent signals and online behavioral patterns related to crossing channels, there are options used by our most successful clients to minimize drop-off like website personalization, triggered email, tailoring messaging to channel attributes, marketing on a more personalized level and following through with advanced re-targeting methods. We expect that armed with the learning of this season, even more marketers will undertake these strategies to maximize ROI.”
About the IgnitionOne Retail Data Driven Marketing Solution
IgnitionOne provides intelligent marketing technology solutions and services that drive real-time customer engagement helping retail marketers by providing data intelligence and the tools required to activate data-driven marketing strategically and effectively. Powered by IgnitionOne Score™, their proprietary data solutions and methodology allow marketers to create unique, one-to-one communications with both prospects and current customers to convert highly interested users into qualified leads. These score-powered communications can be deployed through programmatic Display, Facebook, Google, and Website Personalization.
These retail data intelligence findings represent their category expertise. Read more about the data analysis on the IgnitionOne website.
About IgnitionOne
IgnitionOne offers technology and services that help marketers win. The company focuses on intelligent audience creation, real-time cross-channel scoring, and robust optimization – providing a layer for smarter marketing decisions and deeper insights, whether you use native IgnitionOne solutions such as Search, Display, Email, and Website Personalization – or the marketing technology you already have.
With a global footprint of over 450 employees in 10 countries, IgnitionOne is one of the largest independent marketing technology companies in the world, currently scoring over 300 million users monthly in 75 countries and powering more than $60 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, CenturyLink, La Quinta and Acer, as well as advertising agencies such as 360i, GroupM and ZenithOptimedia.
For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.
Contact:
Kendall Allen
For IgnitionOne
kallen@witstrategy.com