Here’s an interesting thing that I’ve noticed that is great news for marketers:

Precise stats on cart abandonment are tough because they range widely depending on the source, but if you take the mean then something like 50% of people who add something to their shopping cart never check out. That seems pretty high to me, but let’s be honest we’re all guilty of doing it – right?

Here’s another situation that was interesting to me along those same lines.  I went to go check out Angie’s List the other day. If you’re not familiar with the service, it’s a fantastic idea (especially when you’re trying to find someone to paint your new condo on the cheap!).  During the signup process, I never  realize it was a paid service – until I had already given my email address and created a password for my account.

That’s a good idea for their service, because now they have me!

I was short on time and didn’t want to go find my wallet and complete the signup process, so I closed the laptop and off I went.  True to my A.D.D. nature, I didn’t remember to go back and finish the checkout process, so guess what happened next? Angie’s List sends me an email a week that says “we noticed you didn’t finish signing up, so here’s a coupon” that would allow me to use the first month without paying for the service.

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Smart strategy, and one that is easily achievable for your organization if you put a little thought into how you structure the calls to action on your site. Think through the service and information that you can offer on your site, and find ways to capture information about your site visitors. With cart abandonment (and signup) rates being whatever they are, why wouldn’t you want to reach back out to someone who expressed some interest in your products or services, but may have just gotten sidetracked?

Targeting and segmentation are the name of the game – so use the tools at your disposal: analytics, lists, etc. and improve on what may or may not be working on your site.  My favorite quote that relates to what we do was by Lord Kelvin over 100 years ago: “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.”

I gave a workshop this week for the Sales & Marketing Society of the Mid-South as part of their new workshop series for their members.  We covered our 4-step program to using Twitter for marketing or promoting a business,  The PLET Method:

Post  |  Why, What, When, How

Listen  |  Real-time searches and Monitoring Tools

Engage  |  Rules of Engagement, Best Practices

Track |  Analytics, URLs, Phone numbers

Here is a copy of the presentation that we went through. Although none of the screen-capture movies are there, you can still get the main ideas behind the PLET method:

More and more businesses are recognizing the need to get involved in social media, which means that social media “experts” are popping up left and right.  Beware anyone who tells you they are social media expert.  Here’s a great example of why I say that:  Click here But beware, definitely some R-rated language (funny though).

Three of my favorite points from this workshop were my reasons why everyone should get involved in social media:

1. 3 out of 4 Americans are using social technology
2. Typical cost of a social media account is $0.00
3. Social media is like word of mouth on steroids

It’s exciting that so many of those in the workshop were totally new to Twitter and wanted to see if Twitter had potential for their marketing and communications. With so much buzz coming up, we’ll have another series of classes on social media very soon with our friends at Howell Marketing Strategies.  More details on that soon, but this time we’re planning on a 4-day workshop, focusing one day each on:  Strategy, Twitter, Facebook, & YouTube (but possibly SlideShare or LinkedIn as well).

Today’s class focused on more intermediate to advanced Twitter strategy.  We continued with the rest of our P.L.E.T. strategy for successfully using Twitter:  Listening, Engaging, and Tracking

We also talked about RSS and the power of giving people a ‘stream’ of your content.  Here is a copy of our slides from today’s class: