We're happy to report the initial results of the new Abandoned Cart Recovery feature for the TI Commerce ecommerce platform, which was beta launched in April 2008.

The Abandoned Cart Recovery email system lets merchants compose an attractive, customer-service oriented HTML email that is automatically sent to customers who initiate an order but leave before it is completed. For most online retailers, a hefty 50% of all visitors adding items to their cart abandon before completing the order -- so the upside potential of such a system, if managed right, is enormous.

With Timberline's abandoned-cart system, merchants control the number of emails sent, the lag-time between abandonment and the launching of each message, and the design and messaging of the emails. Our initial live Abandoned Cart Recovery program takes a conservative approach, with a series of just two messages. The first message is a thanks-for-visiting and an offer of customer service; the second message makes a modest discount offer. 

• Since going live, visitors responding to the first message produced a 4-5% conversion rate
• The much smaller group of visitors responding to the second message, with the discount offer, converted at an impressive 40-50%
• Overall, Abandoned Cart Recovery emails lifted merchant's total sales by 2.7%

A little under three percent may not sound like much, but when you consider that's an across-the-board improvement of total sales, from a single new initiative, it's pretty mind-blowing.

Marketing and usability expert Amy Africa recommends a more aggressive approach, a series of up to eight messages starting within a few hours of the initial abandonment -- a routine that her case studies have shown can recover around 15% of abandoned carts.

Trying to forecast the upside of adopting an abandoned-cart program? Remember you'll only mail to a fraction of the visitors who actually abandon carts: that is, the folks who got far enough through the checkout to give you their email address. Divide that number by typical email open rates, then click-through rates, and then conversion rates, and your number likely funnels down to a single-digit number. But in this economy, that sure beats a sharp stick in the eye!