Customers
7 Reasons Your Leads Are Bouncing and How to Re-engage Them
November 23, 2022
Not everyone who visits your website is going to end up buying something—not even close.
Data from IRP found that the average conversion rate for ecommerce businesses in August 2022 was just 1.62%. A recent study by Wordstream found that 25% of websites using Google Ads to attract customers have conversion rates of less than 1%, and the average conversion rate, regardless of industry, is 2.35%.
With the average conversion rate being so low, lead engagement is critical. It all starts with identifying why your leads are bouncing and finding ways to re-engage them.
Here are seven common reasons leads are abandoning your marketing funnel—along with tips for re-engaging them with messaging apps.
You're asking for too much information on forms
For e-commerce and retail websites, the average bounce rate on web pages is between 20% and 45%, according to a CXL study. A big reason visitors leave websites is that they’re immediately bombarded with long lead capture forms.
Unless you’re offering an added incentive for completing a long form (like a discount), keep them as short as possible. Today, you don’t need a lot of information from leads to connect with them. To start messaging leads, all you need is their phone number.
If you need multiple details to qualify your leads, you still don’t need to obtain all of your customer data in one shot. Keep your online forms short to get basic contact information and ask them to opt into messaging.
Customers increasingly prefer to communicate via this channel. According to SimpleTexting's 2021 research, 62% of consumers have subscribed to receive texts from a business in the last year. The study also found that 78% that they use their smartphones most over the course of a day to check, send, and answer texts.
Reach out to leads conversationally to capture relevant customer data over time. For example, you can use messaging apps to ask customers what brought them to your website. Ask what specific product they’re looking for and if they need help finding it.
Messaging apps help you gradually fill in the blanks left by abandoned lead capture forms. Take advantage of the modern customer’s preference to engage with brands via messaging to better understand their intent and use the personal information they provide to create personalized experiences and point them toward the products that best align with their interests.
You're too reliant on email marketing
Email can be a powerful marketing channel—but it’s also possible to overwhelm consumers’ inboxes. In a Yes Lifecycle Marketing survey, 55% of consumers reported that they ignore marketing emails because they receive too many.
Give your customers’ inboxes a break by reaching out via messaging, too.
According to SimpleTexting, 59.1% of consumers reply to a text message within 1-2 minutes while 37.2% reply to an email within an hour of receiving it.
Take advantage of this trend and supplement your email marketing efforts with conversational messaging. Messaging apps can do anything emails can, like managing opt-in compliance and sending clickable buttons with calls-to-action (CTAs). And, of course, messaging apps can initiate real-time conversations with customers via agents or chatbots.
Too slow to respond to customer inquiries
Quick responses are crucial to conversions. HubSpot’s recent research showed that 82% of the consumers surveyed wanted immediate responses to their marketing or sales questions.
Messaging apps make it easy to send immediate responses. Even if your agents aren’t available, chatbots can respond to customers right away—answering simple questions, sharing resources, and redirecting to live agents for complex issues.
Customers also prefer using them to communicate. According to an internal Forrester report, 30% of customers will switch from legacy channels (phone, email, etc.) to messaging once it becomes available for customer care. Using messaging app chatbots, fashion retailer Modanisa resolved 70% of customer inquiries without a need to go to live support.
While the chatbot might not be able to resolve every customer issue, inquiries are still being acknowledged immediately. When live agents do need to step in to address more complex questions, they can do so effectively with context from the messaging app about the conversation. Our Forrester report also found that messaging improves agent efficiency by 35% for those remaining inquiries still requiring an agent.
You're not educating customers
Digital buyers today are incredibly self-sufficient. They like doing their own research and solving their problems independently. According to Zendesk, 70% of customers “expect a company to have a self-service portal or content available to them.”
If you’re not allowing them to learn about your product on their own, they’ll move on to a competitor that does.
By using messaging you can easily share answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), offer product comparison information and tutorials. Make it easy for customers to find educational content by meeting them on the channels they prefer.
Armed with artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, chatbots can understand what customers are looking for and send them relevant resources.
Through education, you’re nurturing leads and keeping them engaged even if they aren’t quite ready to buy. The greater understanding they have of your product and how it works, the easier it is to emphasize the benefits of your products.
You're not qualifying and organizing your leads well enough
Even though it’s hard work, lead qualification is well worth the effort, especially for your salespeople.
According to Sales Insights Lab, sales teams believe that 50% of the clients they speak with aren’t a good fit for what they're selling. Lead qualification helps sales teams avoid wasting time on leads who are unlikely to convert and focus on retaining the leads who are more likely to make a purchase.
The first step of lead qualification is developing a set of questions that separates people who fit your target customer personas from those who don’t. Messaging apps allow you to ask your leads these questions easily and quickly.
The act of opting into direct messaging immediately qualifies a customer as a strong lead, since they are knowingly engaging with your brand and interested in receiving direct communications from you.
When you use messaging apps to engage leads, you have the added advantage of being able to categorize leads based on their qualification status.
- Unqualified leads who haven’t been nurtured long enough, which means you’re still unsure of what they need and if you can provide it for them.
- Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) who’ve expressed interest and are ready to receive marketing communications like emails.
- Sales qualified leads (SQLs) who’ve taken to your marketing efforts, learned about your product, and are ready to connect with a sales agent.
- Conversion qualified leads (CQLs) who’ve performed an action that signifies a readiness to purchase, like clicking on a CTA or submitting a contact form.
Messaging apps have features that let you label all of your customer conversations as an MQL, SQL, or CQL to track their progress. Or use simpler, action-oriented labels like “new customer,” “new order,” “pending payment,” and “paid” to follow their customer journey and keep your conversations neatly organized.
Offers are mismatched
Marketers know that getting people to their website is only half the battle. It’s critical that brands have offers on their web page that match visitors’ intent. Messaging apps can help you create tailored offers by using bots to engage with site visitors and understand their preferences.
One of the easiest ways to do this via messaging apps is by creating product catalogs and sending them to leads. Catalogs allow leads to browse your entire catalog and see pictures, descriptions, and prices for all your products.
You can even group similar products together and send leads who’ve shown interest in a certain type of product a more specific list of items. From there, you can follow data related to how they’re interacting with your product catalog and further refine your approach according to these insights.
Sometimes the easiest way to match customers with the products they want is by making it easier for them to view and engage with your products and acting on the data gleaned from their actions.
You're trying to rush conversions
The urgency to close a deal is understandable, however, rushing leads into purchases is never a good idea. You’ll likely end up pushing them away and/or giving up on them too soon.
With messaging apps, you can nurture potential customers without pushing purchases on them. You might send them educational resources about topics they’re interested in while they’re still getting to know your brand.
When customers are ready to make a purchase, they can let you and your team know through messaging. For example, they might ask for pricing information over chat. At this point, you can gently nudge them toward an order by sending discounts and other special offers over messaging.
Use messaging apps to patch holes in your funnel and keep customers engaged
With messaging apps, you can keep your leads engaged for as long as it takes to convert them—allowing them to make purchases on their own terms and when the time is right for them.
This nurturing ideally prevents bouncing. But if you do happen to lose a lead, you can always re-engage them gradually over messaging to bring them back into the fold.
To learn more about how messaging can re-engage lost leads and decrease your bounce rates over time, check out the WhatsApp Business Blog.