Exit Intent is an offer shown in a popup when a visitor is about to leave your website. It is your last chance to convert the visitor before they leave.
Exit Intent is a feature of the DailyStory Customer Engagement platform.
Below are 10 reasons to use Exit Intent. Plus an extra bonus reason!
We recommend targeting the type of exit intent based on rules driven by actions of the visitor – depending upon the rule they trigger you can personalize the Exit Intent they experience:
1. Decrease shopping cart abandonment
Business Insider found that there could be up to $4 trillion dollars waiting to be recovered in abandoned shopping carts. Shopping cart abandonment reflects a failure of the business to build trust, reinforce benefits and reduce fear.
Exit Intent provides a final opportunity, prior to abandonment, for you to:
- Interrupt the buyers decision and build trust, reinforce benefits and reduce fear.
- Offer a discount or promotion if the shopping cart is transacted.
- Offer the ability for the buyer to get a reminder email (if they haven’t signed in)
2. Highlight relevant content
A large technology provider found that customers who participated in their online community spent 25 percent more than customers who did not participate in their online community. The online community provided relevant experiences, success stories and use cases that other customers could relate to and use to influence their purchasing behavior.
Exit Intent provides a final opportunity, prior to the visitor leaving your site, for you to:
- Highlight the availability of relevant content or resources and then navigate people to those resources.
- Use analytics to analyze the initial request made by the visitor: what keywords brought them to the site, did they click on a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) ad and redirect them to content similar visitors found relevant.
3. Growing your email subscription list
Email marketing remains the number 1 tool with the biggest positive impact on revenue. Organically building an email subscription list is one of the best ways to create an audience for you to market to. For most businesses adding subscribers to their monthly newsletter isn’t always obvious. They’ll add existing customers, but neglect to promote the availability of the newsletter on their website.
When a visitor is leaving your site it is a great opportunity to promote your newsletter or other mailing lists that may be of interest to the visitor:
- Provide a simple sign-up form, typically just ask for an email address.
- Reinforce that signing up for your email listing will be beneficial to the visitor.
- Create trust by indicating that you will not share the email address.
4. Ask for word of mouth promotion
In a recent study, the American Marketing Association (AMA) found that 64 percent of marketing executives indicated that they believe word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing. However, only 6% say they have mastered it.
The key to word of mouth marketing is asking for it! And what better opportunity than when a shopper who recently completed a product purchase is exiting your site?
- Use social channels, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, to make it easy for your visitor to share their experience. For example, with a single click of a button, they can share a status on Twitter or Facebook.
5. Promote new offers or features
For some companies, especially those with a “house of brands”, it can be hard to promote new offers, features or capabilities. The information may be there but could be buried in press releases, blogs or other site content. Keep in mind that most visitors to your website don’t come through the home page, but come through search engines. Therefore you can’t expect them to find new offers on their own.
When a visitor is leaving your site, you can use Exit Intent like an advertisement to promote offers:
- An ad or offer can be presented if the visitor is idle for a period of minutes. This can be a great way to refocus the visitor if they stepped away for a few minutes or were interrupted by something else.
6. Offer personalized recommendations
Personalization is the concept of matching the visitor’s experience with what they were expecting to find. This can be promoting products that were previously looked at, recommending content based on related content, or tailoring the visitor’s experience based on what visitors similar to them have found useful.
Exit Intent presents a final opportunity for you to interact with your visitor before they leave. Just as you would personalize their browsing experience, you can personalize the Exit Intent experience as well:
- Recommend products or content that other visitors may have found useful or relevant. This creates a way to change the exit into a deeper visit of your site (or even purchases).
7. Request ratings and reviews
According to a survey by BrightLocal, 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Similar to word of mouth promotion, sometimes you just need to ask for a rating or review. A great example of this is the Apple experience on iOS devices – if you’ve ever installed an App from Apple’s App Store you’ll occasionally get an in-App request to provide a review. This is because the App publishers know just how important ratings and reviews are!
When a visitor or customer is leaving the site this is a great opportunity quickly ask them for a review:
- Most likely they are already authenticated and asking for a review can be a simple as requesting a rating and comment on a product they have already purchased.
While ratings and reviews are typically thought of as B2C capabilities more and more businesses recognize the value of rating and reviews for their services and products too!
8. Request feedback on experience
A visitor is leaving your site. Do you know why they are leaving? Did they find what they are looking for? Do they need more help?
Exit Intent provides the perfect opportunity for you to quickly ask the visitor why they are leaving:
- This could be as simple as a Net Promoter Score with a comment box or it could be a request to complete a more in-depth survey.
9. Cross sell and up sell
If you have ever purchased a product from Amazon, you know they do a very good job at cross selling and up selling related products. Similar to personalization, the moment a visitor is leaving your site is your last opportunity to help them find products and resources that they may be interested in, but were unaware of.
Exit Intent cross sell and up sell should focus on:
- What products (or content) did other consumers select that this visitor did not select.
- What products are highly related to this product that the buyer may also find beneficial?
While Exit Intent does not provide the capabilities to determine the answers to those questions, it does create the opportunity to help promote them.
10. Learn about customer behavior
The overriding goal of Exit Intent, along with other interrupt driven marketing tools like Welcome Mat, is to increase your Conversion Rate Optimization. All of these tools help you understand your customers better. This can include metrics around Exit Intent such as:
- Impressions – the number of times the Exit Intent is shown to users.
- Navigate Away – the number of times no interaction with the Exit Intent takes place.
- Call to Action (CTA) click – the number of times the CTA is clicked.
- Dismiss click – the number of times – and type, e.g. ‘Maybe Later’ – the dismiss button is clicked.
Bonus Tip – Decrease Bounce Rates
In Google Analytics, bounce rate is the percentage of single interaction visits to a website. A bounce rate of greater than 70 percent for a blog or article isn’t unusual.
Visitors bounce because:
- They finished reading your blog post or other content they were interested in
- They didn’t find what they were looking for
- They are price or comparison shopping
- They got distracted and forgot what they were looking for
- They were researching information
An Exit Intent on these pages creates an opportunity to convert a visitor to your newsletter or another offer that entices them to stay.
Learn more about DailyStory’s Exit Intent capabilities.
