It’s been a busy week, so this will be a short article. I’ve been head down on a few big projects and having a newborn is hard (but incredibly rewarding) work. Who could have guessed?

I wrote last year about “abandoned carts” - consumers who visit your portal, click around and leave without making payment. E-commerce companies have become incredibly sophisticated in their efforts to re-engage people who view items and leave without completing a purchase. Why not learn from their example and apply these tactics to our recovery efforts?

The applications for the ARM industry are real - and reflect the very human nature of effectively understanding the consumers we are attempting to build a connection with. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of consumers who visit our portal and leave without a payment.

Some people get distracted. Their kid (or boss) walks in, their break ends, or they get distracted and lose you among the 47 other browser tabs they have open.

Some are checking their options on their phone and want to revisit their options when they get home and have time to think. 79% of our portal visitors are on their phone and I’d be that we’re not unique there.

Some aren’t sure if the payment plan (or settlement offer) will work for their budget and need a day to figure it out.

All these consumers fully intend to come back, probably to pay. But will they remember to do it?

Some consumers, probably more than we want to admit, aren’t yet convinced. They’re not certain that the debt is real, our company is legitimate or that now is the right time to resolve their debt.

These consumers need subtle nudges across several touch points (and often communication channels) to conclude that this is real AND worth their action.

I knew in my bones that abandoned cart efforts would help in all of these cases by providing that friendly nudge. That reinforcement of our legitimacy. That well-timed reminder.

Now I have the data to prove it.

A few months back, we turned on automated abandoned cart emails through our payment portal vendor. (Shout out to Tratta - Josh, I know you read this 😉). The results exceeded my already high expectations.

Longtime readers know that I love a good funnel chart. Here’s our abandoned cart email funnel data:

$12.23 collected (and $23.26 promised in future-dated scheduled payments) per email sent. $56k paid and $107k promised via recurring payment plans. Essentially for free, on autopilot.

Maybe we would have gotten some of these payments anyway. Maybe. I’m glad we don’t need to find out.

These numbers aren’t business altering. We don’t have clients calling us asking what we magically did to boost our recovery rate for them. But they are impactful - and growing at an increasing rate as we continue to hone our digital communications and drive more consumers to our portal.

Quick reminder: Not every consumer who leaves the portal without paying should get an abandoned cart email. May people have payment plans ongoing and are just logging in to check their balance. And you probably don’t want to send an abandoned cart email to a consumer whose last action on the portal was to submit a dispute!

So basic abandoned cart emails are highly effective. What’s the next step? In a word, personalization.

We know which channel (email, text, etc.) drove the consumer to our portal. We know they respond well to that channel - I want to use that channel (or their preferred one if they’ve indicated to us they have a preference) to push the abandoned cart message.

We also know which pages they viewed on our portal and which page they last viewed before they left. We can tailor our content in the abandoned cart message to align with their experience before they left our portal.

For example, if their last action was to view available payment plans, send a message highlighting the benefits of payment plans.

If their last action was to review a settlement offer, send a message emphasizing that the offer is only available for a limited time (if that’s truly the case, that is).

Consumers who just visited our portal for the first time probably benefit from different messaging than those who have visited seven times without a payment.

The options are endless.

I’m excited to get building. Here’s to a future deep dive debrief on those efforts in a future article!

I introduced a new tool I created: AIInCollections.com. It’s a free, community-powered idea bank packed with real AI use cases for the collections/AR industry. I filled it with dozens of ideas you can draw inspiration from and implement today, each with tools used, cost estimates and difficulty ratings. And more will be added each day from users. Check it out here.

Are we on the same wavelength? Check out EngageARM.com for free resources in-depth tutorials to help you build a highly-effective recovery department.

I’d like to close this with a quick ask. If you enjoyed this, please share with a colleague. If you disliked it, let me know why. All feedback is good feedback, after all.

Cheers,

Nate

EngageARM.com