Andy Mai: Growing Sales Using Abandoned Cart Automations

Andy Mai is a 20 year-old entrepreneur from Sydney, Australia who got into eCommerce roughly 2.5 years ago. He was at a stage where he was doing a lot of buying and selling, making money from flipping clothing on eBay. After a while, he decided it was time to take the next step and began watching videos like “how to make $100 a day at 18.” Dropshipping just kept coming up again and again. 

“Eventually I just googled what dropshipping was, really enjoyed the business idea and model and I just gave it a try. It took roughly 6 months to crack. After I cracked the code of dropshipping, I found my first winner and I was able to make money from dropshipping — the rest has been history.” 

Andy’s first Shopify store was Superhero Merch Co. Since he was a huge fan of Marvel and DC, his passion led him towards selling superhero compression shirts, and imported AliExpress items. After some reevaluation, he scrapped the store and opened his second store selling health and fitness goods such as compression pants and backpacks for cyclists. However, he was unable to scale a winning product, so the store ended up turning into a general store. Andy began adding LED masks, kitchen products, and various other items and managed to scale the store to $300,000. 

After that, he transitioned into another general store, Trendy Sumo, and since then made the decision to share his knowledge and experience with clients, helping maximize their profit margins, reaching sales upwards of $2.5 million. Andy also started his own brand of stores including Music Chests which sells handmade chests playing top hits and movie soundtracks. 

“When it comes to managing many things, I make sure I only transition and add another task once I’ve automated and solidified one thing. I never add another task or project to the plate, unless everything I have is very steady. When everything is plateau that’s when I start adding things to my schedule to get the ball rolling. I drop two days off on Saturday and Wednesday. I use those days to catch up on work or just do whatever I want. Locking those two days has really allowed me to breathe.”

Discovering Yotpo SMSBump

Andy stumbled upon Yotpo SMSBump from a friend’s recommendation, praising the app for its amazing results. He was encouraged to download it and start playing around with the different features. Soon enough, Andy realized that text marketing was going to play a huge role when it came to running his business. 

“I’ve been using the app on and off over the past year with clients and some of my old stores and the results have been amazing! The abandoned cart automation has brought me an extra 10% in revenue. In addition, monthly campaigns - launching text blasts has been able to add another 10% on top.”

Andy used to regularly launch email campaigns, but comments that the results were nowhere near what they are with Yotpo SMSBump. He believes it’s because with SMS marketing the open rates are much higher and with the right incentives, customers take instant action.

The Power of Abandoned Cart Automations

The Yotpo SMSBump feature Andy uses the most is the Abandoned Cart automation. In fact, his first tip to someone starting out with SMS marketing is to set it up, forget about it, and see recovered sales flow in. He advises to stay away from sending out monthly campaigns when just starting out, as it requires greater marketing knowledge and experience. With the abandoned checkout automation, you stick to customers who already have intent to purchase your item, and you can always retarget them afterwards. 

Andy’s abandoned cart strategy is a three-step sequence. He sets up his first abandoned cart automation after a few hours of an abandoned order. The second, after 1-2 days, and the third, a week after a customer has abandoned their order. The final SMS really tries to get the customer to complete the purchase, it’s their last chance, so you must give them an amazing deal to lock them in. Andy explains:

“Even if you break even, and you’ve given them a $10-15 coupon, that’s OK because you’ll be able to make that money back through your monthly text campaigns that you’ll keep targeting them with. It’s about gradually increasing incentives, discounts and adding pressure over time. Basically, when you send enough texts, it will hit the trigger.” 

First abandoned cart SMS:
 

“Hey you left this item in your cart, would you like to come back and purchase it? {AbandonedCheckoutUrl}”

Second abandoned cart SMS:
 

“Hey we noticed this item is still in your cart - we’re saving it for you! Due to the Christmas holidays here’s an extra $5 coupon: {AbandonedCheckoutUrl}”

Third abandoned cart SMS:
 

“Your item will soon sell out! We want to secure you as a loyal customer, so here’s a 30% discount: {AbandonedCheckoutUrl}”

Gaining New Subscribers and Segmenting 

To grow subscribers at a fast rate, Andy advises those new to SMS marketing to use Yotpo SMSBump’s email converter tool and blast everyone on their email list to get them to opt in to text marketing. 

“You want to incentivize them saying, hey if you opt in, we’ll give you a $5 coupon you can use in the next 7 days. You can do the exact same thing with your Instagram followers, using the shareable link growth tool.”

Another great way to grow your SMS subscribers is with giveaways. Andy highly recommends launching giveaways and competitions on Instagram, for three reasons: growing followers, growing subscriber list, and building brand awareness. 

“What you should do is give away a package of a wide variety of hot items, get people to #1 endorse to qualify by following your instagram page, #2 tag three friends, #3 opt in to SMS marketing.”

Andy is currently taking a simple approach to segmentation and splits his SMS subscribers based on different niches. Since he manages several stores, if for example, he has a winning product in an electronics store he would focus on creating a segment around that store. When a holiday comes around, he would send everyone who’s in that segment, deals on cool gadgets and technical related products. 

Eventually, Andy plans to grow his team, and have a marketing intern who will create segmented campaigns for each of the audiences based on product interest, and past purchase. He believes that will pull out a much higher conversion rate. 

Why Yotpo SMSBump?

During the onboarding process, apart from receiving some free credits, Andy shares that he most appreciated the premade templates for automations which made things super easy for him when launching his first abandoned cart automation. To summarize his experience he says:

“The return on money spent using the app, is very high. It’s a no brainer. Highly profitable retargeting.”

Connect with Andy

To learn more about Andy and his road to success reach out to him on Instagram, YouTube or book a personal 1 on 1 session.