As described in one of our previous post, we are in the process of releasing some new features for Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce. Continuing on the same lines we have released version 7.9.0 of Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce (Refer here for changelog). With version 7.9.0 we have started to focus on other recovery mediums apart from just emails and so we have introduced a recovery mechanism via SMS.
Why SMS Integration?
Most folks with a cell phone are within arms reach of their phone 24 hours a day. (Take a look at your own phone – I’m willing to bet it’s pretty close!) So after considering this in mind, we have integrated Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce with Twilio to send reminder SMS to recover the lost sales.
Here is one fact which will convince you to try out SMS medium for recovering carts. (Source: txtsignal)
98% of text messages are read within 2 minutes.
If you consider a 24 hour period that read rate nears about 100%. Comparing this with email where the read rate is near about 20%, SMS definitely gives an upper edge.
So from the above stats, the next question comes is Why not SMS!!
Configure your account
We have integrated with Twilio to send reminder SMS. After you register your account with Twilio, you can go to Advanced Settings tab (introduced in version 7.9.0) and add your API credentials available from Twilio.
More about the configuration and setup can be found out in our detailed documentation here.
Setup SMS templates
Similar to email templates, we have an option where you can create your own SMS templates. Based on our research and what trends are adapted by the e-commerce store owners, we have provided 2 SMS templates by default which can be used as is to start going.
Performance Improvements
Apart from these changes, we make sure we are up to mark when it comes to performance. In 7.9.0 we have tried to improve the performance on the checkout page so that the user information is captured and the user is still able to complete the order seamlessly.
