Our Choice
TargetBay
Overview
TargetBay specializes in many services including email marketing, retargeting ads, designing and triggering pop-ups to improve conversion rates, building user-generated content, personalizing product recommendations for specific shoppers, and using Instagram to direct shoppers and increase conversion rates. Each service they provide is under its own name. For example, email marketing, which TargetBays biggest success, is under the service BayEngage. BayEngage has over 300 fully customizable email templates which help acquire more customers, recover abandoned carts, and incentivize and engage lost customers. BayEngage uses powerful segmentation to send emails at the right time. These emails also generate customer conversations for new customers and help companies remind customers of abandoned carts or follow-up emails about products or sales. To increase the open and click-through rates of the emails, BayEngage A/B tests their messages. Email marketing under BayEngage is the most popular feature of TargetBay.
Price
$0 - $299
Highlight
TargetBay specializes in many services including email marketing, retargeting ads, designing and triggering pop-ups to improve conversion rates, building user-generated content, personalizing product recommendations for specific shoppers, and using Instagram to direct shoppers and increase conversion rates. Each service they provide is under its own name. For example, email marketing, which TargetBays biggest success, is under the service BayEngage. BayEngage has over 300 fully customizable email templates which help acquire more customers, recover abandoned carts, and incentivize and engage lost customers. BayEngage uses powerful segmentation to send emails at the right time. These emails also generate customer conversations for new customers and help companies remind customers of abandoned carts or follow-up emails about products or sales. To increase the open and click-through rates of the emails, BayEngage A/B tests their messages. Email marketing under BayEngage is the most popular feature of TargetBay.
TargetBay which includes BayEngage, BayPics, BayReviews, BaySmart, BayServe, and BayAds, integrates with multiple platforms. If an e-commerce company uses Shopify, Magento, smile.io, WooCommerce, 3D cart, Big Commerce, Volusion, Instagram, AdRoll, or Google, their website will easily integrate without any developer support and the company can start using TargetBays tool sets immediately.
In one of TargetBays features, BaySmart, they created a tailored e-commerce experience that inspires visitors to continue shopping. For example, they recommend products a customer wants to see on a company's e-commerce website. The product recommendation engine is powered by an algorithm that is backed by real-time data- it compares the current customer to other customers who have similar navigation patterns on the site. Companies can design their own recommendations with colors, themes, and space availability. Once a company is satisfied with the template they made, they can generate a code and place the recommendation on the website anywhere. These templates can be placed on different pages and anywhere on the page to keep the customer navigating the website. A recommendation can pop up instead of a customer losing interest in the site because the product they wanted isn't in stock anymore. The type of recommendation that is suggested to visitors matters- BaySmart can recommend most rated products, most bought products, highest rated products, most viewed products, etc. A company using BaySmart seems to have a lot of control over how this service plays out.
Using TargetBays feature BayAds, companies can use AdRoll integration for website retargeting. Companies are able to manage their own retargeting campaigns from inside the TargetBay back end. BayAds uses product reviews, coupons, and product recommendations in their retargeting ads. BayAds can get customers to click back into the website if they leave and head to a different site by using cookies to retarget customers. Within the company's website, BayAds can recommend customers to click on products that they previously clicked on. Companies can create their own custom audiences using BayAds marketing segmentation. The segmentation groups customers into three segments, browsing abandonment, cart abandonment, and purchase upsell. BayAds retargeting compared to other companies is more specific, because they include more details in their recommendations like customer reviews and ratings. Because of this, companies have seen a 32% increase in the click-through rate by using BayAds dynamic ads.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
The way TargetBay breaks down their pricing can be seen as a pro-if a company only needs help with engaging customers through email marketing, they can choose BankEngage. If a company needs help with retargeting ads they can choose to only subscribe to BayAds. Competitors don't have this option. TargetBay allows companies to only pay for the service they need.
BayEngage has over 300 email templates that are fully customizable for companies to send to their visitors. The emails have the ability to recommend products and engage customers to click on the website page and shop.
TargetBay is advertised to be trusted by thousands of companies online- they have examples, companies testimonials, and case study examples.
TargetBay has automated the entire cart abandonment process by creating tools to get shoppers back onto a companies website, back into their carts, and shopping. This can be seen as a pro because it allows companies that use TargetBay services to have control over the templates and algorithms. Since there aren? live agents helping customers 1 on 1, there is no room for human error and companies can regulate what their customers are seeing.
Cons:
There are no company reviews on the TargetBay website. There is only a TargetBay case study page with six success stories, a commentary from the co-founder of TargetBay on their company being in the news (which can be seen as biased), and a sentence that explains how thousands of eCommerce brands and retailers trust TargetBay, with a shortlist of nine companies shown.
The way that TargetBay set's up their monthly pricing can also be seen as a con because they're breaking up their services to make more money instead of offering these services and features in a single monthly or annual plan. The way that they describe their pricing on their website is also very visually confusing because of the product breakdown.
TargetBay prides its company on email marketing and email templates, but emails are checked less than texts and they can feel and easily be sent to spam. Their method of marketing can feel outdated for a company that compares their services with competitors using SMS.
Customer service isn't really advertised on TargetBay's website. TargetBay has more of an automated feel where companies can fill out templates to get retargeting results, or companies can pick how many emails they want to be sent to their customers per month and customize the email, and then it's sent. It feels like TargetBay is the most automated of all the companies. Also, TargetBays website is confusing to navigate and has several mistakes- which can be unattractive to a company that is trying to hire a service to help their own website.
Cart Text
Overview
CartText captures lost revenue for brands by contacting companies customers by text to purchase lost items in their cart or renew forgotten subscriptions. Real CartText agents will live contact customers and turn their lost carts into sales that companies wouldn't otherwise have the time to do. By installing the Cart Text app to their website, companies can immediately start gaining lost revenue. The live agents also will communicate with the company's customers to figure out solutions to close the sale- if there were problems with shipping, stock, etc- and they help companies save up to 21% of abandoned carts.
Highlight
CartText captures lost revenue for brands by contacting companies customers by text to purchase lost items in their cart or renew forgotten subscriptions. Real CartText agents will live contact customers and turn their lost carts into sales that companies wouldn't otherwise have the time to do. By installing the Cart Text app to their website, companies can immediately start gaining lost revenue. The live agents also will communicate with the company's customers to figure out solutions to close the sale- if there were problems with shipping, stock, etc- and they help companies save up to 21% of abandoned carts.
CartText uses quick SMS and video Messaging to connect to customers who have items in their shopping carts but if not checked out or customers who have cancelled subscriptions. CartText has a text message open rate of 98% and a response rate of 45%. The quick SMS messaging or video chat messaging option allows for a faster better customer service experience that is not automated.The fact that the agents are Real people makes the messages to customers feel more personalized and less robotic. The conversations allow for agents to convert missed sales by also giving companies conversation reports to understand why they are losing sales. CartText also integrates conversation visibility which allows for companies to live view the conversations that the agents are having with their customers.
CartText doesn? cost you a monthly or annual subscription, making an account is completely free and they make you money you would otherwise lose. However, CartText takes 10% of your lost customer cart revenue and if your company is subscription based they take 5% of the renewed subscription. As a company you have to pay 10% or 5% which can fluctuate depending on how much revenue they recover.
Texting is quicker than email. The conversation and connection that is provided by text message is more personal and quicker than email marketing. The open rate of text messages is way higher than the open rate of emails. Customers can also get an easy to use by text discount code for their cart purchase.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
A customer service extension to any company that returns companies money they would have lost, without the company having to do any extra work, hiring out, paying more salaries. CartText is a very quick way of protecting and rerouting customer experience to purchasing rather than abandoning carts or subscription. It? also the most personal way that companies are able to reach their customers without directly speaking to them. CartText? live team specializes in the importance of quick and persuasive customer service. Companies using CartText put in minimal effort to get revenue they would have never had the time, employees, and possibly technology to get back.
CartText is a user friendly site. Once companies log into their personal CartText and make a free account, it's very simple to use and navigate. The menu bar on the side allows the company to control their personal dashboard which shows them how much revenue they?e making back, conversations they?e involved in with customers, and it allows them to track introduction and response rates.
When CartText agents contact customers, the customer receives a unique one-time discount code for their purchase which creates incentive for the customer to buy what? in their cart or renew their subscription. This feature allows for customers to also feel the experience is more personal, real, engagement is 1 on 1. Customers receiving a one-time discount they wouldn? otherwise receive is definitely motivation to purchase lost cart items, and even add to their cart.
CartText collects advanced conversation insights and reports between contacted customers and their agents. These conversation insights and reports focus on collecting what customers say repeatedly and highlight keywords that companies can review to improve on future sales. This advanced conversation collection brings companies data they would otherwise miss. This feature is huge for companies to understand how to maximize on sales in the future and why items stay in customers carts.
Cons:
CartText has an 98% open rate and a 48% response rate, and they don't mention follow through. Based on this percentage, companies customers may think these texts are scams after opening, or they are annoyed, or feel an invasion of privacy. If customers didn? opt into the CartText service and they received a text from the ecommerce site they almost bought from (the company that opted into using CartText) the low response rate may be due to privacy breached. Customers don? always like receiving texts from random numbers- especially from people trying to get them to shop. This is proved in the data.
They do mention that 21% of lost revenue is returned to companies on average, but that doesn't mean companies always receive this big of a percentage. 21% is still better than no percent, but it? not very reliable as a company to see this on the CartText site. On top of this, if CartText receives 5%-10% of lost revenue based on the company's ecommerce or subscription based set up, that could make a company feel used.
There's a lack of company reviews on the Cart Text website. When a company scrolls down to the ?ear From Our Clients·section there are six reviews and there is misspelling in two of them. All of the reviews have five stars and there's no way of knowing if they're real. The credibility of Cart Text is lacking.
Companies customers forget about their carts or subscriptions for a reason. They either can't pay for what is in their carts or what their subscription is, or they just don't care enough to buy what? in their cart or renew their subscription. Even with the one-time discount that is provided by CartText, it? proven in their own data that the turn around is only 21% of lost revenue. If a company's product is good enough that a customer wouldn? forget about it, or a subscription is worth it, then a company shouldn? have to hire a secondary company like CartText to fight for lost revenue.
Live Recover
Overview
LiveRecover is powered by real people and contacts, gauges, and converts abandoned customer carts into sales for the company. LiveRecover is able to carry out customer service work that a company wouldn't have time to do, and they convert 21% of lost carts into returned revenue without taking a percentage. LiveRecover follows up with customers manually via text that has items in online shopping bags but hasn't purchased. LiveRecover agents collect their contact information when customers personally input their information at check out. LiveRecover agents have a goal to answer questions about the product they were trying to buy and then help them purchase.
Price
$49 - $99+/mo.
Highlight
LiveRecover is powered by real people and contacts, gauges, and converts abandoned customer carts into sales for the company. LiveRecover is able to carry out customer service work that a company wouldn't have time to do, and they convert 21% of lost carts into returned revenue without taking a percentage. LiveRecover follows up with customers manually via text that has items in online shopping bags but hasn't purchased. LiveRecover agents collect their contact information when customers personally input their information at check out. LiveRecover agents have a goal to answer questions about the product they were trying to buy and then help them purchase.
LiveRecover converts 21% of abandoned carts into revenue for companies. Without LiveRecover agents doing this work, companies would continue to lose this revenue. 21% is better than no percent. LiveRecover doesn't take any percentage of the recovered revenue and they provide companies customers with a discount code, creating hesitant customers into committed shoppers. The discount provided is decided by the company, which can be percentage-based or give customers a free shipping code.
LiveRecover offers features conversation reports and full conversation visibility, which allows for companies to watch agents and customer conversations in real-time. The reports show extracted key phrases to identify common questions or concerns that customers have. This creates insights for companies and helps companies avoid these problems in the future, so their customers will purchase before abandoning their cart. LiveRecover also provides cart segmentation which is powerful segmentation based on specific cart conditions and a custom cart URL which allows for a custom cart domain of the company's choice.
LiveRecover advertises on their website having 2000+ eCommerce brands using their service. This is a high number and is a highlight because it would help other ecommerce companies see the credibility in subscribing to LiveRecover for their company. A growing clientele hopefully equates to a company that is doing what they advertise.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
LiveRecover has a straightforward website. They explain way better on their website how their service works, compared to all other competitors. They show companies a step-by-step process of how they convert 21% of abandoned carts into returned revenue. They also layout for companies exact features with descriptions in a very straightforward way. They have a user-friendly site that can easily attract companies to use their service over competitors.
The LiveRecover segmentation feature allows for specific customers to be reached out to by category. For example, companies can input to target specific customers based on their cart conditions. Segmentation by customer type -first time or recurring- which is based on orders associated with the customer. Where the shopper is shopping from or shipping to- this is based on the shipping address provided by the customer. Segmentation can be based on the customer's cart value- which is the price of the customer's cart before tax and shipping prices. Another feature in segmentation, allows companies to target carts based on specific customer tags- wholesale, on sale, etc. Powerful segmentation is definitely a pro at LiveRecover for companies that want to sort through which customers to reach out to using a simple segmentation process.
LiveRecover has real agents working for your company seven days a week, contacting your customers, and creating incredible opportunities to make and create better relationships with customers. The real-time aspect is better than an automated text from a robot because it allows customers to ask hard questions they may hesitate to ask a robot. A live agent from LiveRecover can also negotiate better than an automated text or robot. People may feel more of responsibility so respond to an actual person than to an automated text message. Automated messages feel like spam.
LiveRecover allows you to book a demo with their service. This demo is for the LiveRecover team to answer questions, show a quick demo, and help companies decide if LifeRecover is a good option for their company. Some companies might not understand what this service really does- this is a helpful tool.
Cons:
Text message marketing is more effective than e-mail marketing based on their statistics, however, it can be seen as spam. The statistics that LiveRecover can be used against them as well. With only a 48% text message response rate and a 21% recovered revenue, these statistics can point to the number of people who don? want to use this service, don? trust it, or are simply annoyed that their number is being used by yet another company. LiveRecover doesn't show the statistic of how many people follow through with a purchase from the 48% response rate- they just include that there is 21% recovered revenue.
LiveRecover is the only company that has a monthly fee and that also takes a percentage of the company's returned revenue. This is seen within LiveRecover's first two subscription plans and not specified in their enterprise custom plan which is annual. This is most likely the least attractive model for a company to see because it's fairly obvious that LiveRecover is trying to get you to spend more and upgrade to a higher monthly plan. It is also obvious because LiveRecover starts by taking 10% in the first plan of $49/mo and then lowering that number to 5% for $99/mo. As the price of the plan goes up the percent of revenue goes down that LiveRecver takes, which ends up evening out. This is the least attractive model I think a company could see if choosing between LiveRecover and its competitors.
The 14-day trial or $500 in recovered sales- whichever happens first- from LiveRecover is possibly an unattractive option for a company trying to test out this service. If an agent can get a customer to spend $500 in one sale, that means that their free trial would be possibly shorter than the 14-day period. $500 is not a lot of recovered revenue and doesn't necessarily prove anything to a company on a trial.
LiveRecover only has two monthly plans and then the Enterprise Custom option requires an annual commitment. The option of going from a free trial to $49/mo is a big step, and then from there going to $99/mo is a jump. There should be another option between the $49/mo and $99/month option or another option between the $99/mo and the Enterprise Custom option because of it's annual. A company trying LiveRecover only has two monthly options and one annual option to choose from.
Optimonk
Overview
Optimonk is an all-in-one online optimization platform to grow eCommerce revenue for companies. They do this by creating customer service shopping experiences that build trust and get customers to buy. Optimonk specializes in Personalization, A/B testing, advanced segmentation, and provides other advanced features all in one subscription. They offer many services all for monthly/annual prices- the more the company pays in their monthly/annual plan the more features the company can use from Optimonk.
Price
Free - $29/mo.
Highlight
Optimonk is an all-in-one online optimization platform to grow eCommerce revenue for companies. They do this by creating customer service shopping experiences that build trust and get customers to buy. Optimonk specializes in Personalization, A/B testing, advanced segmentation, and provides other advanced features all in one subscription. They offer many services all for monthly/annual prices- the more the company pays in their monthly/annual plan the more features the company can use from Optimonk.
OptiMonk increases sales by converting new visitors into first-time buyers and existing customers into repeat buyers. They do this by promoting special offers, fighting cart abandonment, recommending products, and redirecting visitors. OptiMonk reinforces customer calls to action by making the company's websites work as personalized digital assistants- by presenting the best offers for companies' customers to leading them to the most important landing pages. OptiMonk also drives immediate sales by displaying incentive for the customer to purchase before leaving the site. The incentives- like coupons will pop up which drives and redirect traffic to the best cart converting pages. Optimonk leads site visitors to bestsellers, latest deals, and seasonal offers which can also help improve the customer's experience on a company's website and increase sales.
OptiMonk collects email sign-ups which help drive more immediate sales and allows companies to gather potential customers' emails to turn website visitors into actual customers with future email marketing. Optimonk can subscribe visitors to Facebook messenger lists and get up to 10x more engagement than with just email marketing. OptiMonk also provides a "save your cart" option which is a message that pops up on the visitor's screen before they leave the site. This option allows the visitors to save their car for later by providing their email. A link to their saved cart will be sent via email and then they can finish shopping later on by clicking the link.
OptiMonk promotes limited-time offers and countdown timers to enhance a call to action. OptiMonk also recommends products to clients that are personalized to each individual shopper and algorithms that dynamically recommend products for the visitors based on the most popular or their most recently viewed product on the site. The algorithms create specific recommendations for customers which is an automated feature. OptiMonk creates solutions for first-time visitors reminding visitors where they left off and promoting best sellers in general Opti Monk has a big solution to recommending products on companies' websites. They're also able to redirect visitors' questions in pop-ups, sticky bars, and side messages. They also have event triggering that redirect visitors at the right moment if they're about to leave a company's site, are scrolling down on a website, or about to click a specific button.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
OptiMonk has the highest number of customers advertised at over 40,000 websites (companies) using their service. OptiMonk also has 18,000,000 plus conversions per day from 150+ Countries. They have a huge list of customer stories on their website showing revenue growth from abandoned carts, increased sales, larger email lists, higher subscriber lists, and high conversion rates of visitors to customers. They appear to be the leading service amongst competitors.
OptiMonk also advertises as an award-winning service that promotes high credibility. They have five-star user reviews on Capterra. Five stars on Shopify. They were awarded #1 Product of the week with Product Hunt. They were awarded the best functionality and features with the 2020 GetApp award. They were also awarded the winter 2020 High Performer award.
OptiMonk has the most services provided in singular bundles. Compared to TargetBay, for example, which has bundles that exclude services and divide services a lot to get companies to pay more monthly or annually for separate bundles.
Opti monk focuses on connecting companies with their visitors by turning the website into a digital assistant that communicates directly with visitors and makes announcements, increasing forms submissions, increasing social engagement on Facebook, and creating audiences on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Linked In. OptiMonk gets site visitors to sign up to a company's Facebook Messenger list by using a ?end to Messenger·button instead of or along with the email form field.
Cons:
Reviewed on other sites to have long response times in customer service. The customer service might not be as one on one as other competitors advertise. Having live agents in real-time and being able to message customers right away like LiveRecover or CartText can be important. This type of service that OptiMum provides with messenger can easily backfire and create frustrated customers if there is a long response time. If OptiMonk is going to provide instant customer service, they have to follow through with connecting customers to buying company products as quickly as possible.
OptiMonk advertises a lot of services that can be replicated by the company they are selling to. For example, they advertise the ability to increase social engagement, which is probably true, but any company can put social sharing icons or following icons on the bottom of their website, or create and embed YouTube videos, or create pop-ups on their site.
Like OptiMonk, any company can promote its own special offers, coupons, and incentives without the help of a monthly or annual service. Companies can create email marketing and coupons and incentivize their customers easily. It will be more general, but they can still do it without OptiMonk.
OptiMonk's targeting options might feel like spam to the customer with email marketing, calls, SMS coupons, etc.