Abandoned online shopping carts – how to exploit them without breaching the law

The Privacy Act, the Spam Act, and industry codes all affect how you use the details of online shoppers who have abandoned their shopping carts before completing the sale.

Online customers can sometimes enter their names, phone numbers, and perhaps other contact details to start an order via a website, but, on the check-out page (usually where credit card information is requested), then decide to exit the website without completing their orders.

Instead of seeing this as a missed sale, savvy online retailers see these abandoned shopping carts as a valuable target for sales revenue.

A simple but powerful marketing tool for a business is to contact those individuals, using the details provided, in the hope of closing the sales.