The internet is brimming with distractions. That means holding an online customer’s attention long enough for them to complete a purchase isn’t always easy.
In 2019, the global online shopping cart cart abandonment rate for all ecommerce sectors was 79.2 percent, up from 75.6 percent in 2017. That means almost four-fifths of online shoppers put items in their carts, but don’t finish the transaction.
Thankfully, you don’t need to simply accept this problem as an inevitable reality of ecommerce. With the right abandoned cart email strategies, you can re-engage customers who failed to complete purchases.
If you’re looking for ways to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate, keep the following tips in mind for crafting the best abandoned cart emails. These will help you boost sales by reminding customers of the value of your product or service so that they complete the purchase. However, before we launch into examples of successful abandoned cart reminder emails, let’s go over the basics.
What is an Abandoned Cart Email?
An abandoned cart email is a sales recovery tactic that sends an automated reminder emails to ecommerce customers who have added products to their cart but failed to check out. People fail to check out for a variety of reasons, and most times accidently; a complicated purchase process, websites crashing, site time outs, and good old fashioned distractions could lure someone away from their cart unexpectedly even if they were intending on making a purchase.
Do Abandoned Cart Emails Work?
Abandoned cart emails can be incredibly useful at capturing potentially lost sales. Almost half of all abandoned cart emails are opened by recipients, according to Salecycle, and over a third of clicks lead to conversions. The ROI on abandoned cart emails is also extremely high: every single abandoned cart email sent delivers over $5 in revenue. It’s safe to say that abandoned cart emails get the job done.
How Do I Email Someone Who's Abandoned a Cart?
Setting up an automated abandoned cart email sequence should be able to be done from most CRMs. You’ll want to set-up an ecommerce trigger whenever items enter a cart on your ecommerce site but are not purchased before the visitor navigates away. From your CRM, you can schedule exactly when these emails will be deployed, and you can integrate with ecommerce tools like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce to track your success and sales. Below you can find an example of an ActiveCampaign abandoned cart series:
When Should You Send Abandoned Cart Emails?
Wondering when to send an abandoned cart email? According to statistics, the sooner, the better. Within an hour of leaving a cart without making a purchase, 90% of leads go cold.
Automate your abandoned cart email rate so customers who are guilty of online shopping cart abandonment receive an email reminder within an hour of exiting your page.
Successful Abandoned Cart Email Examples
Below you’ll find some tips and examples for creating the highest converting abandoned cart emails.
Use Your Emails to Visually Show Their Abandoned Cart
Incorporating visuals and other multimedia elements make your abandoned cart emails stand out in a dynamic way. They can also make a product look more enticing.
Thus, when sending an online shopping cart abandonment email, it helps to include images of the products that are still sitting in the recipient’s cart. Often, people forget about the online purchases they intended to make.
With images, you can remind a customer of an item they meant to buy, while also making it look enticing. Amazon does a good job of this with their abandoned cart emails. You can clearly see the product that was left in the cart with an easy link that takes the recipient right back to checkout.
Source: Pinterest
Focus Abandoned Cart Strategies on Personalization
Even the best abandoned cart emails won’t work if customers don’t open them. That’s why you should always personalize your abandoned cart email subject line with the recipient’s name. According to one study, you can boost open rates by 50% just by including a personalized subject line.
You can still take personalization a step further. This cart abandonment email for a Google Photo Book uses one of the users own photos to entice them to complete the purchase. It’s a mixture of including personalization (what’s more personal than seeing some of your own photography?) and a reminder of the product left in the cart.
Create a Sense of Urgency
Urgency inspires action. That can be a helpful psychological tip to keep in mind when you’re trying to craft your abandoned cart strategy. If an item in a customer’s basket was on sale, remind them of the limited window they have to take advantage of your great deal.
If an item won’t be available forever (e.g. it’s a seasonal offer) or is low in stock, let your customers know. They’ll be more likely to avoid online shopping cart abandonment and finish the purchase if they realize that not doing so could mean missing out on a special offer.
PacSun does a good job of inspiring urgency by reminding the recipient of what item they’re missing out on and writing “Hurry back before they are gone!” insinuating that there’s high demand for the product and that it won’t be available for purchase forever.
Source: Milled
The Best Abandoned Cart Emails Include Reviews
Reviews and testimonials generate social proof, which is the psychological tendency to accept an idea if others express it. If a customer sees that other people have positive things to say about an item in their cart, that item will become more appealing to them.
Including reviews and testimonials is a smart way to improve your current abandoned cart strategy and prevent future cases of shopping cart abandonment. Just be sure you’re being smart about when to send survey emails to gather this valuable feedback.
Mattress company Casper uses a minimalist design with attention-grabbing copy, but better than that, they also include buyer testimonials. It’s a geat, eye-catching anecdote and will likely inspire recipients to click on the link to read more reviews, which will hopefully inspire a completed purchase.
Again, although online shopping cart abandonment is a common problem in ecommerce, it isn’t totally unavoidable. By implementing these abandoned cart email strategies into your retail marketing plan, you’ll get more customers to complete their purchases. In doing so, you’ll substantially boost overall revenue.