INTRODUCTION

1. Capture Lost Sales With Abandoned Cart Emails Directly
2. Capture Lost Sales With Abandoned Cart Emails Across

Content in abandoned cart emails should be personal, with high quality images and a clear call to action to influence a purchase Click To Tweet. If you segmented your list for abandoned cart emails, there is a chance you will have a good idea as to why the customer abandoned cart.

Why we wrote this guide

Abandoned cart emails help retail businesses recover sales from people that add items, then abandon their shopping cart. We wrote this guide for anyone that wants to learn how to get started and maximize their chances for success right out of the gate.

The idea that 70% online consumers engage with your site to the point where they are about to check out and abandon is nerve wracking.

An abandoned cart email conversion rate refers to the percentage of consumers who receive these emails and convert on the opportunity to buy the neglected items. According to a recent study, abandoned cart emails can recover up to 30 percent of lost sales. They only use one abandoned cart email, but as you can see, one is all they need. 15% of their total revenue is coming from this one abandoned cart email. Timing And The Email Funnel From analyzing the top ecommerce stores (at least 10% of their sales revenue is coming from their abandoned cart emails), we get a wide range of variability within.

The Baymard Institute, an eCommerce usability think tank, has aggregated cart abandonment data from various industry sources over the last 9 years. Bad news: Despite major advancements in technology and eCommerce user experience design, the average cart abandonment rate has remained constant.

Industry pundits portray cart abandonment as a problem that costs online retailers billions of dollars in lost revenue every year. Good news: This is an exaggeration.

It's human nature to test the waters before making an online purchase. There's no technology, Shopify plug-in, or perfectly optimized online shopping cart in the world that can eliminate it. We must accept that cart abandonment is a natural part of the eCommerce buying cycle.

What we can do is change our perspective. We need to view shopping cart abandonment as a conversion rate optimization and customer service opportunity.

How? By taking a customer-centric approach. Customers give you an amazing purchase intent signal when they abandon a transaction on your site. Think of cart abandonment emails as your second chance. An abandoned cart email is an opportunity to continue the conversation with an incredibly important group of potential customers.

By building a quality abandoned cart email program, one of three things will happen when you follow up:

1. You'll win the order 10-15% of the time.
2. You'll find out why the customer didn't buy and use this qualitative information to proactively improve your buying process.
3. You'll create a great customer service moment and leave an everlasting impression on the customer.
4. You'll create a positive emotional connection with your prospective customers.

This guide will help you maximize those four outcomes with every cart abandonment email.

In addition, you'll learn to measure the cart abandonment rate on your site, how to identify a higher percentage of customers shopping on your site, and how to calculate the expected ROI of an abandoned cart email solution.

Capture Lost Sales With Abandoned Cart Emails Directly

Fun fact; roughly 70% of all shopping carts filled in an online shopping store are abandoned before the customer completes the checkout process, leaving the products ideally off the shelves and the company’s pocket empty. Shopping cart abandonment is one of online retail’s biggest crutch, the simplicity of walking away from a cart full of products that do not exist in front of you is far too hard to resist for a large number of online shoppers.

These open-ended sales opportunities could make or break a company’s bottom line, so the pressure to return as many abandoned shopping carts back to the customer and through the checkout is real and deserves a closer look.

Capture Lost Sales With Abandoned Cart Emails Across

While there are some preventative measures that can be taken to try and alleviate the number of shopping carts that are left behind, the reality is there will always be a few stragglers in the online world. The solution? Cart abandonment emails! A tactic used by the world’s largest e-commerce business to get their customers back on track.

An abandoned shopping cart email is an email that is sent directly to the customer after their cart has been left idle for a specified amount of time, in an effort to remind the customer of their online shopping cart and encourage them to complete their purchase.

Shopify states that nearly half of all abandoned cart emails are opened and over a third of clicks lead to purchases back on site, a significant recovery for any online store.

So we know that it works, and we know that it’s worth it, but how do you create it?

A proper abandoned cart email should let the customer know what they forgot, and encourage them to complete their purchase without coming off as pushy or invasive. It may be helpful to consider who your company is and what type of personality you would like to convey in order to come up with unique ideas to get your customer’s attention.

A quirky subject line or an eye-catching graphic may be all it takes to separate your email from the rest, but understanding who your customers are and why they may have abandoned their cart is critical in creating a relevant and engaging email.

Check out a few examples of effective abandoned cart emails:

As you can see, these emails are unique and relevant to the brand and product, while still maintaining that personal touch that makes the customer feel spoken to. These emails are engaging and light hearted and still get the point across, making them perfect examples of what your abandoned cart email could look like!

It’s important to note that your abandoned cart email may not always work on the first try, that’s why you should prepare a second and third email to send off to the customer to increase your chances of getting their attention and saving that sale.

A good rule of thumb to follow is the 3-day window. This strategy is used by many of the top e-commerce companies to grab the attention of their customers, without being pushy or overwhelming them. Consider sending the second email 24 hours after the first is sent, and then the third email 72 hours after the first, this is the best way to stay active on your customer while still maintaining that reasonable distance.

Now that you know what abandoned cart emails are, and how to use them, you can create your own and start saving those lost sales on your e-commerce website.