Ecommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery [3 Email Templates]
With approximately $4 trillion worth of products abandoned in online shopping carts last year, one thing is clear – shopping cart abandonment continues to plague ecommerce stores.
But with 68% of online carts being abandoned, a huge remarketing opportunity presents itself. In a recent study, Business Insider estimated that about
63% of abandoned products can be recovered by savvy ecommerce marketers.
Being a savvy ecommerce marketer doesn't mean sending the default abandoned cart email. To get more sales you need to use an advanced email marketing app that allows you to send a series of emails. People are too busy and inboxes are too full for one email to get you sales.
To craft the perfect abandoned cart email series, you must first consider that customers abandon their carts for a variety of reasons. A study by UPS and comScore found the top 5 reasons why customers abandon their online shopping carts were:
- Unexpected shipping costs or conditions at checkout
- Browsing for a better price elsewhere
- Didn't want to create an account to purchase
- Preferred payment was not offered
- Got distracted and forgot to complete the order
As you can see, there isn't a one-size-fits-all email that will solve your cart abandonment issues. By sending a series of emails you're able to customize and combine offers to win-back customers who could have left for different reasons. We recommend sending the following three emails to increase your abandoned cart recovery and boost sales for your store.
Email 1: Reminder
72% of customers who buy from abandoned cart emails convert in the first 24 hours, so don't waste any time! Send your first abandoned cart email 1 hour after your customer leaves your site.
Many ecommerce marketers make the mistake of offering a discount in their first email. When you're using the default single abandoned cart email, that might be your best shot at getting a sale. But if you have the ability to send a series, you'll be throwing away your profit unnecessarily.
When constructing this email include:
- A photo of the product
- Link back to their cart
- Your customer service contact information
Email 2: Free Shipping Offer
Shipping costs are the top reason why customers abandon items in their cart. If you're able to offer free shipping on an order, do it on this email. For orders that don't meet a minimum free shipping threshold, you're not out of luck. Use this email to cross-sell and encourage customers to increase their order value to meet your free shipping threshold.
Amazon (the best email marketers in the world) attribute 35% of their revenue to cross-sell recommendations. Cross-selling in your abandoned cart emails will recover lost sales, increase your average order value, and boost revenue for your store.
Like your first email, send this one within 24 hours. Doing otherwise is throwing away a valuable sales opportunity. As a bonus, include promotional branding stating what makes your products unique, why you're awesome, and what your customers say about your products.
Email 3: Hail Mary Discount
Still no purchase? It's likely that your customer is price-sensitive and a discount will push them over the line. It's time to consider how much you're willing to give up to make a sale. We've found that abandoned cart emails with discount offers 10% and up or free shipping recover the most sales.Once you've decided on a discount offer the next step is adding urgency. Add one or a combination of these elements in your discount abandoned cart email:
- "Your discount expires on..."
- "This item sells out fast... "
- "Items in your cart are almost sold out"
- "Cart expires in 24 hours"
- "Items are low in stock so we can't hold your cart"
It's a good idea to include a link to a short survey in this email asking customers why they didn't complete their purchase. Doing so will provide you with data to further optimize your abandoned cart emails in the future.
What's Next?
These three emails are a great place to start when building your abandoned carts email series, but our advice to you is to test, test, test. If something’s not working, change it, if something is working go with it, or improve on it. Once you’ve got these emails sorted, why not take a(nother) look at how you can build an engaged list of email subscribers.
Looking for an email solution that integrates with your ecommerce platform so that you can send emails that get you more sales? SmartrMail offers an advanced abandoned cart email series with personalised product recommendations, in addition to quick and easy newsletters and automated flows, and, it's their ecommerce-first platform is fully integrated with Neto. By combining your customers' purchase history with on-site tracking and email data, SmartrMail helps advertise the right products, to the right customers, at the right time.