A harsh reality that every ecommerce owner faces is the fact that out of 100 ecommerce site visitors who add products in a shopping cart, only 31 will proceed to make a purchase.
Although it is impossible to convert 100% of those with an abandoned shopping cart into customers, something can be done to re-engage them, and one is through an effective abandonment cart email campaign.
With nearly half of abandoned cart emails opened and with over a third leading back to purchases on the site, a lot of potential sales are lost if you do not start creating your own campaign.
Don’t know where to start? Let our 5-step plan below help you out!
Step #1: Create a campaign schedule
Timing is a crucial element in an abandoned cart email campaign.
Studies show that among those who abandon their shopping carts at first but finish their purchase, 72% complete their purchase within 24 hours. Additionally, 95% of people with abandoned shopping carts finally completed their purchase up to two weeks after cart abandonment.
Your campaign schedule should keep up with these shopping cart abandonment statistics, and clearly, sending only one email is not enough.
You can follow a simple abandoned cart email campaign that consists of three emails sent at the following time intervals:
- First email – within 24 hours
- Second email – in 2 days
- Third email – in a week
First email – sent within 24 hours
As the initial point of contact, the first cart abandonment email you send should be written in a gentle and caring tone. It’s not the yet the time to force your potential customers to buy their abandoned products, but a time to figure out why they left.
Let them know the products they left in their cart and show product images and links to your site. Include your contact details as well so they know how to contact you for any questions they may have. Check out this example from boohoo.com.
You might wonder – why is it important to send the first email within 24 hours?
Unless the products you sell require a lot of research, like laptops and smartphones, sending an email immediately after cart abandonment may be too soon. Your potential shoppers may still be browsing your site or researching, and you definitely do not want to get in the way of their shopping process.
On the other hand, if you wait more than 24 hours to send the first email, they may have forgotten their shopping cart with you and have proceeded to purchase from someone else.
Second email – sent in 2 days
Since you are emailing your potential customers again because the first one failed to convert, your second cart abandonment email is now your opportunity to add urgency and scarcity to your tone.
For urgency, remind them again of the products they left in the cart and tell them that if they don’t proceed to checkout, their items will be sold to others.
For scarcity, throw in a time-bound incentive to complete the purchase, such as free shipping or guaranteed returns.
Third email – sent in a week
As the final follow-up in the campaign, your third cart abandonment email should offer a bolder call to action and an incentive that’s harder to resist, such as a big price off in exchange of completing the purchase. Take a stronger tone, such as this one from Smiley Cookie.
Your emails may have different purposes each time one is sent out one, but what’s important is each of these emails are personalized and focused on just one action – for the person to go back to the abandoned shopping cart and complete their purchase.
Step #2: Have a captivating email subject line
First things first. Obvious as it may be, but it is essential to make your brand identifiable on your email’s subject line. If your recipient is not sure or does not know who you are, it won’t likely be opened.
Additionally, since 33% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone, anything ordinary for an email subject line is a complete no-no in this situation.
How do you make your email subject line captivating?
Keep it short and simple. Emails with subject lines containing less than 30 characters have above average open rates. Your recipients should be able to figure out what your email is all about with a quick scan of the subject line.
Personalize it. Use ‘you’ or ‘your’ in the subject line or your recipient’s name. If you want to go the extra mile, personalize the subject line with what’s actually left inside the shopping cart. Here are a few great examples:
- Hey! You left some items in your cart!
- John, you forgot how much you want to buy this!
- John! We’re reserving the teal iPhone case for you!
Ensure there are no spam triggers. You may not mean to make it sound like spam, but a sure way to get your email ignored is if it contains spam triggers in the subject line. Refrain from using “Buy NOW!”, “Click here!”, excessive exclamation marks or all caps.
Get creative. Sometimes, a funny subject line can do wonders for your email’s open rates. As part of your abandoned cart recovery tactics, think outside-of-the-box and have fun crafting your copy! A good example of this is Chubbies Shorts.
If you are thinking twice about how your recipients will react, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What will you do if you receive an email with this type of subject line? If you still feel positive, then you know you are ready to proceed with the next step.
Step #3: Create an attractive email template
There are two types of email templates – a plain text template and an HTML email template.
According to a 2012 and 2014 HubSpot survey on email deliverability, 64% of their respondents say that they prefer receiving HTML emails over plain text emails.
But after a series of testing and doing a variety of image-rich email versions, the simpler emails with fewer to zero visuals actually won.
Plain text emails are more preferred apparently. Why?
Based on the results of the survey, it may have something to do with email deliverability, and the prove to this point is Gmail’s promotions tab.
Since an HTML template uses visuals, Gmail may consider it as a commercial email. It gets filtered under Promotions instead of the primary inbox. The result? People can’t open it.
Another reason is people may actually prefer emails that are easier to read and require less commitment doing so.
So, which template should you use?
Identifying whether to go for a plain text or an HTML email is a matter of A/B testing. To know which one it will be, have both versions of your email and compare.
Remember: For your plain text email, create it like a normal email you send to your colleagues and friends. It may lack those creative illustrations and cool moving images, but it still capable of re-engaging with your lost potential customer on a personal, 1-to-1 basis.
For your HTML version, the rule is to ensure that images, headers, backgrounds and .gifs are properly coded and that it also has its own plain text version. It is, after all, part of Google’s and Outlook’s basic deliverability guidelines.
Otherwise, they might classify your email as dodgy and your recipients may not receive it.
Step #4: Be creative with your copy
Creative copy is a non-negotiable feature of any abandoned cart email or any marketing email for that matter.
To get those creative juices flowing, write your email and treat it as another opportunity to market to your customers. Strive to make it compelling because just as good copy can convert and boost your sales, it can also cost you money if done in poor taste.
Use the right tone per email sent. Earlier, we shared with you a sample email campaign and each of those emails are written in different tones to serve its purpose. The tones may be different for each, but it should all be focused on one action – to retrieve the abandoned shopping cart and make the recipients proceed to buy the products.
Be descriptive and informational at the same time. The same as the Chubbies Shorts email above, it may be humorous and punchy, but it sure did a fine job of informing the shorts left in the cart and how to go back to the cart to complete the purchase.
Have an unmistakable call to action button. All that copy you write should point to a single call to action. Generic statements, such as ‘Complete Checkout’ or ‘View Your Cart Here’ works, but adding a little creativity, like ‘Take Me to My Cart’ or ‘Teleport to Your Cart’ (another Chubbies’ creation) definitely would not hurt.
Include recommendations of similar items and offers. As you cap off your great email copy, take the email as an opportunity to acquire new sales by recommending products similar to the ones placed in the shopping cart or by sharing all the great offers your recipients can enjoy if they buy from you.
Step #5: Offer a discount or free shipping
Although it is not essential, but offering perks, such as discounts and free shipping are great-to-have’s in any abandoned cart email campaign.
Give discounts if possible since based on a cart abandonment rate, 32% of abandoned shopping carts have something to do with the price being too expensive.
If they are turned off by the price, save the potential sale with a good discount rate, such as this one from ProFlowers.
Free shipping has always been a marketing strategy used to attract customers, which you can also consider doing for your campaign.
If we go back to a shopping cart abandonment rate we discussed in our previous article where 56% of abandoned shopping carts are due to shoppers being presented with unexpected costs, throwing in shipping for free may help lower that rate.
Crazy Egg also makes a good case on successfully doing free shipping for your site without hurting your bottom line.
Conclusion
Considering that cart abandonment is considered part of the shopping process, it is essential to recover these abandoned carts and convert some, if not all, into actual sales.
To start the recovery process, devise a campaign schedule then create your email’s subject line. Create your email template, insert your creative copy, and have those great-to-have’s, namely discounts and free shipping.
Remember, avoid the common mistake of having your email go to spam. Otherwise, all the effort you put in will go to waste.
Allow your customers to opt out as well.
In a 2015 Marketing Sherpa survey where 2,507 were asked how they feel about receiving an abandoned cart email, 51% found it to be helpful, but a third of them also found it annoying. Provide the choice to opt out from the drip campaign. After all, it is still part of customer service.
And lastly, test before officially launching your campaign. Have a walkthrough of your own site, make test shopping carts, abandon them, and wait to receive those emails to ensure that all the steps have been properly implemented.
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