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 e-commerce marketers.

Being a savvy e-commerce marketer doesn’t mean sending the default abandoned cart email that comes with Shopify, Neto, or other ecommerce platforms. 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 these 3 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, a link back to their cart, and your customer service contact information. When including you contact information, ask the customer if they have any questions or need assistance. You’ll find that responses uncover pain points in your sales funnel such as shipping costs or payment options.

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) attributes 35% of their revenue to cross-selling 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 element 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.

Get Free Abandoned Cart Emails for Shopify, Neto and BigCommerce

SmartrMail is the only email marketing app for Shopify, Neto and Bigcommerce that offers an abandoned cart email series with the option to automatically cross-sell personalized product recommendations.

The post 3 Emails to Increase E-commerce Abandoned Cart Recovery in 2023 appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

First, you have to attract customers through various marketing strategies. Then you have to get them to visit your online store. Then it’s a case of getting them to add a product to their cart. Finally, they then have to complete the checkout process for you to have made a sale. 

And at every step of the customer journey, they may drop off and fail to complete the next step, costing you a sale. 

While this can and does happen at every step, potential customers dropping off of the final step between adding products to their cart and completing the checkout process is a particular problem for merchants. 

This article will take a look at exactly how big of a problem shoppers abandoning their cart is. 

Why cart abandonment is such a problem

Potential customers dropping off at any stage of the customer journey is not ideal.

And while it’s unrealistic to think that you can ensure every customer moves from each step of the journey to the next, customers abandoning their carts is especially painful. 

This is because successfully completing the checkout process is the final step. 

Online shoppers who have made it all the way to adding items to their cart have displayed a strong interest in your products and a clear purchase intent. 

By all accounts, these potential customers should be completing the checkout process. 

This is a very different case to, for example, someone not clicking on your social media ads. It’s completely understandable that most people viewing your ads are either not interested or not ready to purchase. 

When someone has gone to the effort of adding a product to their cart, however, they are both clearly interested and ready to make a purchase. 

Finding out why they’re abandoning their cart is, therefore, incredibly important. Especially when you consider just how common cart abandonment is. 

The shopping cart abandonment rate

It’s estimated that globally between 55% and 81.4% of online shopping carts are abandoned, with the average percentage being 70% across dozens of studies. 

That’s two potential customers dropping off at the final step for every customer who makes a purchase. 

Cart abandonment rates, however, also vary by industry as well as by device. 

For instance, cart abandonment is as high as 90% in the fashion industry, 85% for both cosmetic and customer electronics stores, and 84% for general sports & outdoor goods retailers.

We also know that people are more likely to abandon shopping carts on mobile devices, with the average mobile abandonment rate being 85.65%.

The negative effects of shopping cart abandonment 

These are huge percentages for the number of people merchants are losing at the final step of the customer journey. 

And this has an enormous negative effect on online retailers.

People failing to complete a purchase leaves literally trillions of dollars worth of products left in abandoned carts every year.  

While these products can, of course, be sold later on to different customers, it’s estimated that cart abandonment directly costs retailers $18 billion dollars every year. 

The good news

So far, everything might seem very negative, but there is good news. 

First of all, we have a very good understanding of the reasons why people abandon carts to begin with. The most common being:

1. Unexpected/high shipping costs or other conditions at checkout
2. People browsing for a better price elsewhere
3. Having to create an account to purchase
4. The preferred payment is not being offered.
5. Getting distracted and forgetting to complete the order

And because we know why people abandoned carts, we know what steps are effective at reducing cart abandonment. 

For example, offering free shipping whenever possible or, if that’s not feasible, ensuring that you’re upfront about shipping costs and conditions will go a long way at mitigating the most common cause. 

Beyond that, not requiring customers to create an account, offering as many payment options as you can, and just generally improving your checkout experience will help reduce your cart abandonment rate further. 

Most importantly, though, there are also abandoned cart emails. 

Abandoned cart emails 

Abandoned cart emails are a type of email marketing automation that is sent to people who have abandoned their carts. 

This means that as soon as a customer who has put items in their cart leaves it abandoned, they’ll receive an email reminder prompting them to come back and complete the purchase.

Below is an example of this type of email from Moment.

The effectiveness of abandoned cart emails 

Here’s a good statistic for a change: it’s estimated that two-thirds of abandoned carts are recoverable with the right marketing. 

Abandoned cart emails are the most effective marketing tool for recovering these lost sales. 

Not only do they enjoy a much higher open rate compared to regular email marketing at 46.1%, but they also enjoy a phenomenal click-through rate of 13.3%, and over a third of these clicks lead directly to a sale. 

This makes abandoned cart emails among the most engaging emails you’ll ever send. 

Additionally, every abandoned cart email sent generates an average of $5 in sales. 

Given that you only need to set your abandoned cart automation up once, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t enable them right now. 

For more on what abandoned cart emails are and the best practices, check out our guide here. If you’re looking for some inspiration, be sure to also check out our collection of abandoned cart emails here.

Conclusion

It should now be apparent that shopping cart abandonment is a serious and very prevalent problem for merchants. 

Not only is it causing all of the effort you put into getting customers to visit your store and add products to their carts to waste, but it also has significant hidden costs in terms of lost sales. 

Thankfully, we know why people abandon carts, and we know that abandoned cart emails are incredibly effective at recovering these otherwise lost sales. 

And with SmartrMail’s abandoned cart email templates, it’s literally just a case of switching this powerful automation on for you to start generating additional revenue. 

So there’s no reason you should continue to miss out on these sales any longer. 

The post Why Shopping Cart Abandonment is a Problem for Merchants appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

One-third of all clicks on an abandoned cart email, for example, lead directly to a sale and browse abandonment emails receive 80% higher open rates and 50% higher click-through rates than regular email campaigns. 

But while both automations are incredibly effective at generating additional sales, having ‘abandon’ in both their names can lead to some confusion. Especially if you’re new to email marketing.

So in this article, we’ll cover how these automations differ from each other, what exactly is being ‘abandoned’, and how each fits into your broader email marketing strategy. 

What is an abandoned cart email?

Let’s start with abandoned cart emails. These are automated emails that are sent to people who have added products to their online cart but, for whatever reason, never completed the purchase. 

In other words, they’ve abandoned their cart on your online store instead of completing the checkout process. 

The goal of abandoned cart emails is then to remind the would-be customers of their cart and encourage them to come back and complete their purchase.

The email below from Moment is a good example of an abandoned cart email.

Notice the “you left some products in your cart” wording and the “return to cart” call-to-action? These are dead giveaways of an abandoned cart email.

Why abandoned cart emails are important

If you think people adding items to their cart and not completing their purchase isn’t that common or a problem, you are sadly mistaken. 

It’s actually more common for people to do this than it is for them to complete the purchase.

For every customer who does make a purchase, on average, two are abandoning their cart. 

While the reasons people abandon carts are varied, what’s clear is the need to target cart abandoners with a timely, automated email campaign to encourage them to complete their purchase.

And the good news is that these emails are incredibly effective at achieving this. 

Not only do they receive a higher open and click-through rate compared to regular email marketing campaigns, but when they’re structured well, they can recover up to a third of these otherwise lost sales.

To learn how to structure and optimize your campaign, read our guide on abandoned cart emails here. To view more examples, check out our collection of abandoned cart emails here.

What is a browse abandonment email?

Now that you’ve got a good idea of what an abandoned cart email is let’s look at what browse abandonment emails are. 

Like abandoned cart emails, browse abandonment emails also aim to recover sales from people who visited your online store and showed an interest in your products but never made a purchase. 

The key difference is that browse abandonment emails are sent to people who simply looked at (or ‘browsed’) particular products but did not add anything to their cart. 

The goal with browse abandonment emails is then to get these would-be customers to return and add the item to their cart (and then ultimately complete the purchase).

The email below from Timberland is a good example of a browse abandonment campaign.

In this email, the “thanks for visiting” and “we noticed you were checking out this item” wording and the “add to cart” call-to-action is what give it away as a browse abandonment campaign.

Why browse abandonment emails are important.

It’s actually more likely for people to abandon their browsing session than it is for them to abandon their cart. For every 10 customers who visit your store, 9 won’t add a product to their cart. 

But as they’ve viewed your products, they’ve shown purchase intent and are, therefore, more likely to convert from a browse abandonment email than a regular email campaign. 

Especially when the browse abandonment email contains the specific product your customer was looking at.

That’s why over 10% of clicks on browse abandonment emails lead directly to a sale.

To learn how to structure and optimize your campaign, read our guide on browse abandonment emails here. To view more examples, check out our collection of browse abandonment emails here.

The difference between abandoned cart and browse abandonment emails

As we’ve already alluded to, the key difference between an abandoned cart and a browse abandonment email is in how close customers come to making a purchase. 

With browse abandoners were actively browsing products on your online store. Cart abandoners came closer to purchase, however, by actually having placed items in their online cart.

This means you should think about how to match your campaigns to where your customers are in the journey to making a purchase so you can best address the unique needs of these two different audiences.

How does this difference affect your browse abandonment strategy?

Because cart abandoners came one step closer to making a purchase, it’s also fair to say that they demonstrated higher purchase intent compared to people who were just browsing. 

This is a key difference that should be reflected in how you compose your abandoned cart and browse abandonment campaigns. 

In particular, this means you should use a lighter touch with your browse abandonment emails, as the people receiving them have shown less intent to purchase. They could, after all, simply just be ‘browsing’ or window shopping. 

What browse abandonment does strongly indicate, however, is interest in a particular product or product category.

This means your browse abandonment emails should leverage and build on that interest with the help of product education and by recommending similar items. As opposed to going heavy with sale tactics like discounts and coupons. 

You also shouldn’t include as many follow-ups in your campaign (2 max), and you don’t want to always send a browse abandonment email every time someone leaves without making a purchase.

For more on this and other strategy tips, check out our guide on browse abandonment emails here.

How does this difference affect your cart abandonment strategy?

If someone has actively added an item to their cart, however, it’s fair to assume that they have much stronger purchase intent and are more likely to convert from your abandoned cart campaign. 

This means you can include more follow-up emails in your abandoned cart campaigns and use discounts and other sale tactics more liberally. You should also send customers your abandoned cart emails every time they abandon their cart.

Conclusion

Both abandoned cart and browse abandonment campaigns target potential customers right when they show purchase intent with timely and relevant emails. 

While they target two different audiences, one who made it closer to purchase than the other, they are both essential automation that should be part of every store’s email marketing strategy. 

And when you tailor these two automations to the unique needs of their recipients based on where they are in the customer journey, they will work together to boost sales for your store. 

The post Abandoned Cart vs. Browse Abandonment Email Campaigns appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

For every customer who makes a purchase online, an average of two people are adding products to their cart but never checking out. This 2:1 ratio leaves literally trillions of dollars worth of merchandise left sitting in online shopping carts every year.

Thankfully, a sizeable portion (roughly a third) of these lost sales is recoverable with automated abandoned cart emails. 

However, these emails are only effective if people are actually opening and reading them. 

As any good email marketer knows, one of the biggest factors influencing your open rate is your subject line. 

In fact, for a third of your email list, your subject line is the determining factor in whether they open your email or not. 

So with abandoned cart emails being so important at recovering lost sales and their subject line being crucial to their open rate, choosing a good subject line is vital.

That’s why in this article we’ll take you through:

• What elements go into a great subject line
• Strategies when writing subject lines for abandoned cart emails
• Examples of abandoned cart subject lines that you can use yourself 

Elements that go into a great subject line

Regardless of whether you’re coming up with a subject line for your abandoned cart emails, a welcome email subject line, or simply one for your latest newsletter, there are certain features that they all share that’ll entice subscribers to click on them.

These are:

• Clarity 
• Personalization 
• Brevity 

Clarity 

It’s easy for us email marketers to get carried away trying to write a unique, interesting subject line that’ll pique our subscribers’ interest. 

However, it’s important to remember that the entire point of subject lines is to let subscribers know what the email is about. 

With stats showing that more descriptive subject lines enjoy a higher open rate, you’ll want to avoid making your subject lines vague in the hope of people clicking through just to see what you’re on about.

For abandoned cart emails, this means you should make it clear that you’re sending an email reminder for someone to checkout or that you’re providing a special offer to encourage them to come back. 

Personalization

Personalized emails result in over a 50% increase in customer satisfaction and receive a 30% higher open rate on average. And personalization is just as much about your subject lines as it is your email content. 

The most obvious way to personalize subject lines is to include the name of your subscriber if you know it. For abandoned cart emails in particular, the other great and easy way is to include the name of the product they’ve abandoned. 

A personalized abandoned cart subject line could then look something like: 

Hey {{NAME}}, it looks like you forget about your new {{PRODUCT}}.

Commerce-focused email apps like SmartrMail will let you include these merge tags in your subject lines which makes it super easy to personalize them. 

Brevity

When writing subject lines, you only have a small amount of space to work with before email clients will start cutting off your message. 

This is especially true now that most emails are being read on mobile devices. Just take a look at how subject lines are being cut off below. 

It turns out that subscribers tend to prefer shorter subject lines as well. 

A Litmus study found that having between 4 and 15 characters achieves the highest open rates. Whereas having over 50 characters results in the worst number of opens.

So keeping your abandoned cart subject lines short like “Hey {{NAME}}, don’t forget your {{PRODUCT}}” is a good way to go. 

If you want to dive even deeper into what separates great subject lines from mediocre ones, check out our article on writing the best subject lines.

Abandoned cart email subject line strategies

Now that you have a decent understanding of what makes for good subject lines, it’s worthwhile looking at some proper strategies that are unique to abandoned cart emails. 

These strategies complement your broader abandoned cart email strategy by matching the different goals of which email in your cart abandonment series.

As a quick recap, the ideal sequence of abandoned cart emails is to first send a simple reminder. If that initial email is unsuccessful, you then send a couple of follow-up emails that provide an offer to entice the cart abandoner to come back and check out. 

If you feel like you would benefit from a refresher, check out our in-depth guide on abandoned cart email strategy.

Otherwise, we can jump into going through subject line strategies for each email in your abandoned cart series below. 

Email 1: The simple reminder email

Seeing as one of the most common reasons for cart abandonment is people forgetting about their cart, your first email should simply remind people about their cart. 

For this email in your series, your subject line only needs to highlight the fact that your shopper has left something behind in their cart. Good examples of subject lines that do this well include:

• Hey {{NAME}}, it looks like you forgot your {{PRODUCT}}
• Aren’t you forgetting something, {{NAME}}?
• Should we hold {{PRODUCT}} for you, {{NAME}}?
• Don’t worry – we’ve saved {{PRODUCT}} for you! 
• Don’t forget about your {{PRODUCT}} before it’s gone

As you can tell from the examples above, in addition to simply reminding your shopper of their cart, you can also add some FOMO to help get people to take action. 

FOMO (or fear of missing out) is a powerful marketing strategy that often works well with abandoned cart subject lines. 

To play on people’s FOMO even further, you could combine it with a sense of urgency and scarcity as well. Some examples of subject lines that do this are: 

• We can only hold your {{PRODUCT}} for another 12 hours
• We can’t keep {{PRODUCT}} on hold for you much longer
• Not to worry: your {{PRODUCT}} is reserved for 2 hours
• We’re down to our last few {{PRODUCT}} remaining! 
• {{PRODUCT}} is getting snapped up fast! 

Asking a question in your subject line is also a great way to pique someone’s interest and get them to open your email. Some examples that you can use include:

• Aren’t you forgetting something, {{NAME}}?
• Should we hold {{PRODUCT}} for you, {{NAME}}?
• Heading out without checking out, {{NAME}}?
• Still thinking it over, {{NAME}}?
• Ready to buy? Complete your purchase now.

One of the best examples of this we’ve seen from an actual brand is with Harry’s abandoned cart email. 

The subject line “What’s holding you back?” does an excellent job of capturing people’s interest and enticing them to open the email. 

Email 2: The simple offer email

As your abandoned cart email strategy evolves with the second email in your series, so too should your subject line. 

Seeing as we typically recommend including a small offer in your second abandoned cart email, such as free shipping if you don’t already offer it, your subject line should contain details about your offer. 

For instance, if you’re offering free shipping, your subject line could be along the lines of:

• Enjoy free shipping on {{PRODUCT}} 
• Check out {{PRODUCT}} now to receive free shipping
• Limited time only: free shipping on {{PRODUCT}}
• A free shipping code has been applied to your cart! 
• Purchase {{PRODUCT}} now to enjoy free shipping

Again, phrasing your subject line as a question can help improve your open rate, just as Sierra Trading Post has down. 

Notice how they’ve doubled down on this strategy by also using a question in the preview text. 

If you already offer free shipping, or you can’t offer it as an incentive in your abandoned cart series, then your subject line should simply reflect whatever offer you’re able to provide. 

Some examples of these subject lines like this include: 

• Hey {{NAME}}, here’s a X% discount on your cart
• An item in your cart is now X% off! 
• Here’s X% off if you complete your order 
• Here’s a X% coupon for {{PRODUCT}}
• Get {{PRODUCT}} for X% off now!

Email 3: Your best offer email

If neither a simple reminder nor a small offer did the trick, your third cart recovery email follow-up should pull out the big guns with the best offer you can give.

This is also the time to up the ante with elements like eliciting FOMO and creating a sense of urgency. Just as in the example subject lines below. 

• X% off {{PRODUCT}}. Expires in 24 hours! 
• Today only: X% off {{PRODUCT}}
• Our final offer: Free shipping + X% off {{PRODUCT}}
• At X% Off, {{PRODUCT}} Won’t Last Long
• X% off exclusively for you, {{NAME}}

Obviously, these subject lines will perform better when the offer is actually greater than what your second follow-up email contained. 

The email below from PetFlow is a good example of this.

The countdown timer within the email reinforces the sense of urgency and FOMO further as well, helping with conversion rates. 

Examples of abandoned cart email subject lines

Now that we’ve been through how to approach your subject lines for each email in your abandoned cart series, here is a list of subject lines you can use yourself with your own cart abandonment campaigns.

Simple reminder subject lines

• Hey {{NAME}}, it looks like you forgot your {{PRODUCT}}
• Aren’t you forgetting something, {{NAME}}?
• Should we hold {{PRODUCT}} for you, {{NAME}}?
• Don’t worry – we’ve saved {{PRODUCT}} for you!
• Don’t forget about your {{PRODUCT}} before it’s gone
• Your {{PRODUCT}} is reserved for 2 hours
• We can only hold your {{PRODUCT}} for another 12 hours
• We can’t keep {{PRODUCT}} on hold for you much longer
• We’re down to our last few {{PRODUCT}} remaining! 
• {{PRODUCT}} is getting snapped up fast! 
• Oops, you forgot something, {{NAME}}
• Heading out without checking out, {{NAME}}?
• Still thinking it over, {{NAME}}?
• Psst… you’ve left {{PRODUCT}} behind
• Ready to buy? Complete your purchase now.
• You left without saying goodbye
• Your {{PRODUCT}} is one step away from being yours!
• {{PRODUCT}} is selling out fast! 

Subject lines containing an emoji

• {{NAME}}, you’ve left something in your cart ?
• Looks like you forgot about your cart, {{NAME}} ?
• Time is running out to save X% on {{PRODUCT}}
• We can’t save your cart forever
• Purchase {{PRODUCT}} now to enjoy free shipping  ?
• Your {{PRODUCT}} is packed and ready to go ?
• Don’t forget about your {{PRODUCT}} ?
• Don’t let this offer on your cart go to waste ?
• ? Your cart is about to expire ?
• One more thing and {{PRODUCT}} is on its way ?

Mentioning free shipping

• Enjoy free shipping on {{PRODUCT}} 
• Check out {{PRODUCT}} now to receive free shipping
• Limited time only: free shipping on {{PRODUCT}}
• A free shipping code has been applied to your cart! 
• Purchase {{PRODUCT}} now to enjoy free shipping
• Today only: {{PRODUCT}} ships free
• {{NAME}}, get your cart shipped free, today only! 

Simple offer

• Hey {{NAME}}, here’s a X% discount on your cart
• An item in your cart is now X% off! 
• Here’s X% off if you complete your order 
• Here’s a X% coupon for {{PRODUCT}}
• Get {{PRODUCT}} for X% off now!
• A special offer has been applied to your cart
• Come back and check out {{PRODUCT}} for a special offer
• A discount has been applied to your cart while you’ve been gone

Final offer

• X% off {{PRODUCT}}. Expires in 24 hours! 
• Today only: X% off {{PRODUCT}}
• Our final offer: Free shipping + X% off {{PRODUCT}}
• At X% Off, {{PRODUCT}} Won’t Last Long
• X% off exclusively for you, {{NAME}}
• Free Shipping + X% = Empty Cart
• Free Shipping + X% = Our Best Offer Ever

Your broader abandoned cart email campaign strategy

Now that you have all the insights and examples you need to create compelling cart abandonment subject lines, it’s important not to neglect the rest of your abandoned cart email campaign. 

After all, getting someone to open your email is only half the challenge. Getting them to click through and complete their purchase is the much more challenging half. 

To actually start improving your conversion rate and cover lost sales, you need to have a proper abandoned cart strategy in place. 

Whether you’re not sure what the best practices with these emails are, how you should schedule follow-up emails to send, or if you just want a refresher, check out our comprehensive guide on everything you need to know about abandoned cart emails. 

The post How to Write Abandoned Cart Subject Lines +50 Free Examples appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

On average, for every customer who makes a purchase online, two others are adding items to their online shopping cart but never completing the transaction. This results in tens of billions of dollars worth of products left abandoned in people’s carts every year.

If you, as a merchant, are able to solve this challenge, your store would experience a massive boost in sales. 

While you’ll never completely eliminate cart abandonment from your online store, the good news is that automated email marketing is fantastic at recovering a large portion of these otherwise lost sales. 

Over a third of abandoned carts can be recovered with an abandoned cart email sequence. 

In this guide, we’ll take you through what these emails are, what a good abandoned cart email strategy looks like, and how you can set them up in SmartrMail.

Background on abandoned cart emails

What exactly is cart abandonment?

Before diving into the solution, it’s worthwhile making sure we’re clear on what the problem is in case you’re not familiar with cart abandonment. 

Cart abandonment is simply when a potential customer visits your online store, adds one or more items to their online shopping cart as they browse your products, but for whatever reason, never checks out and finalizes the transaction. 

This means that despite people clearly being interested in purchasing particular items, you don’t make the sale. 

There are several reasons why this occurs. The most common reasons for cart abandonment (in order) are: 

• Unexpected shipping costs or conditions at checkout
• People browsing for a better price elsewhere
• Having to create an account to purchase
• The preferred payment not being offered
• Getting distracted and forgetting to complete the order

You can learn more about shopping cart abandonment reasons here, but even the most optimized stores still experience this problem. 

What are abandoned cart emails?

Abandoned cart emails are a type of email marketing automation that send to people who have abandoned their shopping cart. 

This means that if a potential customer is browsing your store online, adds one or more items to their cart but then doesn’t check out, they’ll receive an email reminder prompting them to finalize their purchase. 

Often more than one email reminder will be sent

In addition to the first email reminder, the most successful strategies will utilize an abandoned cart email sequence that includes multiple emails. 

This way, if the first reminder email was unsuccessful at getting the shopper to return and complete their purchase, additional emails will be automatically sent to increase the chances.

In practice, this will usually take the form of including a discount in the second and third emails as an incentive if the simple reminder in the first email didn’t do the trick. 

Why you should automate abandoned cart emails

The lost sales associated with abandoned carts should in itself be reason enough to try to recover these sales. 

There’s no reason to be put off by the work setting these emails up either. 

Email apps like SmartrMail make it quick and easy to automate abandoned cart emails with pre-made templates and customizable options. You’ll be able to set up a decent abandoned cart sequence in a matter of minutes.

Once you’ve got your abandoned cart emails ready-to-go and automated, they require no ongoing effort. They will start recovering sales for you automatically. 

And these emails are effective too. 

Abandoned cart recovery emails enjoy a much higher than average open rate and a third of all clicks in them lead directly to a sale. Remember, over a third of abandoned carts are recoverable with an abandoned cart email sequence. 

For such an easy win, there’s no reason for merchants not to be sending abandoned cart emails. 

Abandoned cart email strategy

Now that we’ve covered what abandoned carts are and why they’re such an important email automation, it’s time to cover how to approach your abandoned cart email strategy. 

As we’ve already touched on, good abandoned cart email series will contain more than just one email. 

We find that the ideal number is three. A single email runs the risk of being missed entirely and two emails don’t give you space to develop your strategy. Whereas four or more emails will come across as spammy and annoy your subscribers. 

So what should these three emails look like? To show you, we’ll go through what each email should contain. 

Email 1: Simple reminder

One of the biggest reasons people abandon carts is because they simply got distracted and forgot about it. 

This is especially true when people have dozens of tabs open for multiple stores when comparing prices and looking for the best deals online. 

While you may want to offer a discount in the first email in your abandoned cart sequence, doing so will give away margin for people who would’ve converted without it and can even come across as pushy. 

For this reason, it’s best to keep your first abandoned cart email simply as a reminder. Like Moment has done with their email below. 

There are a few things to pay attention to in this email. 

Like Moment’s email, all your abandoned cart emails (not just the first in the sequence) should contain the following:

• Clear images of the products people have left behind in the carts
• Name of the product and potentially a short description
• A clear call-to-action (CTA) button that makes it easy for your customer to return to their cart and check out
• Means to contact you for support if they need help

The last point is an important one as another common reason people abandon carts is that they ran into an issue while trying to check out. 

Often people in this situation won’t bother contacting you unless you’re proactive and ask if anything went wrong. That’s why Moment’s email is a great example—because it actively encourages people to reply if they encountered any issues.

All the other points are also still important and the good news is that SmartrMail’s abandoned cart email template automatically includes the abandoned items’ images, titles, and descriptions for you. It also automatically includes a button to make check out easy. 

When you should automate this email to send

In addition to what your abandoned cart emails contain, the other big fact in your strategy is the timing of the emails. That is, how long after someone abandons their cart should this email automatically send? 

The answer to this is you don’t want to waste any time. 

Nearly three-quarters of people who convert from abandoned cart emails do so in the first 24 hours. 

So we typically recommend you automate the first email in your series to one hour after someone abandons their cart. 

Getting your first email out early will help convert those who simply forgot while leaving you enough time to win over others who will need a bit more convincing. 

Email 2: Small offer

If your first abandoned cart email was enough to get your customer to return and finalize their purchase, then they will automatically drop out of your abandoned cart email automation and won’t receive the second or third emails. 

However, the reality is that many of your cart abandoners will require a bit more enticing than a simple reminder email to convert them. 

Seeing as unexpected shipping costs is one of the most common reasons for cart abandonment, offering free shipping in your second abandoned cart email can do wonders for your conversion rate. 

This is exactly what Huckberry has done in their abandoned cart email below.

In addition to offering free shipping, you’ll notice the language in the email copy changes compared to Moment’s initial abandoned cart email. 

The line “our sales are often limited, and we don’t want you to miss out on these awesome picks” introduces a sense of urgency and scarcity. Doing this helps to get people to take action and finalize their purchase quickly instead of putting it off further. 

Experimenting with time-based offers that expire quickly is something you might want to do to see if they’ll improve your conversion rates too.

If you already offer free shipping

If you already offer free shipping, then obviously a free shipping offer in your abandoned cart email isn’t going to incentivize many people. Though it’s still a good opportunity to remind people you offer it. 

Instead, just offering a small discount off their total price should hopefully do the trick.

When you should automate this email to send

Again, seeing as most people who convert from abandoned cart emails do so in the first 24 hours, you’ll want to automate this second follow-up email within this time frame.

Avoid automating it to send too soon after your first abandoned cart email, however. Otherwise it can come across as pushy and worse, spammy.

Not everyone has push notifications set up for emails on their phones or keep their inbox open on their computers either. So you’ll want to give them a chance to see your first email before sending your second follow-up with a discount. 

Email 3: Final chance offer

Even offering free shipping or a small discount isn’t going to be enough to persuade some shoppers. Some customers are just quite price-sensitive. 

This means that for your third and final email in your abandoned cart series, you’ll need to up your offer and provide the best discount you can afford. We typically find that offers of 10% off someone’s entire order or above achieve the best conversion rates.

The email below from Kate Spade offers its shoppers 15% off. 

There are a couple of things to note about this particular email as well. 

Firstly, the use of a custom coupon code makes the offer seem personalized and that it really will expire soon. Combined with the wording, this helps up the sense of urgency and gets people to convert. 

You don’t have to worry about trying to generate unique coupon codes for every abandoned cart either. Simply creating one long, seemingly random code like in the email above will do the trick and will let you add it easily into your abandoned cart email template. 

The other thing to pay attention to is the use of product recommendations at the bottom of the email. 

Adding personalized recommendations like this is a great way to help increase average cart order values. It will also help generate sales from those who didn’t check out their original item because they had already purchased it or an alternative elsewhere and are no longer wanting what they left in their cart. 

SmartrMail includes the option to add personalized recommendations at the bottom of your abandoned cart emails in a single click. We’ll show you where to enable this feature in the next section. 

When you should automate this email to send

To avoid spamming potential customers with three emails in a single day, it’s a good idea to wait 12-24 hours from when your second follow up email sent before automating this final email to send. 

This will also give people a chance to open and consider your first discount offer before you give away more margin prematurely. 

Summary of the best practices

To help you make sense of all these tips and suggestions, we’ve created the chart below that outlines the main points which you can save and refer to later.

How to set up abandoned cart emails in SmartrMail

Now that you know what abandoned cart emails are and what the best practices for them are, the only thing left is to actually set them up. 

Thankfully, SmartrMail makes automating your abandoned cart series super simple. All you have to do is follow the steps below. 

If you don’t have a SmartrMail account yet, you can sign up for a 15-day free trial here if you run your online store on Shopify, BigCommerce, Woocommerce, or Neto ecommerce platforms.

You can either follow the instructions or watch the short video below:

1) Create a new automation

Like any other type of email automation, the first step to setting up for your abandoned cart series is to head to the Automations page in SmartrMail and click on the pre-made abandoned cart automation at the bottom of the list.

2) Make any desired adjustments to the automation

After clicking on the pre-made automation, you’ll be presented with a standard abandoned cart series consisting of three followups spaced out in line with the best practices discussed above.

Here the time delay between someone abandoning their cart and receiving the first followup is 1 hour, followed by 1 and 3 days respectively for the second and third followups.

You can customize these frequencies by clicking on the Time Delay node you wish to adjust and making the changes on the left.

If you really want to, you can also add or remove followups by either dragging a new email into the automation or by deleting an existing email. You can learn more about this in the Automations overview here.

3) Customize the emails

Each of the three followup emails in the pre-made automation are ready to use.

However, if you want to customize any of them, such as by adding a coupon code to your second or third followups, you can do so by simply clicking on the email and then clicking on the Edit button that appears on the left.

This will take you to SmartrMail’s standard email composer where you can make any adjustments you like to the email.

For example, you can add your unique copy to your abandoned cart template to create a sense of urgency or scarcity along with other elements like coupon codes. 

If you’d like to dive deeper into how to word these emails, check out our guide on abandoned cart email copy here.  

Merge tags

You’ll also notice in the pre-made template that there are several merge tags included. These are: 

• {{name}} which will include your subscriber’s first name when the email is actually sent. This is an easy way to personalize the email.
  • {{first_product}} which will display the title of the first product included in the list of items the recipient has abandoned in their cart. Again, using this in the subject line is a good way to personalize the email and improve your open rate by making the email stand out in people’s inboxes.

There are also additional merge tags that you can include when customizing your abandoned cart templates which you can learn more about here.

Once you’re happy with the email, you can return to the automation by clicking on the Save & Exit button in the top right.

4) Enable your abandoned cart series

When you’re happy with how your abandoned cart emails are set up, you can easily automate them by first ensuring that each individual email in the series is switched to on like in the screenshot below.

Once all the emails are switched on, you then just need to click on the Enable button in the top right.

And that’s it! That’s all it takes to automate abandoned cart emails with SmartrMail. 

FAQs

We’ve found that there are a few questions merchants typically have when setting up their abandoned cart series. So to save you the time of trying to find the answers yourselves, here are the answers to some common questions.

Who receives abandoned cart emails? 

Not everyone who abandons a cart will be able to receive your email reminders. 

Firstly, a record of their email address is needed to know where to send the emails. This is the case if the cart abandoner has previously signed up to your email marketing or has added their address and signed up to receiving marketing emails during the checkout process without having to have checked out. 

Due to GDPR and CAN-SPAM regulations, we cannot send abandoned cart emails to those who have not opted in to receiving marketing emails or have unsubscribed from your emails even if we know their email address. 

Will all three emails in my abandoned cart series send if the first email is successful?

If you have two or three emails in your abandoned cart series and someone completes their purchase after receiving the first email, then the subsequent emails will not send. 

This means that you don’t have to worry about your offers in your later follow-up emails sending for those who have since come back and finalized their transaction. 

This is also the case even if they didn’t open your first email. As soon as the cart is recovered, no further abandoned cart emails will send. 

Will SmartrMail include links directly back to the recipient’s cart?

If you’re using either Shopify or Neto as your ecommerce platform, then buttons in your abandoned cart template will link directly to the recipient’s cart to make it easy for them to check out. 

For other users, the buttons will direct the recipient back to the product listing page.

Conclusion

While cart abandonment is a major problem for merchants, abandoned cart emails offer an easy and effective solution that’ll recover a significant portion of these lost sales with no ongoing effort. 

Depending on how much effort you want to put in, it can take less than an hour to set up a decent series of three emails to automatically send to cart abandoners. 

That said, we definitely recommend putting some thought into crafting your discount offer and wording to improve the effectiveness of these emails even more. 

By having a series consisting of a simple reminder email, followed by two offers of increasing attractiveness, you’ll boost your sales without giving away margin needlessly. 

Additional resources

If you want to put in that little bit of extra effort to really get the most out of your abandoned cart emails, then we have some additional resources you might be interested in: 

• A guide on how to write subject lines for abandoned cart emails along with plenty of examples you can use yourself.
• A list of the top reasons for online cart abandonment and how you can address them.
• A detailed explanation of how much of a problem cart abandonment is for retailers.
• An abandoned cart copy guide that takes you through how to word your emails.
• 7 additional examples of great abandoned cart emails.
• 5 examples of abandoned cart emails from fashion stores. 

Still have questions about your abandoned cart emails?

If you’re still unclear about anything related to abandoned cart email best practices or how to set them up, the SmartrMail customer success team is always ready to help. 

If you’re already a SmartrMail customer on a paid plan, you’re more than welcome to ask any questions to have through the in-app support chat.

If you’re not a SmartrMail customer yet, we encourage you to sign up for our 15-day free trial. 

The trial is completely commitment-free and during it you’re able to jump on a complimentary one-on-one call with a member of our customer success team where you can ask any questions you have and be shown how to automate your abandoned cart emails the way you want. 

The post Everything You Need to Know About Abandoned Cart Emails appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

Businesses need to make their checkout process as frictionless as possible. If not, abandoned cart rates will increase, and businesses will lose sales.

Over 96% of Americans purchase from online stores each year. You don’t want to miss out on those browsing your site that don’t purchase.

Aside from continuously striving to make your checkout process as seamless and transparent as possible, it is likely you’ll still have customers abandoning their carts.

So what should you do? Prepare for cart abandonment, so you’re ready when it does occur.

Businesses build cart abandonment emails to trigger potential customers who have items in their cart but left their website without purchasing.

These emails can be automatically sent with almost any email marketing provider you choose. When a user adds an item to their cart but doesn’t check out, a trigger occurs and sends an email in an attempt to win back the customer.

But what makes an effective abandoned cart email, and what strategies are businesses using to make the sale?

In this article, we’ll look at three abandoned cart email examples and the unique strategies each one deployed to win back the customer.

Before we do, we must examine why customers are abandoning carts.

Why customers are abandoning carts

There’s a variety of reasons why customers abandon their carts. 

Unexpected costs, no guest checkout option, complicated process, and a lack of transparency are among the most common.

Most of these can be solved by improving your user experience and making it easier for your customers to purchase.

To start, improve your SEO to ensure your customers are easily finding your site. Customers that struggle to locate your site will become frustrated before they even reach your homepage.

According to Adam, SEO expert at Loganix: 

“Fine-tuning your branded SEO can dramatically reduce abandoned cart rates. When your own branded search results are schema-friendly and contain deep links to your product pages, users quickly are assured of your brand and will filter into relevant product links.”

Next, make sure you don’t have any hidden fees and showcase the total order price at each stage of the checkout process. 76% of abandoned carts are a result of price sensitivity. 

Finally, make sure you have a guest checkout option. Consumers don’t want to create an account or track down their account information for a previously created profile.

A recent study found that one-third of abandoned purchases occur due to the user being unable to get into their account. 

While consumer password managers help solve that issue, it still is worth ensuring that your site has a guest checkout option.

Now that your site is optimized for improved user experience, let’s take a look at some of the abandoned cart email strategies companies are using to win back customers. 

Three abandoned cart email strategies

It’s common for businesses to reach out to customers with well-designed cart abandoned emails in an attempt to win back their business.

Putting extra effort into abandoned cart emails is worthwhile. This means going above and beyond with the design, copywriting, checking for grammar mistakes, and execution. 

Why? 

They actually work!

Utilizing freelancers, you can scale this operation with ease. 

Three successful abandoned cart email strategies include assistance, free gifts, and discounts for new cart size milestones.

Let’s dive into each. 

1. Offer assistance.

Let’s start with the subject line. Subject lines are critical to grab the shoppers’ attention and remind them that they had items in their cart. 

Some include the products in the subject lines, while others use a more catchy, alluring subject line in hopes of enticing the shopper to open.

Zoma, an online mattress company, sends abandoned cart emails to users with the subject line, “It looks like you forgot something.” This is clever and can be intriguing for the consumer.

To find out what works best with your target market, run A/B tests to see which style of subject lines have greater conversion rates. 

If you’re struggling to write a catchy one, try this subject line generator for inspiration.

In addition, most abandoned cart emails will feature the product listing that the user selected prominently in the email. 

This will keep the product in the consumer’s mind and re-energize them to purchase. In addition, it allows for a simple click-through to continue shopping where they left off.

As we continue to examine the Zoma email below, you’ll see the mattress that the consumer added to their cart.

There are also three different ways listed to talk with the company: email, phone, and webchat. 

The focus of Zoma’s email isn’t only on the products that the consumers were considering, but also on removing friction to purchase them.

By offering three different ways to speak with a Zoma representative, consumers are able to get in touch and place an order if they were struggling to purchase on the company’s website.

I highly recommend following suit and also incorporating a live chat option on site for customers who need support right away via a low pressure medium. 

Live chat is becoming increasingly popular with online stores and consumers so be sure to 

check out this post from GetVoIP on the best ways to implement live chat onto your site.

Not to mention, live chat for customer support is incredibly efficient for those moving to work remotely in virtual teams in light of the recent pandemic. This way, your customer support agents can answer customer questions from home and help clear phone queues to speak to a live rep. 

Here you can see how Zoma’s live chat feature looks when browsing their site:

Source

2. Include a free gift.

Beauty salon and spa, Milk + Honey, wins customers back by enticing them with a free gift that can be added to their order.

In the example below, you can see that a headband is added to the order related to the skincare products that the customers recently added to their cart.

They also add a deadline to claim this offer. This creates urgency and forces the customer to commit in a shorter period of time.

Milk + Honey sells premium products that are often in high demand. This can create new challenges for their abandoned cart email strategy if their inventory goes out of stock. 

How can you adapt your abandoned cart emails when this happens?

Use inventory management software to trigger an alert when products go out of stock. Then, build an email program that triggers a pre-order email rather than an abandoned cart one.

This will show that the product is in high-demand and encourage the shopper to get it while they still can!

3. Unlock savings at new price milestones.

Everyone loves a good deal.

With Americans’ average weekly earnings hovering around $1,000, consumers will be looking for ways to keep those dollars in their pockets.

Discounts, flash sales, and deals are great ways to delight consumers and push them towards making a sale. 

When you market this type of promotion to someone already shopping, it can be enough to cause them to convert.

ASOS, a clothing company, sends savings information in their abandoned cart emails. If the shopper spends more, they save more. It’s that simple. 

This type of abandoned cart email not only focuses on the items the shopper was browsing, but rather, encourages them to spend even more.

Winning Customers Back

If a potential customer leaves your site without purchasing, it doesn’t mean they’re gone forever.

It’s on you to win them back.

Companies are deploying abandoned cart email campaigns to convert customers who were once interested in their products.

There are many email strategies you can use to re-engage and convert customers who have abandoned their carts. To monitor results, all you have to do is connect your e-commerce store and email marketing platform to Google Analytics.

Start by removing friction and offering assistance. 

Consider including a free gift with their order to incentivize them to purchase. 

Offer discounts that are unlocked at new milestones. 

All of these strategies can have a positive effect on your business and drive sales that were previously lost.

Which one are you most excited to try for your store?

The post 3 Epic Abandoned Cart Email Examples to Increase Conversions appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

The good news is that a sizeable portion (roughly 35%) of these forgotten about carts are recoverable with a timely email reminder. Doing the math, if these rates are the same for your store, then automating abandoned cart emails will boost your revenue by a whopping 24%. That’s not bad for something you just need to spend a little bit of time setting up once and then not having to worry about again.

But these are just averages; not all abandoned cart emails are created equal.

Ones that have been quickly slapped together with uninspiring copy and bad design layouts aren’t going to recover 35% of abandoned carts. Likewise, well thought out and designed abandoned cart emails that are automated to deliver at the optimal time in people’s inboxes will likely convert more than a third of lost sales.

Seeing as we already have created articles on how to design your abandoned cart emails as well as a collection of great examples, this guide is dedicated to helping you with writing the copy for your abandoned cart emails.

The problem with writing good abandoned cart copy

While what you ought to say in your abandoned cart emails might seem simple (all you have to do is remind people to complete their transaction, right?), it’s not.

The big issue with writing copy for abandoned cart emails is that you must walk a very fine line between encouraging people to complete their purchases, and being a nag. This problem is made worse as good ecommerce marketing strategy involves not sending just one, but multiple abandoned cart emails.

As there’s multiple reasons people abandon their carts, the reality is that you’ll want to send more than just one follow up email to cover all your bases.

Usually the first email is a simple reminder to catch people who have simply forgotten about their purchase that you send within a couple of hours. You don’t typically want to include any discounts or special offers in this email as chances are it’ll already achieve a decent conversion rate anyway.

To cover people who didn’t simply forget about their cart, but abandoned their purchase because of the price or unexpected payment or shipping fees, you should send additional emails containing offers.

We recommend sending the second email within 24 hours after someone abandoned their cart, and a third, final email another 24 hours later. Best practice is to include a modest discount in the second email such as free shipping if you charge for shipping while leaving your best offer for the final abandoned cart email.

To help visualize this, we’ve created the small timeline infographic below:

Have a clear email subject line

There’s a good chance that your potential customer simply got distracted while placing items in their cart on your store and forgot to complete the order. This means they’re not expecting to receive an email telling them to complete their purchase.

When it comes to getting someone to open an email they weren’t expecting to receive, the ultimate deciding factor will be your subject line. A good subject line will encourage people click through and read your email, whereas a poor one will drastically reduce your open rate.

So how do you write a good subject line for abandoned cart emails?

In general, the best email subject lines are ones that invoke a particular emotion. So for your first reminder email, creating a feeling of abandonment or a desire for someone to be reunited with the items in their cart can work wonders. Additionally, including the product someone added to their cart (or one of the products if they included multiple ones) in the subject line can grab people’s attention. Finally, the inclusion of appropriate calls to action can provide the final push to get someone to open your email.

Example subject lines along these lines include:

• Your {product} is missing you, come back and complete your purchase now!
• You and {product} got separated, get reunited now!

For the second and third follow up emails, you generally want to include some kind of offer or discount. This is because your first email has done the job of reminding potential customers of their shopping carts, so if they still haven’t checked out, it’s likely because the product’s cost or shipping was too high.

Example email subject lines you can include for these follow up emails include:

• Finish your {product} purchase now to qualify for free shipping!
• Get 10% off your {product} when you checkout.

While not all email service providers will let you include the title of products people left in their carts in your subject lines, you can with SmartrMail’s abandoned cart emails.

Read more: How to write subject lines for abandoned cart emails.

If possible, always personalize it

Personalized email marketing always performs better than non targeted email blasts. While abandoned cart emails present limited opportunities for personalization, when they do, you should take advantage of it.

The most basic level of email personalization is simply addressing the recipient by their name. While doing this is pretty much mandatory for all the other types of email marketing communications, abandoned cart emails make doing so challenging. This is because doing so not only requires your potential customer leaving their email address during checkout and opting into email marketing, but also leaving their name.

To counteract this, you can experiment with different checkout flows to see works best at getting people to leave their names. Just remember that the goal with your checkout flow is to convert prospective customers into actual ones. There’s no point in increasing the number of people abandoning their carts just so you have more details to include in your emails.

In addition to including someone’s name, you can also include personalized product recommendations of extra items the customer might like to purchase. While not all email service providers offer this option, ones focused on ecommerce and personalization like SmartrMail include this option for abandoned cart emails.

Create a sense of urgency

A perception of scarcity is a great marketing tactic, especially when it comes to abandoned cart emails.

Creating a sense of urgency can be as simple as encouraging the prospective customer to hurry up and complete their order before a product is sold out. The email below is a good example of this in action.

Seeing as one of the biggest reasons people fail to complete their online transactions is because they are searching for a better price elsewhere, including a limited time offer in your second or third abandoned cart email is a great way to generate actual urgency.

Stay on brand

Your brand is essential for ecommerce success and to ensure a strong brand, you need to make sure all your marketing communications remain on message.

Whatever your branding is, your abandoned cart emails should remain consistent with it. If your brand is fun and playful, so should your abandoned cart emails. Take the example from Virgin Trains below.

Virgin’s branding is known around the world and this abandoned cart email from them more than lives up to the broader Virgin image. This is what makes the email work so well too.

Unfortunately given how unique brands are, it’s hard to recommend what to write here. You and your customers know your brand better that anyone else. The best advice we can give here is to take the same approach to creating the content for your abandoned cart emails as you do with all your other marketing communications.

Stay on point

Abandoned cart recovery emails should only be sent with one goal in mind: getting prospective customers to complete their purchases. This means that abandoned cart emails should be short and sweet. There’s no need for lengthy emails that take any more than a minute to read through. All that your emails need to cover are the following:

• Remind your potential customer of their cart/offer a discount
• Include details of the product(s)
• Include product images
• Provide an easy way for people to click through to their cart
• Provide a way for people to reach out if they have any questions

Conclusion

Writing the copy for your abandoned cart emails doesn’t need to be hard. By keeping the above points in mind, you’ll be well on your way to create a solid abandoned cart email series.

Of course, your conversion rate will rely on other factors beyond just the copy. That’s why I’d encourage you to now read through our comprehensive guide that covers everything you need to know about abandoned cart emails and how to set them up.

Read the guide on abandoned cart emails

The post A Guide to Writing Your Abandoned Cart Copy appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

With the average cart abandonment rate sitting at a whooping 69.23% and approximately $4 trillion worth of products being abandoned each year, it’s the bane of many ecommerce store owners. However, for savvy ecommerce marketers, this presents a massive sales opportunity.

Being able to recover sales from abandoned carts will lead to more sales and profit for ecommerce store owners.

The most popular means to recover these lost sales in ecommerce are with abandoned cart emails. These emails are automatically sent to people who fail to complete the checkout process as a reminder to complete the transaction.

These emails are among the most effective you can be sending. We’ve found that on average, each abandoned cart email generates $27.12 in sales for ecommerce stores.

While these emails are very popular with ecommerce store owners and can be highly effective, not all abandoned cart emails are created equally. Their effectiveness ultimately comes down to how well they’ve been designed and implemented.

In order to help you get the most out of your abandoned cart emails, we’ve identified the five most important elements when it comes to their design.

1: Include Details of the Abandoned Products

This first tip might seem like a no brainer, however details of the product or products someone has abandoned often goes missing from many abandoned cart emails.

By skimping on details, someone who has completely forgotten about what they were going to buy may not be adequately reminded by your email. The email below, for example, only includes the products’ titles and very brief descriptions.

When sending your abandoned cart emails, you want to take the opportunity to include all the relevant details that you can.

Having a clear description of the items as well as a nice high-res image will not only remind people of what were going to buy, but also of why they wanted it in the first place. You might also want to consider adding product reviews to give potential customers that final push they need to go ahead and make the purchase.

The email below does a good job at including these details.

2: Include a Clear CTA

A call-to-action, or CTA, is perhaps the most important part of any marketing material. This is because it tells people what action they should engage in next. For abandoned cart emails, this will be to complete the transaction.

After reminding your would-be customer of what they wanted and why they wanted it, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to head back to their cart and finalize the transaction. The harder it is to get back to their cart, the more likely you’ll lose them again before they find their way back.

For instance, the abandoned cart email below provides no clear means of getting back to the person’s shopping cart.

The easiest and most seamless way to let someone get back to their cart is to include a large, unmissable button that sends them straight back to their cart. Such as in the example below.

The ‘Complete Your Purchase’ buttons in this email provide a clear path for the recipient to continue on after reading the email and deciding to make the purchase. This will ultimately result in a higher conversion rate for their abandoned cart emails meaning more sales.

3: Include As Few Links As Possible

Once you have included a clear CTA to take people back to their carts, you will then want to start eliminating any unnecessary links.

This is because you want to do everything you can to increase the likelihood that someone will click on your CTA link. Every click elsewhere is a click that could’ve been on your CTA.

Take the yellow Kate Spade Saturday email that’s lacking a CTA back to the recipient’s shopping cart above. This email contains a banner in its footer encouraging people to check out their latest products.

Even if this email contained a link straight to one’s cart, there’s a good chance that many people would be distracted by the opportunity to view the newest products. Spending time viewing these products increases the likelihood that they’ll forget about their shopping cart again and fail to convert.

The email from Huckberry below is a good example of an abandoned cart email with as few links as needed. In fact, the only other link is the unsubscribe link which is necessary to include to be compliant with CAN-SPAM.

4: Ensure Your Abandoned Cart Email is Mobile Friendly

If you’re only designing emails to look good on desktops and leaving mobile as an after-thought, you’re well and truly behind the times. Over half of all emails are opened on mobile. This means that how your emails look on smaller screens is just as important as how they render on desktops.

With abandoned cart emails, you therefore definitely don’t want to be limiting yourself to just those who open emails on their laptop or desktop.

You want to ensure there’s just as much chance that someone will convert if it was opened on their smart phone as if it was opened on anywhere else.

Ensuring that emails look great across all the different types of phones out there can be challenging. We understand this frustration. That’s why abandoned cart emails sent with SmartrMail are designed to display correctly no matter what size screen they’re displayed on.

Up until now we’ve only shown you examples of abandoned cart emails as they appear on desktops, however the email below is a good example of responsive mobile design.

5: Include an Incentive

While not a design tip per se, the effectiveness of including an incentive in your abandoned cart email makes it worthy of a mention.

The top two reasons people abandon their online shopping carts according to UPS and comScore are unexpected shipping costs and leaving the site to find a better price elsewhere.

Seeing as price sensitivity plays a major role here, including a coupon code in your email or offering free shipping if you don’t already, can go a long way to converting more people.

If you’re hesitant to include a discount for people who simply forgot about their purchase and would’ve paid the full price, multiple abandoned cart emails might be of interest.

With SmartrMail you can automate up to three different abandoned cart emails.

The first email can simply be a reminder email. This email will then catch the people who simply forgot about their purchase. In the second or third follow up email you can then include a discount or free shipping to catch people who didn’t complete the purchase due to the price.

Abandoned cart emails are a powerful tool for ecommerce stores to recover lost sales and boost their bottom line. By implementing these design tips, they will be performing at their absolute best and brining you even more sales.

If you’ve ever stumbled upon a website that hasn’t been updated since the early 2000s, you’ll also know that design trends change rapidly in the digital space. That’s why, in addition to these tips, it’s also important to keep up to date with changing design trends.

If you’re looking at setting up abandoned cart emails, SmartrMail makes the process super simple for you. We plug in with Shopify, Bigcommerce, Neto, and WooCommerce stores and offer a 15 day free trial.

Install SmartrMail on your store here.

The post 5 Abandoned Cart Email Template Design Tips With Examples appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

However, when reminding customers of items in their cart, copywriters must walk a fine line between marketer and nag.

Luckily, these 5 online fashion store emails can get you started with witty copy and a strong understanding of what causes cart abandonment.

1. Shipping = Free

Why we love this:

Huckberry understands that the #1 cause of cart abandonment is unexpected shipping costs. The free shipping offer is the bold and visible, and there is only one funnel leading the customer back to their cart.

2. Forget Something? + You May Also Like?

Why we love this:

The product recommendations give other options if a customer decides they don’t like the original item added to their cart. Personalized product recommendations can be easily added with email marketing apps that track customer browsing behavior, past purchases, and email clicks.

3. Got Distracted?

Why we love this:

That photo is hilarious! One of the top 5 reasons for cart abandonment is your customer getting distracted. Bonobo also does a great job offering a support line if the customer has any questions.

4. Dear {name},

Why we love this:

Personalized emails deliver 6x higher conversion rates. Along with including the customer name, Ghurka also provides the name of their customer service representative to add a human element to the email.

5. FOMO

Why we love this:

FOMO is real. Adding a sense of urgency to your emails can triple conversion rates. If you do choose to hold a customer’s cart, don’t hold it long. 72 percent of those who do buy from abandon carts convert in the first 24 hours.

The post 5 Abandoned Cart Emails Every Ecommerce Fashion Store Should Steal appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.