Millions of dollars are lost yearly because of abandoned carts. Think about how many abandon carts you have left over the years when shopping online. Probably hundreds of thousands. I legit do this five to six times a week. There are several reasons for this, but that is another article for another time. However, there are ways you can utilize the abandon cart feature to your business’s advantage. The shopping cart platform you’re using– WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, or something else –should have abandon cart plugins for you to install; to help stop the abandon cart situation. If the platform you are on doesn’t offer this feature, it’s time to migrate to one that does.
Subject Line + Email Option
Creating a scripted email that entices them to go back to their cart is super important. Subject lines such as:
- You Left Me, Don’t You Want Me
- 15% off Your Current Cart
- You Abandoned Me, and I Thought We Were Bestie’s
The subject line is what makes your customer open the email. I suggest creating a spreadsheet with various email subject lines that make you want to open them. A/B Test them against each other. Then use different ones for the abandon cart emails you have.
Yes, you need more than one email abandon email option. Your company has multiple products in it, so you don’t just want one email option for your abandoned carts. Target your emails at new products, new customers, sale items; for every conceivable outcome. One scripted email cannot cover all of your audience. You want this email to entice the sale. A simple email is not going to cut it. A well-crafted email showcasing the product is great but don’t forget to utilize social media. It can help with the sale. Make it a beautifully crafted email with words, discounts, and graphics.
Research The Industry
One of the best things you can do is see what others in your industry or similar industries are doing. One of my favorite abandon cart emails comes from Bauble Bar. What are they doing to help lower their abandoned cart sales? A client of mine had $7K in abandoned cart sales she missed in one month. She discovered this by switching from Squarespace to BigCommerce. The feature shares this information with her. So, she learned that she was losing roughly $7K a month that is $84,000 annually estimated revenue she was losing. We researched people in her industry and saw how they utilized the feature. Then we crafted a plan for her business. Cut the abandoned cart sales down by 60%.
Timing Of Emails
Here is one of the areas most people miss out on when it comes to the abandoned cart. You want to make sure you schedule the email response at an optimal time. I suggest to clients that they have three emails lined up—one that is five hours later, one day later, and three days later. Most people abandon carts because of sticker shock from shipping, pricing, or they forget. In that case, by spreading out the abandon cart emails, you are hoping to land them at a better time.
Offer Discount
The final step is the discount that you offer them to shop with you right now. That is the point of the abandoned cart email system to cultivate sales in that varied moment, not 15 days down the line. Generally speaking, the discount needs to be 15% or higher to make them opt into purchasing immediately. Yes, you’re “losing” money on the sale, but you should be focused on landing a repeat client. That is what is more important. Land the sale and then cultivate a relationship that makes them loyal customers.
