Abandoned Cart Emails: Why Customers Leave & How to Get Them Back to Purchase
Abandoned Cart. Whether your business is killin it or you are just getting started - those 2 words are a product-based business' greatest nightmare - am I right? Approximately 60-80% of online carts are abandoned, leaving a customer without your product & you without their money. Quite the problem...
We are all guilty of getting excited about purchasing something online because a social media ad took us there & then realizing as we are about to checkout that we probably shouldn't spend that money... or worse yet, we don't have our card handy. We think - oh I'll buy it later tonight or after I get paid next week. But then, because we're human, we forget.
Other reasons customers don’t finish their purchase consist of website crashing, poor internet connection, difficulty navigating the checkout process, etc. Whether it’s the fault of your website or something completely out of your control - you need a way to get that customer back on your checkout page! It really is such a simple addition to your marketing structure & is guaranteed to bring in some abandoned revenue.
So what can an Abandoned Cart email sequence do for your business?
A heck of a lot - potentially 50% click rate to the email, followed by one third of those clicks converting to a purchase of the items you saved for them in your cart! An increase in sales with just one automatic email setup? Yes please!
Essential Parts of an Abandoned Cart Email
Once you’ve decided that this Abandoned Cart Email needs to be part of your email marketing - be sure to include these 3 components to the email:
The items they left behind. Show them what they wanted & what they still don’t have!
Great context - words are everything! Be clever, catchy, cute - whatever your audience responds well to! You should know who your Ideal Customer is & speak directly to them in this catchy email
A link back to their cart (potentially with a discount code included - more about that below).
Here are two examples - one without a discount code, simple design & redirection back to the site + another that is a little more in depth, clever & includes a discount code for more incentive.
How to Create Urgency & Encourage Immediate Purchase
Now that you have the three parts to your Abandoned Cart email - let’s chat urgency! The purpose of this email is to not only get your customer back to your website, but to make that purchase with a little fire under their booty! How to go about doing this? There are a few ways…
offer a discount code that expires in 24 hours or less: Come back and use code EXAMPLE at checkout for 10% OFF your order (only valid for 24 hours!)
if your store often runs low or out of stock, you can say something like: We noticed you left these items behind - get them before they’re gone!
offer assistance & double check that the customer didn’t just have problems with their checkout: We noticed you left the below items behind and wanted to see if you had any problems with your checkout process. If you did, simply reply to this email, we’d love to help! And in case you wanted to pick up where you left off… (show items and button to go back to shop)
Like always, you & your team know your customers best! Chat with them like you would in any other usual encounter and get them back to your store!
How to Create your Abandoned Cart Sequence
Each Email Campaign Database has their own version of Abandoned Cart sequences - but most offer you the ability to set them up. I personally prefer ActiveCampaign for product-based businesses as it has every feature you could possibly need for your product marketing. They have helpful articles such as this one to guide you in setting yours up! If your business is on Shopify, set up abandoned cart emails here.
If you are on a different platform, simply search “abandoned cart” in your help section and tons of articles are sure to pop up!
As always, if you have questions, simply send me an email and I would love to help any way I can!
xx
Helen
helen@petersonvirtualassistant.com