What are you doing today in order to increase your visitor to sale conversion?
E-commerce business is changing faster than ever before, along with customers taking more time to think about their purchases. Shopping cart abandonment is an online retailers’ biggest challenge due to potential lost revenue, but luckily marketers can help solve this problem with cart abandonment emails. According to SalesCycle, approximately 75.6% of online shopping carts were abandoned in 2018. Cart abandonment is when online shoppers on your e-commerce site add items to their shopping cart, and then leave your site before converting (completing the purchase). The thing is, ¾ of people who abandon their carts usually plan to come back, so if you’re not reminding shoppers with abandoned cart emails, you’re missing a huge opportunity to recover lost sales.
How to Create Abandoned Cart Emails that Convert
Timing
The time distribution of your abandoned cart email is crucial if you want prospects to complete their purchases. The sooner you send it, the easier people will remember who you are and why they added the items into their cart. If you wait too long, you lose that shopping urge that caused the shopper to add the item to their cart in the first place. So make sure to distribute your email within 24 hours of them exiting your checkout so the prospect’s near purchase is still fresh in their mind.
Use Converting Subject Line
Subject lines have the potential to grab the attention of the customer and increase open and click rates. It’s the first thing prospects will see, so if your subject line isn’t well thought out, all your hard work won’t be read. The most effective subject lines are those that are straight to the point and evoke emotion like excitement, humor, fear of missing out, etc. So have fun and be creative with winning back customers. Another important factor in grabbing attention is to make it feel personal. You can play around with subject lines to see which have the highest open rates by using A/B testing in your campaign. Here are a few great subject line suggestions:
- “Hey Joe, you forgot something.”
- “Baby come back!” (the song)
- “Don’t let your favorite items sell out”
Include Abandoned Product
In your email’s content, make sure to include the exact product along with the product image, size, color, pattern, etc in the hero of the email. This is a great way to remind them of what they are missing out. Using visual marketing to show interested shoppers which items they’ve abandoned makes the email more personal and immediately grabs their attention again.
Eye-catching CTA button
Bold and easy-to-see CTAs can direct the attention of the shopper towards the desired action you want them to pursue. In this particular situation, the action is to finish buying the product, so make it easy for them to complete the action a button text like: “Continue Shopping” or “Snatch it!”
Present an Incentive
Who doesn’t love discounts or free shipping? One of the most common reasons users abandon their shopping carts is because of extra costs like shipping, tax, and fees. With that in mind, try offering an incentive in your abandoned cart emails that are only exclusive to them. This could be the final push they need to complete their purchase.
Effective emails that convert can also include scarcity that informs readers of the items they placed in the shopping cart have a high risk of selling out if they continue to wait. When deciding on your incentive, it’s recommended to test two incentives in your emails to find out what your audience responds to best.
Offer Customer Support
Another common reason for abandoned shopping carts is because of a failed/poor website or checkout flow experience. This includes long/complicated checkout process, website errors, slow delivery, not enough payment methods, or couldn’t see total order cost up-front. So, with each cart abandonment email, give the opportunity to provide customer assistance or guidance.
Include Customer Reviews and Testimonials
If visitors are in doubt when completing their purchase, a credible and honest review might influence a conversion. Go through your testimonials and place them at the bottom of your email.
At Spectruss, our powerful abandoned cart automation workflows implement these tips and more to remind your customers what they’ve left behind and encourage them to complete their purchase. With this abandoned cart messaging system, our retail clients reconnect with customers who navigate away from their shopping carts, recapture sales, and generate more revenue.
