Abandoned Cart emails are essential to any eCommerce site. Just short of a successful checkout, it demonstrates a high-value, high-intent touch between you and your customer. And with 76% of carts being abandoned, it's important to convert as many abandoned carts into transactions as you can.
In this article, we outline the best practices in creating your abandoned cart emails, so that you can maximize your conversion rate.
1. Send your emails at the right time.
Abandoned cart emails are all about recency. Your future customer was just on your site and your brand is fresh on their minds. Strike while the iron is hot.
Although timing emails can be difficult, BuyerGenomics AutoPilot takes care of that for you. When you set up your Abandoned Cart campaign, set your first email to deploy "at the time of the event," and you're ready to go.
This way your customer will receive their first abandoned cart email at exactly the right time: not to early (when they're still browsing) and not too late (too many days later).
2. Get personal(ized): Feature the cart
Your customers added items to their cart for a reason. Whether it was to compare them, save them for later, or because they forgot to check out, what matters is that they demonstrated high-intent for specific products. Leverage that intent.
BuyerGenomics makes it easy to add cart content to your abandoned cart emails. In the email builder, simply drag and drop the cart widget from the sidebar into your email, and BuyerGenomics will automatically populate the emails with their cart when deployed.
There are many different ways BuyerGenomics can render your cart - we personally enjoy the "Featured Cart Content" layout, but you can use whichever fits your brand's style the best.
3. Send a series of emails - not just one.
It's rare that an individual converts on the first abandoned cart email. Out of all the abandoned cart series we've seen across all clients, the best ones consist of three emails. The first email starts by featuring the cart, while the last one ends with a special or perceived offer.
A high-performing email series may consist of the following:
- A "Featured Cart" email, deployed at the time of the event;
- A follow up email, with a more urgent subject line, in the evening of the same day of the event; and
- An offer email giving them free shipping if they check out with their current cart.
Note that even if you offer free shipping already, it still serves as a promotional offer when called out in the email.
4. Escalate your subject lines and preview text.
Don't start off with your most urgent subject line or best offer. Since you'll be sending three emails in a series (as you learned in #3), you have time to work up to your most pressing subject lines.
For your first subject line, don't start too aggressive. Try something simple, like "You left something behind!" - with the high intent of the abandoned cart touch, a gentle subject line like this serves as a reminder, and primes them for future emails.
For the second and third subject lines, make the subject lines a little more urgent: "Don't leave these behind!" or "Don't forget to checkout before these products are gone!" The escalating urgency prompts your customers to take action - they remember from your first email that they have an abandoned cart, but now they need to do something about it.
5. Include a call-to-action back to the cart.
The final goal of an abandoned cart rescue series is to get the customer to check out - and the best way to do that is to make it as easy as possible for them.
In your abandoned cart email, make sure to include a prominent call-to-action that brings them back to the cart. BuyerGenomics' carts automatically do this, but you can (and should) supplement this with an additional call to action that brings the customer back to their cart. A button is a common yet reliable way to go. Add text that influences them as well - making the button say "Checkout" or "Checkout My Cart" is a good idea.
Conclusion
By following these best practices in creating your abandoned cart rescue campaign, you are well on your way to changing abandoned carts into transactions.