How to make your abandoned cart emails work: learn from examples

In this post, we will determine why customers abandon their carts without reaching to ordering and much less to shipping. Not only that, but we will also figure out how to fix that problem by applying well-optimized email campaigns targeted at the most common reasons why a client leaves the store without checking out. Before starting an e-mail campaign, you should ensure that customers actually get your emails. Our Magento SMTP extension will help you protect your emails from customers’ spam folder.

How do we counter the increasing number of abandoned carts? Can we prevent customers from leaving the products they were just about to purchase behind?

E-shoppers abandoning their carts is a critical problem that no e-commerce store is safe from. To find the correct solution, we must figure out the reasons behind it.

 Sometimes people leave carts because they don’t feel secure about e-payments. Add a Magento Stripe extension to prove that in your store they are safe.

Baymard Institute, an independent web research team from the UK, combined 31 different studies on why clients leave without checking out and calculated an average documented cart abandonment rate of 68.53%.

Why is the percentage of abandoned carts increasing over the years?

Reasons popularity for abandoned cart emails

Following our intuition, there are only one or two main reasons we can think of regarding high cart abandonment rates. People mostly assume because a customer simply changed their mind, or probably didn’t feel like buying right now.”

However, from the numbers presented by above, we actually see that “unexpected costs” is the number one reason that beats all others by a huge difference.

Let’s do the math and see what can be done to address that.

If 68.53% of shoppers do not checkout, this means that only about 3 out of 10 people actually make a purchase from your store. If more than half of the abandoners give up on their purchase just because of unexpected costs, this means that minimizing or removing them completely can increase your paying customers from 3 out of 10 to about 6-7 out of 10. Yes, this doubles the current average of e-shoppers who commit to a purchase.

Using an email remarketing campaign to bring back missing customers

Never rule out a customer because the cart has been abandoned. You can bring back a lot of business to your store by designing a well-targeted email campaign for the users who left without checking out.

Timing is everything

Shopping cart abandonment email timing statistics

Your best bet is to send a total of three emails at separate stages. The exact timing is a relative subject, however study shows that the first 24 hours have the highest return rate.

The first email should be rather helpful, than selling. Bigcommerce estimates that sending the initial email the same day the cart has been abandoned, gives the highest return, after approximately 4 hours.

A good time to send the second email is about 2 days after the abandonment, as Shopify suggests. It can contain a sense of urgency, notifying that the stock is running low, or there is a limited-time discount available.

If by then the customer has not decided to make the purchase, you can use a third email with an incentive, such as free shipping.

Important note! Take these numbers as examples and tweak them while testing your email campaign to get optimal results. All clients react differently to email remarketing, so adjust your campaign according to what the majority of your customers like.

Let’s check out some examples for email templates designed to bring customers back to their abandoned carts by using different techniques for attracting attention.

Keep a friendly tone

“They’ve got my bag? How sweet!”

TopShop abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Clarity over creativity

“I always forget my coffee cup up there…”

Starbucks abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

 What  customers are missing out

“They have a pool? Well, count me in!”

Dollar Shave Club abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Get personal

“I do have great taste! Thank you!”

Crate&Barrel abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Show off your great return policy

“Well, if they are so cool with returns, why not try that dress anyway?”

Nordstrom abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Offer free shipping

“That skirt was expensive, it doesn’t make sense paying for shipping… wait, free delivery?”

Allsaints abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Call to action

“£14.60 from Leeds to London? I didn’t see that while browsing, let’s take a look…”

TheTrainLine abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Urgency boosts conversion

“I really liked those drawers and I can’t find them anywhere else…”

West Elm abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Give an incentive

“Levi’s is offering 25% off those cool jeans I saw? Why not?”

Levi's abandoned cart email

Source: Pinterest

Segment the abandoners, start testing and optimizing

You can determine why your customers abandoned their carts by running surveys and simply ask them. Based on the feedback, you can segment the users according to the exact reasons such as “unexpected costs”, “too long checkout process”, “better prices elsewhere.”

From there on, start testing your email campaign, track how things are going and optimize certain elements to see which strategy fits your customer base the most. There are a lot of variables you can use:

  • The timing
  • Template design
  • Incentives
  • Call-to-action phrases & buttons
  • Graphics and images

We hope that you liked the examples and found the information useful. Let us know if this post has been helpful in the comments section down below and feel free to leave us any questions you may have!