Abandoned Cart Emails: All You Need to Know

There are billions of active email users worldwide, which makes it one of the most promising marketing channels for businesses. You’ll be doing your brand a disservice if you don’t pay enough attention to email marketing. To be an effective marketer, however, it’s necessary to know about the different types of emails and learn how to use them properly.

One of the most important types is the abandoned cart email, which is a message that you send to a person who added items from your store to their online shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase. The idea is to compel the recipient to follow through with the order and generate more revenue for you.

What is an Abandoned Cart Email

An abandoned cart email is an automated message that you send to customers who didn’t complete a purchase at your online store. A lot of people add items to their shopping cart but don’t complete the order, which makes this message potentially useful if you want higher sales.

This message is usually a reminder about what the recipient abandoned. It can also include an incentive, such as a discount or voucher, to compel the customer to complete their purchase.

An abandoned cart message is a transactional one because the recipient has already initiated interaction with you by adding items from your store. Hence, you don’t need explicit permission to send it, unlike marketing emails. This type of message is also unique to the recipient, while marketing emails are general messages sent to a wide audience.

How Abandoned Cart Emails Work

Abandoned cart mailings are automated and work by tracking user actions on your online store. The software takes note of the products your users browse, what items they add to their shopping carts and what they purchase. Your customers will have likely provided their email addresses, which makes it easy to contact them.

Many e-commerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce automatically track user actions, so you don’t need additional software to do that. Once a user adds an item to their cart and leaves your website without purchasing, the platform records it as abandoned. After some specified time, it sends an automated email listing the items that the user left behind and nudging them to complete the purchase.

The Effectiveness of Abandoned Cart Emails

Recent research shows that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is as high as 70%. In other words, only 3 out of 10 items added to the cart get actually purchased by the customer. This statistic displays the need for abandoned cart messages, which would nudge customers to buy items.

Abandoned cart emails have one of the highest open rates of over 40% and a click-through rate of around 10%. This means that one out of 10 people that receive it will go ahead to purchase the items they left behind. This type of email helps businesses to recover lost customers and earn more sales than they would without sending them.

What is the Perfect Time to Send an Abandoned Cart Email

It’s advisable to send such messages as early as possible to increase the chances of your customer buying the items they left in their cart. The ideal time to send it is within a few hours after the customer leaves your online store. At this point, your brand is still fresh in the customer’s memory, which makes them more likely to follow through with the purchase.

You may send multiple abandoned cart messages to the same visitor, but you should space them in order not to be annoying. Wait at least 24 hours before sending a second email and then at least 48 hours for a third one. If the customer doesn’t complete the purchase on the third email, it’s likely that they won’t at all, so avoid disturbing them afterward.

Essential Practices for Sending Abandoned Cart Emails

Tips to note if you want to send the most effective abandoned cart messages include:

• Use clear and precise subject lines. The subject line is the first thing that the message recipient will see, so make it clear that it’s a reminder about the items they’ve left behind. Phrases like “Did you forget something?” or “You left something behind” will work just fine.

• Use personalization to make the recipient feel important and more likely to respond to your message. For instance, you can include their name in the subject line and email body.

• Add a visible clear-to-action button that redirects the recipient directly to the cart they abandoned so that they can immediately complete the purchase.

• Include your support address or phone number so that customers can contact you if they encounter any issues.

• The message should be brief and precise. Go straight to the point and avoid distracting the recipient with irrelevant text.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned about abandoned cart messages, it should be easy to send them to your customers and drive more sales for your business. They are essential for every online retailer and quite easy to set up. Pick a reputable email service provider, e.g., UniOne, connect it to your e-commerce platform, and you should be able to send automated abandoned cart emails to your customers in no time. Follow the tips we provided to maximize the chances of your customers completing their purchases.