Additional Revenue with Cart Abandonment Emails

How to Build a Successful Abandoned Cart Email Flow

Did you know that the average global conversion rate is 2.5% (source: monetate ecommerce benchmarks)? That means 97.5% of all traffic on a site comes and... does nothing, buys nothing, does not convert!

How does that look for your site? How many visitors come to your site daily who "do nothing"?
From this large group of people who "do nothing," there is also a portion in e-commerce that adds products to their cart, proceeds to the cart and checkout, but then still "does nothing" and drops off.

Did you know that up to 81.4% (source: https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate) of all shopping carts are abandoned?It would look odd if you saw shopping carts filled with products left alone at the checkout in a supermarket, right? Left behind by people who took the effort to go to the store, choose products, and add them, only to leave them there.

The reality is that this happens online and in your webshop every day. According to a study by Business Insider Intelligence (source: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-retailers-can-reduce-shopping-cart-abandonment-and-recoup-billions-of-dollars-in-lost-sales-2014-4), it even amounts to about $4 trillion (yes, that's a 4 with 12 zeros, $4,000,000,000,000) worth of products being left behind annually.

From the same study, it remains that 75% of people indicate they intend to return, and 63% of the missed revenue can be recouped.
This presents opportunities for your webshop. It is often cheaper to convince someone who has already visited your store to come back than to pay for and seek out a new potential customer. Especially when this person has already shown a higher intent!

This is also why abandoned cart emails, email remarketing, or abandoned cart emails are so important.
Many webshops do not immediately know how or where to start. How to set up an abandoned cart automation flow to achieve the desired results.

Often, they choose a single email without realizing that an email flow (consisting of multiple emails) generates 24% more orders and 75% more revenue (source: https://mailchimp.com/resources/single-email-series-choosing-effective-automation-business/)

How does that look for your webshop? How much revenue are you missing out on monthly? How much revenue have you missed in the past year?

Are you already sending an abandoned cart email? No? Then start immediately or get in touch. Are you sending one email or multiple? Just one? Then you’re leaving money on the table.
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Goal of Abandoned Cart Emails

The most common goal for these emails is to prompt (potential) customers to take action. In other words, to bring them back to the site and have them place an order. Additionally, it can also be to offer assistance or be service-oriented to the consumer if something is unclear or perhaps has gone wrong.

Where to Start? Tools for Webshops

Shopify

Shopify has a standard feature to enable this. Unfortunately, it only sends one email, and there isn’t much you can configure here. The app OrderlyEmails is an option if you are okay with this - https://apps.shopify.com/email-templates. We personally use Klaviyo for this.

Magento

Magento does not have a standard option to set up these emails. You will need external extensions for this. As with Shopify, we also use Klaviyo here (partner link).

Woocommerce

Just like Magento, this functionality can only be activated with external plugins. We recommend Klaviyo.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform focused on e-commerce that allows you to quickly set up both simple and fairly extensive email flows, where you can communicate more precisely with segmentation.

What is Klaviyo and Why is it a Good Fit for E-commerce?
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Essential Components for a Good Abandoned Cart Email

To achieve good results from your abandoned cart email flows, the emails in these series should contain at least these three essential components:

• (A reminder of) the products they left behind
• Good content
• A clear call to action

Given the clear goal of this type of email, we recommend focusing the content as much as possible on this goal.

Tips for Email Content

The main tip is to keep this email as clear as possible and maintain focus on the goal. You want the visitor to return to the cart, not the product page. Additionally, here are some more tips for the content of your email:

• Add reviews from satisfied customers
• Do you have good shipping conditions? Include them
• Increase urgency (but remain ethical)
  • Order by 10:00 AM = receive tomorrow!
• Show stock (only x left in stock)
• Include a clear "return to cart" button both above and below the fold.
• Add a product photo

When and How Often?

Start with 3 to a maximum of 5 emails (a series delivers 24% more revenue):

• First email 1 hour after abandoning the cart
• A reminder 1 day later
• A second/last reminder 2 days later.
  • Optionally, include a temporary discount email in email 4 and a reminder in email 5 (see advanced tips)

Curious About How to Get More from Your Abandoned Cart Email Flow?
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Advanced Tips to Elevate Your Email Flow

Relevance is very important during communication with (potential) customers. The more relevant you are, the greater the chance of conversion. Besides a standard flow as indicated above, here are some possible ideas that can help you take a step further to be more relevant and get more from this email flow.

Edvanced Tips to Elevate Your Email Flow

Because the subject line is the first thing a recipient sees, a good subject line leads to higher open and click rates. A discount or free shipping can significantly help, but we recommend sending this as a last resort. Research among more than 200 international companies has shown that the following elements can significantly increase the open rate:

• Company Name +53% (Zalando | Did you forget something?)
• Product Details +52% (We’ve saved your summer dress)
• Personalization +38% (Koen, complete your order with a 20% discount)
• Urgency +44% (Last chance: complete your order with a 10% discount)
• Service-oriented +46% (Can we help you? Your order isn’t complete yet)

These are just indicators from other companies, but they show that there are possibilities to improve this. What works best for your target audience you’ll have to find out through methods like A/B testing.

• Segment based on whether they are a customer or not
  By splitting the flows into visitors who have never ordered anything and customers who have ordered before, you can communicate more effectively. A new customer may need a little more convincing (add reviews?), or you may want to offer an introductory discount in emails 4 and 5.
• Segment based on cart value
  You might want to make an offer to visitors with a higher than average cart value to encourage them to complete their purchase.
• Segment based on product category
  Is there something unique about the products in the cart? Can you further tailor your email based on these products to make them more relevant?
• Offer a discount or a bonus in the 3rd or 4th email & reminder
  The longer time passes, the smaller the chance that people will complete their purchase. Motivation also diminishes over time. Besides good texts and being relevant, a one-time discount based on one of the above segments can re-motivate customers. Choose a temporary discount that expires and can be used once. Besides a discount, you can also choose to give something extra, like free shipping, a small gift, or a digital product (downloadable).

Tip: Exclude people who have already received a discount in the same flow in the past 90 days to prevent misuse.

• A/B Test with discount or extra
  What works best for your company? You’ll find out by testing. Here are some ideas to test:
• Fixed amount vs. percentage discount
• Discount vs. an extra
• Discount or extra vs. nothing
• Increasing discount