Imagine someone clicks on one of your ads and lands on your e-commerce site. They spend some time browsing your products and find a few items to buy. Having added the product to their shopping cart, that visitor clicks on the ‘Checkout’ button. They get part of the way through your checkout process and… they’re gone.
What happened to them?
http://www.dubli.com?BArefno=6613598
http://www.dubli.com?BArefno=6613598
While we don’t always have the exact answer to where they went to or why, we do know that this is a typical case. Industry averages dictate that 60-70% of people that add your products to their cart will abandon their purchase. Think about that number for a second. These are people that have found your site through the millions of sites online. They took the time to browse your store and found products they were interested in purchasing. They even added those products to their carts, yet 60% of them are just walking away.
Not only have you lost a sale, but also a potential repeat customer and marketing opportunity. If the shopping experience had been more positive, this customer may have been evangelical about your product and gone on to tell friends and family about it. For all you know, your frustrated visitor may have a popular blog or huge social following with whom to share their experience. Although this might sound extreme, it is an all-too-likely scenario. What is more, it is a scenario that could have been prevented had you simply requested an email address upfront and followed up with an email.
Winning Back Lost Sales With Cart Recovery Emails
It might seem to be a daunting task to turn such a high cart abandonment rate around. However, a visitor who leaves your site is not necessarily a lost customer. If you can get a visitor who has abandoned a shopping cart to return to your site again, your chances of making a sale improve dramatically, such as the case with Lucky Brand Jeans who saw their cart recovery sales increase by 300% using cart recovery emails. This is exactly why email retargeting is vital to every ecommerce store’s marketing strategy.
It might seem to be a daunting task to turn such a high cart abandonment rate around. However, a visitor who leaves your site is not necessarily a lost customer. If you can get a visitor who has abandoned a shopping cart to return to your site again, your chances of making a sale improve dramatically, such as the case with Lucky Brand Jeans who saw their cart recovery sales increase by 300% using cart recovery emails. This is exactly why email retargeting is vital to every ecommerce store’s marketing strategy.
What Can You Do?
There are three essential parts to successfully setting up an email retargeting campaign crush cart abandonment issues and increase your sales.
There are three essential parts to successfully setting up an email retargeting campaign crush cart abandonment issues and increase your sales.
1. Collect Visitors Email Address
Collecting your customers’ email address is the first step in any transaction. It is vital to ask visitors for an email address as a first step in your checkout process. This will give you the ability to communicate with visitors should they abandon their carts later on.
Collecting your customers’ email address is the first step in any transaction. It is vital to ask visitors for an email address as a first step in your checkout process. This will give you the ability to communicate with visitors should they abandon their carts later on.
2. Auto Responder Magic
Having customers’ email is just one part of the solution. Once a customer abandons their cart, you need to be able to follow-up and open communication with your site visitors. It is vital you use an automated program to set up auto responder emails. These can be sent to customers within a predetermined time period of their carts being abandoned.
Having customers’ email is just one part of the solution. Once a customer abandons their cart, you need to be able to follow-up and open communication with your site visitors. It is vital you use an automated program to set up auto responder emails. These can be sent to customers within a predetermined time period of their carts being abandoned.
There are lots of software solutions that integrate with almost every kind of shopping cart that will facilitate these emails for you. Cart abandonment apps like CartStack can send automated, personalized emails to abandoned visitors. These can save you time and help you recover revenue that will otherwise be lost. You can watch this video of how CartStack works.
The content of the automated email can vary. It can be as simple as asking visitors if they had any questions you can help with. You could even offer discounts to customers to entice them to come back and complete their purchase.
The key to use recovery emails is to present them as a service so that they are valued more. This will also encourage the shoppers to refer to recover emails, even later on, compared to other types of emails. Use these emails as nice little reminders. Make sure that there is a link that will take the shopper to his/her cart.
It is essential that you contact visitors right away to find out if you can help them, before they buy from a competitor. The sooner the better. It is recommended to send the first recovery email within the first 20-30 minutes of abandoning the cart. Those who waited for more than 24 hours saw the conversion rate go down by 50%. The next batches of recover emails could be sent – one after 24 hours and one after a week.
If you need some inspiration for your automated email, check out the Shopify blog post: 13 Amazing Abandoned Cart Emails (And What You Can Learn From Them.
Conclusion
With an average of 60% abandonment rate, cart abandonment emails should be a no brainer for ecommerce businesses. They can be one of your most effective sales channels and pay for themselves with measurable and trackable results. When you set up cart abandonment emails, don’t forget to test different things like discounts, copy and images. You’ll be surprised at what you can achieve with a few automated emails.
With an average of 60% abandonment rate, cart abandonment emails should be a no brainer for ecommerce businesses. They can be one of your most effective sales channels and pay for themselves with measurable and trackable results. When you set up cart abandonment emails, don’t forget to test different things like discounts, copy and images. You’ll be surprised at what you can achieve with a few automated emails.
Deepak Joshi
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