Abandoned Cart Emails Used by Leading Brands (Guide for 2024)
An abandoned cart email is simply a follow-up message. This email is sent to those customers who add products to their cart but leave a website or online store without finishing their purchase.
Abandonment cart emails help in bringing back your customers who have not completed their purchase. So, when it is about boosting your sales, this email marketing strategy is essential. You can successfully run abandonment cart email strategy with an effective email marketing automation tool.
Whether you are selling to consumers or other companies, this is an effective sales recovery strategy. It is possible to recover around 10% of lost revenue by using abandoned cart emails.
Why does shopping cart abandonment take place?
There are multiple reasons which make industries lose their customers. Before exploring the reasons for shopping cart abandonment, let’s check out a few stats.
- eCommerce businesses lose $18 billion in sales revenue every year due to cart abandonment.
- Across all industries, an average cart abandonment rate counts to 69.57 %
- This rate is even higher for mobile users counting to around 85.65 %
So, these facts are some important numbers that underline the need of abandoned cart email strategies for all industries.
Now, let’s look at some of the most important reasons for shopping cart abandonment. These reasons are an insight into how you can reduce cart abandonment.
1. Hidden costs
The following chart by Baymard Institute, suggests that unexpected shipping cost is the top reason for visitors to leave an empty cart without making any purchase. Other hidden costs include taxes or fees on other required complementary items that leads to an increase in the cost of an actual order.
These costs can be annoying and irritating to the consumers for which they may feel anguish for their purchase.
2. Creating new accounts
Consumers always seek convenience where they want quick and instant results. When users are asked to create a new account, they avoid buying. Around 22% of cart abandoners do not complete their purchase due to this reason and for 28% of all shoppers this is the reason for abandoned carts.
3. Long and complicated check out
Customers won’t finish their purchase if they face Long and confusing checkout processes. Unnecessary forms at the checkout are often annoying and sometimes even confusing. Due to such poor experience, around 28% of shoppers tend to abandon carts.
4. Research to buy later
In this internet era, users always prefer to conduct research for the products, deals and brands. So, they exit the store to know more on other sites or stores. This results in a long check-out process.
5. Calculating total cost up-front
When users add multiple items in their shopping cart, they expect to see the total order cost beforehand. If they don’t get such convenience, there are chances that they will avoid the purchase.
6. Unresponsive Website
Errors and glitches badly affect your customer experience. So, customers often do not buy any product and never bother to return to the website again.
7. Concerns about payment security
Design flaws, missing images, outdated layouts, and absence of SSL certificate are some of the key suspicions which make customers feel unsecure about the payment.
8. Slow deliveries
In this rapidly moving world, when everything is fast, customers undoubtedly won’t prefer slow delivery. Especially, important purchases like birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, or emergencies are often time constrained, hence they must be on exact time.
9. Disappointing return policy
Some eCommerce stores have strict policies on the returns including limited time and extra charge for the return.
10. Lack of enough payment options
When customers get many options for the payment to choose from, there are chances that they will complete their purchase.
This insight into the reasons for cart abandonment will be surely helpful in alleviating cart abandonment rates for your ecommerce store.
Abandoned cart email best practices
Moving to the next point in the blog, let’s cover the best practices for sending abandoned cart email. A compelling email copy, a simple way to get back to the cart, or a display of the abandoned items tops the list of best abandoned cart email strategies.
A few more are highlighted as follows:
1. Time to send an abandoned cart email
You can observe better results if you send abandoned cart email early. More specifically, sending this follow up email just after one hour gives a 16% conversion rate. However, sending an email too early or too late won’t give you the desired results.
It is also a good choice to send abandoned cart emails three times following the proper time intervals. The first email after an hour of cart abandonment, the second, on the next day of abandonment, while the third email after three days of abandonment.
You can set up your shopping cart abandonment email with WebMaxy.
2. Customer segments for personalized emails
When users get to see items of interest, the chances of them buying those are high. So, depending on purchase history, product preferences, and cart size, you can target customers with personalized abandoned cart emails. Customer segmentation is the key for this abandonment cart email strategy.
An abandoned cart email with personalized product recommendations can help in driving higher click rates as many products will be related to customer’s interest. A personalized email copy, a friendly tone to inspire your customers and the product of their interest at the front and center with catchy CTA will make the things happen.
3. Offering discount on final price
When users are shopping online, they often end up adding more items to their carts that leads to an increased total cost. They also forget to consider extra costs such as shipping costs or taxes. So, when the total price goes above their expectations, they may abandon their shopping cart.
Well, as soon as they see discounts while they are about to leave the store, they may grab the deal and complete their shopping with check out. For creating discounts, you must simply decide the amount, generate a discount code, and you are set to implement the best practice for an abandoned cart email.
4. Including social proof
By using social proofs, eCommerce brands can build trust with those customers who don’t check out successfully. With this strategy, you can encourage cart abandoners to complete their purchase.
People like to check out what others have to say about a particular product and social proof is one of the best ways to do so. By looking into other people’s opinions and what good things they say about your product, they may get hooked on your brand.
5. An attention-grabbing subject line
This is the simple yet effective way to catch customer attention. You can create attention-grabbing subject lines by personalizing the users. To do so, you can use several customer profile properties including their name, company name, or the products they have abandoned.
For example, you can pop up, “Hey Jack, where’d you go?” or “Are you looking for White shirt instead of Yellow?” This strategy works great for your marketing campaigns.
Moreover, open rates are also high for the subject lines including “forgot something” or “left something behind.”
6. Attractive CTAs
Call to actions (CTAs) are important for your cart abandonment email strategy because it keep the users informed about what they must do next to finish their buying journey. eCommerce brands use traditional CTAs such as Buy now, Return to cart, Complete your order, Proceed to check out, or keep shopping. However, if you are giving a discount, you may need to use more effective CTAs like Activate free shipping, or Get my 10% off, etc.
7. Choosing the Right Abandoned Cart App
Recovering lost sales starts with choosing an app that does more than just send a basic reminder. You need a tool that allows you to personalize emails based on customer behavior, purchase history, and cart value. Apps like Retainful help you craft abandoned cart emails that are timely, personal, and engaging, without feeling robotic.
With the right app, you can send emails featuring product images, dynamic coupons, and personalized product recommendations tailored to customer interests. A friendly tone, a compelling CTA, and the right product at the right time can turn an abandoned cart into a completed purchase effortlessly.
Top 5 Abandoned Cart Email Examples
Above, we covered the reasons for shopping cart abandonment and a few best practices for sending those emails. Now, let’s check out a few examples of abandoned cart emails and how the popular brands are using this strategy to overcome the abandonment rate.
1. Peel
With an enticing subject line, Peel’s abandoned cart email makes use of a free shipping deal. Free shipping acts as a motivation for customers to complete their checkout.
They also add very effective CTAs such as ‘Don’t wait too long’ and ‘order today’, which makes users give an instant thought on completing their purchase.
2. Whisky Loot
Whisky Loot’s shopping cart abandonment email is very innovative with a subject line “Your cart is sobering up”. This unusual and humorous email works well to enhance open rates and conversion rates.
In their abandoned cart email strategy, they start with a question and then let you explore the things inside in a very interesting way.
3. Sephora
This brand exploits the strategy of a better welcome campaign to reduce the cart abandonment rate. Rather than giving direct discount offers, Sephora introduces visitors to their newsletter named Beauty Insider, and automatically gets the subscribers in.
Abandonment cart email underlines many benefits of this newsletter,r including gifts, free classes, and bonus rewards for making purchases.
4. Casper
Casper ecommerce brand, makes use of a simple subject line in their email, which asks, ‘Did you forget something?’. After opening their email, there is a catchy headline, “COME BACK TO BED” that draws user attention.
The simple and easy-to-read email with a clear CTA takes users to the checkout page. By including testimonials in their email, they gain users’ trust and establish more brand loyalty.
5. Prose
Starting with an interesting subject line, “Your formulas are up to date,” Prose gives its users a friendly reminder to complete their shopping and checkout. In their email, they usea catchy tagline “Great(er) hair ahead” and an appealing CTA as “Build Your Routine,”.
The friendly tone in their email, discounts for urgency, clear graphics, and a personalized experience make their cart abandonment emails persuasive.
These five examples of eCommerce brands are effectively using abandoned cart email strategies to recover their sales. To make your abandoned cart emails superior, you can use abandoned cart email templates.
To Summarize
Cart recovery campaigns are a significant part of your email marketing and are easier to set up than you might think. For e-commerce brands, implementing the best cart abandonment email strategy is very crucial.
At WebMaxy, you can connect with our experts at info@webmaxy.co, who will guide you to make your abandonment email flow effective.
By analyzing the reasons for shopping cart abandonment for your brand, you must go for the specific abandoned cart email best practice. Moreover, you can take inspiration from the top abandoned cart email examples.
So, just get ready to recover your sales by hitting the shopping cart abandonment email!
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Abandoned cart emails FAQs
An abandoned cart email is a follow-up message sent to those customers who add products to their cart but don’t complete their purchase.
Abandoned cart emails help in bringing back your customers who are interested in your products but somehow fail to complete their purchase. So, when it is about increasing your sales, this email marketing strategy is essential.
To write an abandoned cart email, make sure that you include a reminder of the items left behind, discounts or other actionable copy, and a call to action (CTA). Your message should motivate people to buy those items that they have added to their cart but forgot to check out.
It is a common misconception that abandoned cart emails are illegal and don’t adhere to recent data privacy changes.
However, it is legal and compliant with data privacy requirements. Data is collected with the user’s consent, such as the information they offer when they sign up for your mailing list. So, sending emails for marketing and hence educating customers is safe and legal.
To create the perfect abandoned cart email, first figure out the reason for cart abandonment. Then decide on the catchy subject line, template, and irresistible CTA to use in the cart abandonment email.
Besides, the name of the email sender must be attractive, the products they are missing, and a compelling message are also vital elements for creating the perfect abandoned cart email.
The abandoned cart email campaign should have at least three emails. First email to be sent after the first hour, second email after the first day, and the final email on the third day. However, you can create as many emails as you prefer in your abandoned cart series.
Adam Wilson
Adam Wilson comes with an experience of 12+ years in the IT industry. As a Customer Success Manager, he has been researching and trying to understand the customers’ behavior in different scenarios. He has also studied human psychology to relate it to the purchase journey of the customers. His published books on customer psychology and behavior have received many honors and awards from various enterprises.