Abandoned Cart Recovery: Best Practices 2023

Shopping cart abandonment, the scourge of e-commerce?

Studies agree that between half and three-quarters of Internet users abandon their shopping carts along the way.

Of course, trying to persuade all those potential customers to check out in order to double or triple your sales is a lost quest. However, implementing a cart abandonment recovery strategy for 2023 to convince a few is worth it!

You only have to look back at your own shopping experiences to realize that the way an e-shop works is not that different from the real world.

Imagine yourself in a shop with a few items under your arm. You arrive at the checkout, ready to draw your credit card, only to realize that this means of payment is not accepted. If you don’t have cash on you, you’ll probably abandon your items and leave the store without completing your purchase. And your reaction would probably be the same when faced with a supermarket queue requiring many minutes to wait. You will prefer to walk away, rather than wait too long to check out.

Waiting and disappointment are not pleasant feelings for anyone. On an e-commerce, even more than in a physical shop, the consumer’s demands are increased. When shopping on the web in 2019, the internet user wants to go as fast and as simple as possible.

Shopping cart abandonment: the 8 main reasons in 2023

1. Limited means of payment available.
2. Delivery costs too high.
3. Additional costs concealed before payment is released.
4. Must create an account to complete the order.
5. Ordering process too long.
6. Lack of clarity on delivery times.
7. No contact information displayed for the seller.
8. Lack of trust and feeling of insecurity on the e-commerce site.

Find out also what are the main
to online shopping and how to minimize them?

For one of these reasons (or sometimes for another), the customer decides to abandon his cart, even though he had taken the time to browse your e-commerce.

Fortunately, there are several proven techniques to persuade him to retrace his steps.

Shopping cart abandonment reminder emails: best practices for 2023

Abandoned cart reminder emails are sent to customers who have added products to their cart without finalizing their order.

To get these deserters back, sending reminder emails is one of the most effective tactics, according to figures from a study by SaleCycle:

• Almost half (44.1%) of the reminder emails are opened.
• More than one tenth (11.6%) of the shopping cart abandonment reminder emails are clicked.
• Almost a third (29.9%) of clicks result in an e-commerce purchase.

To achieve such performance, the follow-up email must be worked on.

Here are the ingredients of a good e-mail marketing reminder.

Discover also our best practices to improve an e-mail marketing

Abandoned cart email: timing is everything

Timing is absolutely critical when it comes to successfully recovering lost sales through cart abandonment. According to SaleCycle’s research on 200 global brands:

• Emails sent within 20 minutes have an average conversion rate of 5.2%.
• Emails sent within one hour achieve an average conversion rate of 4.5%.
• Emails sent more than 24 hours after a cart has been abandoned achieve an average conversion rate of 2.6%.

It is therefore best to send a first e-mail to the customer a few minutes or hours after he has left the site, the best being to wait no more than 24 hours.

While some merchants choose to send an email instantly after the shopping cart is abandoned, others prefer to let more time pass. In any case, you should not wait so long that the user may have forgotten the items he wanted before receiving your reminder e-mail.

Then, repeat your reminders several hours or days later. Ideally, trigger the first reminder between 12 and 48 hours after the cart is abandoned, then the third reminder 48 to 72 hours later.

Abandoned cart email: take care of your items

Along with the sender, the subject line is the first thing the re-sent customer will see when they open their inbox.

The subject line of your reminder e-mail should therefore make a good impression and attract attention, while making the recipient want to click on it to find out what it contains.

For this purpose :

• Make sure your brand/company is identifiable before the email is opened, either by the sender’s name or in the subject line.
• Be specific about the subject of your email. Example: ” You have left items in your shopping cart”.
  
• Specifically name the abandoned product or category: a personalized email subject line that includes the abandoned category will increase its open rate by 10%.

If you’re lacking inspiration, here are 8 effective elements to mix and match in your email subject lines:

• Personal interest: This type of subject line talks about the specific benefit your recipient will gain by opening the dunning email.
• Curiosity: this type of object piques the recipient’s interest by revealing little information.
• Offer: this type of subject directly declares that the opening of the reminder email by its recipient will allow him to benefit from an offer (discount or delivery costs for example).
• Urgency/Rash: This type of object tells the recipient that they must act now, before it is too late.
• Politeness: this type of object thanks the recipient of an email to encourage him to open it. Example for an e-commerce: ” Thank you for stopping by and showing interest in this product.”
  
• News: this type of subject indicates to the recipient that he will have access to new things when he opens the mail. You can then offer them similar products to the one they are interested in.
• Social proof: this type of e-mail object reassures and confirms the consumer in his choice, by mentioning for example how many people have already bought the product before him.
• Story: This type of object consists of starting a story to highlight a benefit and to obtain a high opening rate.

Abandoned cart email: focus on personalization

Your reminder emails should be as personalized as possible. The easiest way to do this is to include the surname and/or first name of the user.

Example: ” Anna, did you forget something? ”

However, be careful to reassure the customer about the use of his personal data. Avoid tipping over into the increasingly dreaded “big brother is watching you” side of things in 2019. To achieve this, don’t hesitate to adopt a friendly, humorous, light, or even offbeat tone in order to pass on the reminder in a light-hearted manner.

Examples: ” Anna, don’t forget your swimsuit for the holidays” or ” Anna, this swimsuit is missing from your suitcase “.

Abandoned cart email: work on the design

Abandoned cart reminder emails are a marketing medium like any other. If you take care to make all your marketing materials compelling, attractive and responsive, you’ll need to do the same with this one.

Discover also our article on the psychological influence of colors in web marketing

Abandoned cart email: clearly recall the abandoned product(s)

Before being interested in your products and then giving up, the user has probably consulted a lot of e-commerce sites. So he still has many products in mind. Hence the need to be as specific as possible about the product being abandoned. Price, color, size: give as many details as possible.

You can also incorporate an image of the product that will remind them better than words of the item they are walking past. It is then quite possible that after some time of reflection, customers will finally decide to buy it.

Abandoned cart email with product photo from ASOS

Abandoned cart email: create a sense of urgency

Scarcity is a powerful psychological sales trigger that smart e-tailers know how to take advantage of.

Urgent reminder email from Urban Outfitters

As in the subject line, the sense of urgency can thus be present in the content of the email itself. The idea is to make the customer understand that they should go back to their shopping cart now before it expires or the products they have added are no longer in stock.

Example: ” Hurry up, your cart expires in 24 hours! ”

Abandoned cart email: recommend additional products

When you send someone an abandoned cart email, the main goal is to get them to return to their cart, credit card in hand, ready to complete their purchase.

However, there are many reasons for shopping cart abandonment. Among other things, the Internet user may have changed his or her mind and, after careful consideration, no longer want the item he or she wanted in the first place. But maybe he’ll be willing to buy something else?

Follow-up email recommending other products by Full of Joy

Suggesting other popular or related items is a great way to get the user to come back and shop at your e-shop.

According to several estimates, adding recommendations from other articles would increase conversion by 10%, and the click rate of an email by 50%.

So use your data to identify the most popular products and make sure they are displayed in your email reminder with pictures.

Abandoned cart email: incorporate a call to action

Give the undecided customer the opportunity to easily return to their abandoned cart by incorporating a call to action.

Examples: ” Complete my order” or ” Continue shopping

Prefer this call to action as a CSS button rather than a hyperlink.

Complete checkout” call to action email by Grove

According to an analysis by Digital Marketer, shopping cart abandonment follow-up emails containing call-to-action buttons are clicked on 22% more times than those including a simple link.

Abandoned cart email: include customer reviews

There are many e-tailers who post comments on their product pages. For one simple reason: product validation by other shoppers has proven time and again to have a significant impact on online purchasing decisions.

So, to help seal the deal, why not include the best customer review in your dunning email? It could provide the push the recipient needs to change their mind.

Abandoned cart email: offer a discount

When customers add products to their shopping cart, they don’t always think about the taxes or shipping costs that will be added to the total cost. As a result, many customers abandon their baskets because the final price is higher than they expected.

There is a simple way to get back customers who are initially scared of the final price:

• Offer shipping costs.
• Offer a discount code.

Abandoned cart reminder email including a discount code

Discounts are easy to create. You just have to decide the amount, generate a discount code and leave it in the abandoned cart reminder email.

Retargeting abandoned carts in 2023

In e-commerce, retargeting is a practice that consists of broadcasting targeted advertisements to an Internet user who has visited your site without making a purchase. A few hours or days after the customer’s visit, advertisements displaying the products consulted and/or added to the basket will be submitted to him.

As with the email reminder, it is possible and advisable to include a discount code or free shipping in these banners.

Abandoned cart relaunch with popup window in 2023

Popup windows can be exploited to convince the most uncertain customers to finalize their purchases. After leaving a full shopping cart behind, they may finally come back to your e-commerce. At this point, a popup window can appear with a message thanking them for their new visit.

Example: ” Good to see you again! ”

To make full use of the potential of a popup window and push the customer to return to their purchases, you can also include a discount code.

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