Tips inspired by my husband’s online shopping habits

I want to talk about a touchy subject… abandoned cart emails.

Anytime I bring up abandoned cart emails, whether in a speaking engagement or one-on-one with a client, I can see those shoulders go up and those faces scrunch… I get it. Abandoned cart emails can be pretty cringe.

Abandoned cart emails are also a secret weapon for many an ecommerce ninja; to put it simply, they work. They have that secret sauce built in.

The Abandoned Cart Email Secret Sauce:

• They’re hyper relevant; based on one subscriber’s actions, showing them products that they actually wanted enough to get all the way to “add to cart, enter details” stage!
• They’re also very direct; when we think about my whole “one goal, one measurable” philosophy, Abandoned Cart emails are pretty easy to apply that 1-2 punch to!
• And if they’re done effectively, they drive to the bottom line. 

In fact, as the good people over at Highway 29 just pointed out in their recent case study, if you want to grow your ecommerce by 50% you simply need to recover 21% of your abandoned carts (and yea, they did the math). 

70% of users abandoned their carts on your website (on average) + Recover 21% of those = 50% boost to ecommerce right there!

If you find abandoned cart emails to be creepy or annoying, it’s probably because the abandoned cart emails you’ve received have been done poorly.  

What works best?

My husband likes to do a bit of online shopping, and a few years ago he was in the market for a new gadget for his Dodge Ram pickup. He had even gone so far as to add said-gadget to his cart and start creating an account. But in classic Mr. Whiskers form, his wallet was outside in his truck and he didn’t want to put on pants to go out and get it. He couldn’t complete the transaction and instead, went to bed like a grownup. Next morning, he opens his inbox to discover a coupon for 20% off his already-desired gadget, but alas! His wallet was still in his truck and he was still sans pants. The gadget would have to wait. Later that evening, Auto Parts Anonymous upped the ante and delivered an even deeper discount on the product and, having remembered to bring his wallet inside with him after work, Pro Shopper finally completed his purchase.

Auto Parts Anonymous 1, Whiskers 0

Or was it? 

You see, from that point on, my husband was convinced that he was smarter than online retailers and decided that he would never fully check out on the first run. Instead, now he adds things to his cart and he waits. In some cases, the abandoned cart email is just a reminder, but in others, he gets a discount on a product he already wanted and would have bought at full price. YOUCH.

Why am I telling you about my husband’s pantless online shopping habits? Because, if you use an offer to recover abandoned carts, you train your customers NOT to pay full price. That’s totally fine if your pricing model is ‘we plan to discount regularly’ but it is NOT totally fine if you want loyalty from your customers that isn’t tied to the price tag.

When considering what would work best for your business, ask yourself:

Why do customers abandon carts in the first place?

It could be that they didn’t have their wallet, like no pants magee in my example earlier.

It could be that they got to the shipping details section and saw how much you were going to charge them for shipping and were like, never mind I’m out.

It could be that they got hung up on a customer service question.

They might be price shopping, or unsure if what they actually put in their cart is really the right solution.

They could have just gotten distracted.

These are all hooks that you can use to get their interest with the subject line of your abandoned cart email.

I like to write a TON of subject lines (at least 30) for every email campaign I write. Try this for yourself! Make a list of all the reasons you think a customer might be abandoning their cart on your online store. Then, write 30 subject lines that address EACH of the reasons. I know it might seem like a lot of work, but doing this will actually make your email copy writing go faster! You can a/b test different subject lines for different cart abandonment reasons and, based on the winning subject line, gain more insight into the most dominant reason for customers ditching you before they pull the trigger!

Once you’ve arrived at your winning hook, the sole purpose of your email copy will be to overcome that reason and get people back to their saved cart. 

How many cart abandonment emails should you send?

Well, it depends on your product and brand. There isn’t a winning recipe. However, Klaviyo just put together a VERY detailed case study on Abandoned Cart emails and identified that after 3 abandoned cart emails in the flow, you start to see diminishing returns. 

I’ve seen the three-message flow referred to as an Abandoned Cart Sandwich, where the “Bread” is your hard-sell, “You left this behind, return to your cart” messaging and the “Filling” part is more of a soft-sell, recommendations / other products you may enjoy angle.

What I typically do is a 2-email flow, and this is largely dictated by the fact I work predominantly with wineries and their product, positioning and value to the customer needs to be much more relational. We send the 1st email 1 hour after the cart is abandoned, wait 1-3 days, and then send a reminder that reinforces that the product in their cart is limited and we can’t save it forever (essentially).

If you aren’t sure which to try, I recommend you get started with just ONE simple abandoned cart campaign. Pick the angle or hook that you feel most aligns with your ideal customer’s experience shopping on your website, write your 30 subject lines (because if your email doesn’t get opened, your customer can’t return to their cart and check out), then get all up in your email service provider to build and turn on that sucker. Give it at least a month to do its thing (depending on your website and online store traffic, you might start to see results much sooner than that).

Then, analyze and optimize your abandoned cart email!

Is your open rate above or below the average (roughly 50% of abandoned cart emails are opened)?

How about your click rate? If you are under 10% I’d tweak the campaign messaging further.

And most importantly, how many carts are you recovering? (Take the number of sales from the email and divide by the number of clicks to get your conversion rate)

Did I convince you to try an abandoned cart email for your business?

Whatever recipe you choose, the abandoned cart email is a truly nourishing addition to your ecommerce driving campaigns. In fact, despite my personal love-hate relationship with abandoned cart emails, I still recommend that any new client that has a goal to grow ecommerce choose an abandoned cart email as part of our Email Essentials onboarding package.  It’s a powerhouse and you deserve to get that inbox money.

Now, turn what you know into RESULTS, then come back and let me know which recipe you tried, what the results were, and how you’re going to adjust in the future. This whole email marketing thing is an iterative process and the fun is in the learning!