An abandoned cart or abandoned shopping cart is an automated email sent when someone has added products to their shopping cart and then left your website. The goal of this email campaign is to retrieve this customer and persuade them to complete their purchase anyway. A good abandoned cart can significantly increase the number of sales of your webshop.
How do you start creating an abandoned cart email? The most important part is setting up the “add to cart” Metric properly. This basically means that the email marketing software you are using measures it when someone adds something to their shopping cart. This allows the system to recognize which products have been added and by whom. Below I have further explained how to do this for both Shopify Webshops and WooCommerce webshops.
If you have your shop running on WordPress with WooCommerce, it is important to check how you install the connection of your email marketing software. If you use Mailchimp, Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign, for example, you can often link the two systems by means of a plug-in.
The process of integrating your email marketing software into WordPress can be done in a simple and straightforward manner. Just follow the steps below:
This process is similar for most email marketing software you want to link with WordPress.
So how do you set up an Abandoned Cart email on Shopify? With Shopify, it depends a bit more on what email marketing software you have and an “add to cart” metric is often a bit less easy to add. In addition, an abandoned checkout is a lot easier to add, though. This becomes is an email that is sent when someone has started the checkout and then left. So this is one step further in the funnel as the abandoned cart.
You set this up on Shopify as follows:
Go to your store and click Settings in the lower left corner. Then click on Checkout.
Here you get the option to send automatic emails to abandoned checkouts. Here you can choose to send an email to everyone or only people who have signed up for your email list. In addition, you can choose 1, 6, 10 or 24 hours of waiting time between leaving the checkout and sending the mail.
What should you pay attention to when creating an abandoned cart email? There are a lot of factors that can make the conversion rate of your abandoned cart email fly through the roof. Here are some best practices for your abandoned cart email.
Make sure you show the products people have in their shopping cart in the email. This ensures recognition by the recipient and it is a piece of personalization which is good for your conversion rate. Make sure the product images are easy to see and there is a Call to Action (CTA) button below the products.
This is often called a sense of urgency in technical terms and this amounts to giving a good reason to move on to purchase now. Why will the recipient make a purchase now and not wait quietly until tomorrow? You can do this, for example, by adding a discount code that is only valid for 24 hours. By doing this, you create a sense of urgency and this often helps increase sales. Another example of this can also be “only 1 left in stock.”
The more personalized you can make an e-mail, the better it works. No one likes getting a generic standard e-mail, everyone already gets 20 of those a day. By sending personalized emails, you make sure you stand out above the rest in the inbox. Here’s an example of personalization in an abandonment email:
Personalization depends on the first product the customer placed in their shopping cart. This product is then mentioned in the subject line of the e-mail. For example, imagine you put an iPhone 13 in your shopping cart. In that case, you would receive an e-mail with the subject line, “Is the iPhone 13 something for you?”
This type of personalization can increase the open rate of your emails and ultimately improve your conversion rate.
A good Call to Action can be the difference between a mediocre email and a good email. This is the most important button you add and the ultimate goal of your email. A good email has the CTA button visible right away when the email opens, without scrolling. In addition, a specific CTA button works a lot better than a generic “buy now” “view” button. A good example could be “Yes I want the Iphone 13” or a benefit like “I want a smile that will make everyone jealous.”
When shopping, people often have doubts. It’s smart to remove those doubts. Look why people leave your shop after putting something in their basket. If you know this, you can tackle those doubts in your mail about abandoned shopping baskets.
Suppose someone stopped because they do not trust your company or because they found the shipping costs too high. In your mail, you can show some positive comments from happy customers and even better, a link to an independent review site like Trustpilot.
For the shipping costs, for example, you can say, “Order for an extra 25 euros, and we’ll deliver to your home for free.” Handy tip: put a few product recommendations at the bottom of your mail, so customers can easily get that extra 25 euros. This way you will make your emails much more effective and sell more!
Below you will find a 7 different Abandoned Cart examples from which you can get a lot of inspiration.
Above you see an abanoned cart email from Columbia. Here you can see that they have added some things that might also be interesting for your shop. They let you know that the price of the product that was in the shopping cart has now gone down (urgency). In addition, they also give product recommendations, indicate that there is a sale NOW and that there is free shipping on all orders.
