Travel agencies, online shops, jewellers, cosmetics, household items, decoration, fashion, etc. Abandoned shopping carts on e-commerce websites affect every business sector. About 50-75% of users leave the online purchasing process before completing their order. If trying to persuade all these leads to complete their order remains impossible, setting up an effective and intelligent strategy to convince a few of them is quite realistic, and can be a significant source of revenue. The purpose of this article is to give you important information to help you to get started and send successful abandoned carts reminder campaigns to your customers.

CONTENTS

I. Why should you set up abandoned cart recovery emails on your website?

1. Why do your customers abandon their shopping carts?
2. Three reasons to create an abandoned carts reminder email workflow

II. 8 key elements for successful abandoned cart reminder emails

1. Craft an effective subject line
2. Focus on the design
3. Personalize the message
4. Keep your CTA short and clear
5. Create a sense of urgency
6. Use reassurance elements
7. Create responsive campaigns
8. It is all about timing

III. How to create an abandoned cart email scenario with Mailify ?

1. Create an automatic campaign with an «abandoned cart» trigger
2. Set up the trigger
3. Add a message
4. Video tutorial

Why should you set up abandoned cart recovery emails on your website?

Why do your customers abandon their shopping carts?

An important thing to keep in mind is that every visitor who abandons his cart, does this for a specific reason. If you identify this reason, you will be able to react accordingly to provide the required improvements and reduce the number of abandoned carts on your website. Here are some of the most common reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

UX issues

• The purchasing process is too long or too complicated. Make it possible for visitors to order without having to create a customer account. Limit your purchasing process to a maximum of 5 steps. Consider also integrating a step-by-step display that informs the user about the current step in the purchasing process. Furthermore, add clear and easily recognizable links like «Continue Shopping» and «Order».
• The visitor would like to contact you but can’ t find your contact details. Remember to highlight the contact details of your customer service. You can also set up a live chat service to encourage customers to contact you immediately when they have a question or experience a difficulty.

Lack of information and trust

• The visitor finds out that there are extra charges stated at the last minute. Be clear from the beginning about the eventual fees (delivery and so on…)
• Visitors do not trust your website. Build customer trust and confidence by using elements of reassurance such as customer reviews or relevant official certifications.
• There is a lack of information about the products the user would like to purchase. Be sure to display the product details and to provide a link to the product page within the shopping cart. Announce clearly the delivery time and the payment methods available on your website.
• The potential customer is still hesitant and/or compares other offers with yours. Consider offering a discount or free shipping in your reminder email to make the difference with your competitors.

One last tip: make sure to limit distracting elements within the shopping cart (visuals, messages, offers or other website elements which brings the visitor to leave the page) at every step of the purchasing process. Remove or minimize the usual navigation elements and thereby reducing the possibilities of action for your visitors to the bare minimum, i.e. to go to the next step. While this will not stop shopping cart abandonment, it will reduce its rate.To convince your visitors to complete their orders, the most effective way is to set up a recovery email scenario.

Three reasons to create an abandoned carts reminder email workflow

A powerful automated customer follow-up scenario

As e-commerce professionals, you know how important it is to contact visitors who have visited your website in order to increase your conversion rate. Visitors who have abandoned their shopping cart showed a clear interest for your products or services. Therefore this target is where customer follow-ups are the most effective, but you have to contact them again at the right time. Automation scenarios allow you to save time and increase efficiency. You set up your automatic campaign once and the mailing is sent automatically and individually at the right moment in the customer journey.

An easier conversion

When shoppers abandon their cart on your website, the hardest part is already done: you managed to bring them to your website. Moreover your products have caught their attention. Converting them will cost you less than trying to acquire new customers who have not shown the same interest for your offer. They are «hot» leads. They spent time on your website but didn’t go through the whole process. With a little more effort, you may be able to persuade a few more hesitants. So do not hesitate to bank on abandoned carts to generate additional sales revenue. Setting up email reminders for abandoned shopping carts could increase your sales by about 5%.

A tool that is easy to implement

The last reason why you shouldn’t overlook abandoned carts recovery emails in your marketing and sales communication strategy is the fact that it is extremely easy to set up. Technical skills are not required to set up these advanced automated campaigns. Mailify allows you to create this kind of scenario in just a few clicks.

8 key elements for successful abandoned cart reminder emails

• Craft an effective subject line
• Focus on the design
• Personalize the message
• Keep your CTA short and clear
• Create a sense of urgency
• Use reassurance elements
• Create responsive campaigns
• It is all about timing

Craft an effective subject line

Same applies to a classic email campaign as to an abandoned cart recovery email. The object line should be clear and short, catch attention, build trust of your recipients and also help them to identify easily your company. Do not forget to personalize the subject of your email with the first name of your recipient for instance.

Here are some examples of common email subjects used for abandoned shopping cart reminder emails :

• {firstname}, your cart is waiting for you…
• You left something in your cart
• {firstname},come back for your {product name}
• Your cart is about to expire
• Don’t miss out on these items!
• Complete your order now to save 5%!
• Get your {product name} before it is gone

Focus on the design

The design of your emails reflects the image of your company. Abandoned cart reminders are no exception. So, even if the message has to be simple, short and clear, make sure to use attractive visuals to highlight the abandoned products. You should also use a colour code that reminds your brand identity and your values. Keep it simple and effective!

Personalize the message

A personalised e-mail message will definitely catch the attention of your recipients. Use the first and last name of your customers. You can also personalize the content of the email according to the items currently in the shopping cart. Remember, for example, the details of abandoned items or suggest additional items based on your customers’ buying habits.

Keep your CTA short and clear

The wording of your call-to-action has a huge effect on the effectiveness of your campaigns. We all agree that the ultimate goal of a abandoned cart reminder email is to make sure that the customer completes his order on your website. However it is recommended not to be too explicit in the phrasing of your CTA and instead ask your contact to «consult» his shopping cart. Avoid words like «pay», «finalize» or «buy» that connote a high level of commitment.

Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency and scarcity of your offer among your users is a common and effective method to get more sales. The fear of missing out or not getting a coveted item is a powerful conversion factor. So make your customer gently understand that he should finalize his purchases before his shopping cart expires or before the desired articles are no longer available.

Use reassurance elements

When a user hesitates to complete his order online, he may only need to be reassured. Consider to include a positive customer review to offer a neutral and external proof of confidence to your clients and thus make the final decision easier to make. Also highlight the benefits you can offer your customers.

Create responsive campaigns

More than 60% of emails are opened and read on mobile devices. Your messages must therefore be properly displayed on all types of devices (smartphone, tablets, etc…). Sending responsive messages will increase the opening and converting rate of your campaigns.

It is all about timing

If email happens to be the most efficient way to recover lost customers, it is important to take into account the timing and frequency of your email reminders when you are planning your scenario.

Choosing the right timing is a central element to succeed in recovering your lost customers. Most of the time, an abandoned cart reminder scenario includes three emails. The first email is sent to the customer 15 minutes to 24 hours after he left the website. It is not recommended to wait more than 24 hours to send the first email. The second email is generally sent 24 to 48 hours after the cart abandonment and the third email is usually sent 48 to 72 hours after the cart has been abandoned.

Of course you could send out further reminders. However you should keep in mind that you could frighten your customers if you are too pushy. So avoid sending out too many reminder e-mails or not observing a minimum interval of time between your reminders.

How to create an abandoned cart campaign with Mailify?

Create an automatic campaign with an «Abandoned cart» trigger

This automatic workflow can trigger a sequence of emails that will be sent when a cart abandonment is detected on your online shop.

Prerequisites: you need to have previously installed and updated the Mailify connector related to your shop (Prestashop or Magento). Your shop must also be connected to your Mailify account.

1 – From the homepage, click on «Create a campaign».

2 – At the next step, select «Automatic campaign».

3 – Give your campaign a name and then select the «Abandoned cart» trigger.

To set the trigger

Before you start creating your recovery workflow, you need to configure a few settings. Concretely, you have to inform Mailify on which website shopping cart abandonments should be detected.

1 – First of all, select the relevant shop in the displayed list.

If your plugin isn’t up to date or if your shop is not linked to your Mailify account, you won’t be able to go further in the creation process of your workflow.

If you experience any difficulty to install or update your Mailify plugin on your shop, please do not hesitate to contact us.

2 – Then select the unsubscription list(s) you would like to use for this campaign. The contacts being part of this (or these) list(s) will be automatically excluded from your mailings and those who want to unsubscribe will be also automatically added to it.

3 – Chose the unsubscription method you would like to use for your campaign. By default, the unsubscription method defined in the parameters of your account is applied. However, you can select a different method for this campaign if you wish.

4 – Once you have set the parameters of your «Abandoned cart» trigger, click on the green button to validate. You will then be automatically redirected to the tool to create your automatic scenario.

Add a message

Now that your trigger is set-up, it’s time to create your first reminder email.

1 – From the automatic campaign creation dashboard, click on the «Add a message» button.

2 – Select the Email Builder as the creation mode. You can now use the pre-configured abandoned cart template that is displayed by default. This template has been created by our design and marketing experts and provides you the essential elements to build an abandoned cart reminder e-mail.

You can also create your message from scratch. You can then drag and drop the «Shopping cart» content block into your message. The content of the abandoned cart will be then automatically displayed in your campaign.

3 – Configure the block displaying the shopping cart contents. In the block settings, you can choose the maximum number of abandoned items to be displayed in your message. You can also activate or deactivate the attributes relate dto the product (picture, title, description, price, column header, etc.)

To standardize and easily change the style of the text content, the style of the product attributes (font, size, color, etc.) is automatically applied to all product lines. This way you only have to change the style once. In the example above you change the color of the attribute «Product name» and this change is instantly effective for all product lines.

4 – Once the message is ready, you can validate it. You will be then automatically redirected to the automatic campaign creation dashboard. You can then create other reminder emails and set up the sending of the next email sequences according to the behaviour of the recipient (has or has not opened the previous message).

5 – As soon as all your messages are ready and configured, all you have to do is activate your workflow.

Any questions? Contact our teams and schedule an appointment. Our experts are available to assist and guide you in your campaign creation plans.

We also suggest you to have a look at our dedicated video below.