Tips for Creating Cart Abandonment Emails That Win Back Customers

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What are abandoned carts?

Abandoned carts are shopping carts where you add all the items you want to purchase but do not go through with the payment or order confirmation.

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Customers generally abandon their carts for one of the following reasons:

• They get distracted in the middle of the purchase.
• They intend on completing the purchase later but forget.
• They are doubtful about return or exchange policies.
• They compared the total cost of ordering the item with a different store.
• They did not intend to buy and were only window shopping.
• They faced internet or website issues.

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Of course, you cannot make a sale to 100% of these customers. The ones who did not intend on buying from your store in the first place are out of scope. The customers who intended on buying, though, are the ones we are trying to win back here.

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Cart abandonment emails have come up as the solution to this problem for online businesses. SaleCycle has found that nearly half of all cart abandonment emails are opened, and over a third of clicks to complete the incomplete purchase back on the online store.

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What are cart abandonment emails?

Abandonment cart emails are emails sent to a customer who had added items to their cart but did not complete the purchase. These emails are sent to remind customers to complete their purchases on the website. 

Sending cart abandonment emails is a powerful strategy. For instance, Malimodo is an ESP that was able to help Traya, an eCommerce business, using interactive emails and AMP. It led to a 15% cart recovery rate, out of which 4.8% even placed an order.

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How can you make your cart abandonment emails?

Creating cart abandonment emails can be tricky if you are new to them. Check out the following simplified steps for understanding:

• Track the abandoned carts on your online store. Do this with the help of some plugins.
• Design your cart abandonment email. Plan the visual appearance of your mail and the content that tells your customers that they haven’t completed their purchase, among other things.
• Insert the details of the products, including the images of the products for each shopper’s cart.
• Automate the process. Define triggers to send a cart abandonment email to your customers based on their behavior.

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Cart abandonment email best practices

To get the best returns on your cart abandonment email campaigns, follow these 7 best practices:

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1. Use a catchy subject line

Using the customer’s name or anything catchy enough to get the customer’s attention is a great way of getting noticed and having your emails opened. Go with a joke, discount, or question. It comes under the personalisation of emails. If you're struggling with writing subject lines at scale, consider using Jasper AI to write email subject lines for you, as the tool offers a dedicated email subject template. 

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2. Offer an enticing discount

It is very common for online shoppers to add items to their cart to check the total amount they have to pay at check out. This happens because the online stores levy shipping charges and taxes on the cart total. 

Customers abandon their carts when the tax or shipping fee charged by the online store is higher than what they expected. These customers can be given special discounts in the mail to lower the total amount and make the items more appealing for the price.

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3. Use AMP for email

Making your emails interactive is a great idea for your cart abandonment emails and AMP for email does just that.

With AMP emails, users can take action within the email without any redirects. In this case, you can show items users left in their cart and compel them to complete the purchase using compelling imagery and enticing email copy.

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4. Send the email at the right time

Ideally, you should send your cart abandonment emails within a few hours of the cart being abandoned. 

Take too long, and the customer might complete the purchase somewhere else or even change his mind about buying the item in the first place.

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5. Use interactive email templates

There are many ESPs out there that will provide you with ready-to-use templates. Use these templates by making the necessary adjustments and tweaking the content and design to suit your needs. 

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6. Test your emails

This is not specific to cart abandonment emails but stands true for all kinds of promotional emails too. Always test your emails to ensure that customers can view the emails the way they are meant to be viewed.

You will need to send test emails to different devices like mobile phones and laptops, browsers like Chrome and Safari and even on ESPs like Gmail and Outlook. This is to make sure that your emails render perfectly for as many customers as possible.

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7. Use social proof

You can include the product's average rating within the mail. You can even include some of the best reviews people left on social media platforms for your website.

This creates a sense of social validation for these products and adds value. 91% of people read online reviews. Social validation highly affects the purchasing decision of customers. 

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According to Brightlocal, the top three review factors that make readers feel positive about a local business are:

• The written review which describes a positive experience.
• The review with a high star rating.
• The business owner responded to the review.

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Wrapping it up

A great cart abandonment email has the potential to convert your abandoned carts into complete purchases. You can use the above tips to create your campaign for the same and benefit from these campaigns' advantages.