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When a visitor looks at a product or adds an item to their cart and then leaves, you send them an email to encourage them to come back and finish shopping. But what about the ones who simply visit your website before abandoning it?

See how you can more effectively target these active on site visitors — plus check out real examples of emails that brands use to drive visitors back to their site.

What is active on site?

Website abandonment — also known as active on site tracking — takes place whenever a known contact returns to your site without completing another action. So what does that look like?

A site visitor subscribes to your email list, receives a welcome email, and comes back to your website — but doesn’t view a product, add an item to their cart, or checkout. They simply view your homepage or other non-product page and leave.

With an active on site automated flow, these visitors would trigger a “Thanks for stopping by!” type of email to help boost your marketing efforts and add incremental revenue to your existing abandonment email strategy.

Active on site vs. browse abandonment

Similar to browse abandonment, an active on site event occurs when someone visits your site. The difference between the two is that active on site events are at the top of the funnel because they don’t view a category or product. Here’s how that hierarchy looks, from top to bottom:

  1. Active on Site
  2. Category View
  3. Product View
  4. Add to Cart
  5. Checkout Started

Visitors who land in the active on site flow need to be treated a little differently than with other types of abandonment, so we’ve put together some best practices to help you get the best results.

Best practices for active on site

From the subject line to the email content and images, each component of your active on site campaign needs to be designed to bring subscribers back to your site. These emails might not be as direct as product or cart abandonment campaigns, but that doesn’t mean you should skimp on providing value to your audience.

Here are 7 areas where you can create engagement.

Email subject lines

Image of an email inbox

You only get one first impression, so make it a good one with an engaging subject line. These should be top-of-the-funnel subject lines that encourage the visitor to view more on your site.

Check out these 10 examples of subject lines that are sure to bring them back:

Subject lines that focus on them “looking” at homepage content are always a good idea with this type of flow. Also, use A/B testing with the subject lines to see which ones are performing the best to improve the performance of future campaigns.

Preview text

While the subject line is often the first content your subscribers will see, don’t forget the importance of the preview text. That shows up either next to or below the subject line in their inbox, so it needs to pique their interest.

Here are 7 examples of preview text for an active on site email:

Always send yourself a test email before finalizing the campaign to check the preview text (along with the rest of the email) to see how it’s showing up on different types of devices.

Content

Crafting solid subject lines and preview text will help get subscribers to open your emails. But what’s inside the email is really what will make or break the campaign. 

One tried-and-true method of getting these subscribers back to your site is by reminding them about what you have to offer. From your bestsellers to new products, use this email to feature items they’re sure to like.

Besides products, you can also create content that helps visitors get to know your brand a little better. For example, include what makes your brand stand out from the competition or quotes from stellar customer reviews, like in this email from Sling.

Example of an email from Sling

Another effective strategy is to set up a conditional split where one side of the flow offers a discount for new prospects (ex. 15 percent off), while the other side offers free shipping for customers who have placed an order before. That ensures everyone receives an incentive, regardless of their past history.

If you have a welcome email that goes out to subscribers after they sign up, the content in an active on site email should be different. The active on site campaign goes out after they’ve signed up, received the welcome email, and returned to the site. So, be sure to keep the content varied.

No matter the type of content, be sure to include a discount code and clear call to action (CTA) button to drive them back to the website (more on CTAs below). Remember: If you track conversions from your discount codes, make sure it’s unique to this email flow.

Images

Show visitors what they’re missing out on by incorporating visual elements in the email design. From popular product photos to eye-catching GIFs, images are a great way to break up the text and engage with them. Bonus points if you can tie your photos in with your text like in this email from StrangeLove.

StrangeLove email example with images.
StrangeLove email example with images.

Call to action

Like with any other email marketing campaign, you’ll want to include a clear CTA in the active on site email. This button or link should take them back to the site to continue looking at — and hopefully purchasing — what you have to offer. You can have a CTA with each product, a single one at the top, or place the text on an image.

Frequency

Stock image of a calendar

When setting up your campaign’s flow, we recommend creating an email series of 2 to 3 emails for the active on site flow spaced 1 day apart. 

If you want to create a more general experience, you can clone your browse abandonment flow for this series and update the subject lines and content (just make sure that if you are featuring products in those emails that those products are also visible on your homepage).

Unsubscribe

Be sure to include an Unsubscribe link or button somewhere in the email to make the process as easy as possible for your subscriber. Like with any email marketing campaign, you don’t want to force people into receiving your messages. 

Most Unsubscribe buttons are found in the email footer. But wherever you place it, make sure it’s easy to spot and click. You don’t want them to report your email as spam because they can’t easily unsubscribe.

Active on site email templates

Ready to convert website abandoners into revenue but need some inspiration for the campaign? Check out these active on site email template examples.

Brondell

Everyone loves a good deal, which is what Brondell is banking on for this email campaign. It’s short and sweet but includes all of the key components needed to engage subscribers.

Brondell email campaign example

Surreal

Who says cereal has to be boring? This email from Surreal not only makes their product visually appealing, but it also reminds subscribers that the flavor is popular — and they shouldn’t miss out on snagging a box for themselves. With fun CTAs and a few five-star reviews, this email packs a punch that’s sure to drive some traffic back to the site.

Surreal cereal email example
Surreal cereal email example with testimonials

Coyuchi

Taking more of an evergreen approach, Coyuchi uses their website abandonment email to share why their organic offerings are best for customers and the environment. They draw subscribers in with the subject line, “Thanks for stopping by. Please allow us to introduce ourselves…” The email is heavy on images and CTAs, giving visitors plenty of opportunities to return to the site.

Coyuchi email example
Coyuchi email example with CTA

Saltair

Saltair combines a brand introduction with some of its most popular products to encourage subscribers to head back to their site. They share some of their product ingredients, how those help, and then showcase the products with CTAs for each. The lead image also features a range of skin types, showing their lineup is for all women.

Saltair email example
Saltair email example showcasing the brand's favorite products

Alala

When a subscriber visits your site again, let them know how excited you are to see them. This email from Alala helps the visitor see what’s new with the brand’s products and reminds them about some of their perks — like free shipping on certain purchases and a rewards program.

Alala Welcome Back email example
Alala Welcome Back email example

Mecene

Keeping the focus on what the brand does for its customers, Mecene puts their offerings front and center. They also include products in the email, but they tie it into the overall “about us” vibe, which makes the overall messaging cohesive.

Mecene email example featuring a product
Mecene email example featuring about us information

Made Trade

This email from Made Trade doesn’t waste any time getting down to business. The brand starts out strong with a discount code and then features some of their best-selling products. They also highlight a few things that make the brand special to round out this campaign.

Made Trade email example with discount code
Made Trade email example with bestsellers

Pourri

Another example of a discount code being the main focus, the email from Pourri highlights the coupon both at the top and toward the middle of the campaign. The brand also includes photos of some of their top products, along with “Shop Now” links for each.

Pourri email example with coupon code
Pourri email example with products

Get more from active on site

Any opportunity to increase your revenue with abandonment campaigns is a win. And with Retention.com’s Reclaim product, you can boost those results even more. Here’s how!

Klaviyo’s active on site metric tracks whenever an identifiable browser visits your website. It can identify top-of-the-funnel visitors for as long as their 7-day cookie is active. But after that window closes, the ability to track known visitors declines.

With Reclaim’s Active on Site tracking, you can increase the number of unique profiles you identify by 80 percent and recover lost Klaviyo events. It’s a real win-win!

Not all emails are created equal. That’s why different companies have such a range of open and click-through rates. Abandoned cart emails are no different. To ensure yours is going to bring you the best results and get that contact back to their cart, incorporate these best practices into your abandoned cart email strategy. Which of course should be part of your overall retention marketing strategy.

With that, let's get started!

A shopping cart

Subject lines

This is the first thing users will see when you send them an abandoned cart email, so don't disappoint. Nearly half of all email recipients say they open an email based on the subject line. So, what should you say to get the open?

The best approach is to keep your subject line simple and to the point. Let them know exactly why they are receiving this message. Consumers receive hundreds of emails a day, so cut to the chase.

Not sure what to include in your subject line? Try some of these components:

Here are more than 15 examples of subject lines that work:

Adding personalized information, like the shopper’s name or the item they left in their cart, will better catch their attention and clearly state this email is just for them.

Create a sense of urgency

Alerting potential customers they might lose the items they’ve placed in their carts is a great way to tap into the scarcity effect as a marketing tactic, as long as you’re being honest.

You can do that by incorporating one of these tactics into your email:

This email from Google is a great example of creating urgency:

From the headline, “Going, going, (almost) gone,” to the content saying their popular items sell out fast, this cart abandonment email is all about creating a sense of urgency. The email is short and to the point, which is a definite must for this type of message.

They also include the company’s contact information, which consumers could use if they had any questions or issues. That’s great to include in case the original reason they didn’t make the purchase was because of an issue or question.

Content

If your subject line does the trick, your potential customer will have made their way into the email body. Yay! Now that they are there, you’ll want to make sure your content makes these three points:

  1. They liked something enough to put it in their basket
  2. It was left in their online shopping cart
  3. They should return and complete their purchase

Everything you should include in your email is a means to that end. Basic elements to include in the email that will help you reach that goal include:

Your brand’s personality needs to shine through with every piece of marketing content, including your cart abandonment emails. That allows you to recover sales by being distinctive in a cluttered inbox.

This is a great example from Columbia:

Columbia brand abandoned cart email

Showcase product

The reason for your abandoned cart email is to get that shopper back to their cart to complete the purchase. One major part of doing that is showing them exactly what they’ve left behind.

Thred up product showcase email

Using a large product image can turn a good abandoned cart email into a great one. Your abandoned cart email should be designed to reignite your customer’s excitement. There’s a reason the shopper added the item to the cart in the first place, so remind them of that.

People might not remember what products had them clicking the “add to cart” button in the first place. If they open your email and are still confused, they’re probably going to delete the email, and you’ve lost a potential sale. So, make the product image the main event.

Similar offerings

Maybe they didn’t complete the purchase because the product wasn’t the best one for them. To combat that issue, you can (sometimes) include an alternative product to the one in their cart. We say “sometimes” here because you might not want to do that with every abandonment email, since that could take away from the main one they really do want. They did add it to their cart, after all.

You could send them an email with the product in their cart as the main image. Then, include two or three similar product photos (with links) below that, in case one of those better catches their eye.

This approach is similar to what you see on Amazon’s “Customers who viewed this item also viewed” section:

Amazon

Or, you can try showing them related items to include in their cart that won’t distract from the primary product, such as:

You want to give them items of value, without taking away from the item they obviously like.

Fix issues

Headspace email

There are several reasons why people might leave their cart, as we covered above. So, why not address a few of those possible problems or questions in your email? That will help you cover several bases and get them back to their cart.

Using your customer research and website usability testing (or some of the top reasons we mentioned above), create an email that shows you understand their concerns and will address those issues directly with this abandoned cart email. That’s exactly what Whisky Loot did in this fun email:

The brand stays true to its voice by sharing a lighthearted checklist of things customers can do with their product. The email also answers questions that might be holding up people from making the purchase.

This is a great tactic you can easily incorporate into your message. You can use some of the top questions you hear from people on your:

Besides some of the top concerns — like shipping costs or returns — it can also help to include if you offer financing information for more expensive items. For example, if you provide 0% interest, include that in your abandoned cart email.

Big-ticket items require a significant commitment from an online shopper. These purchases are a big decision. It's your job to convince customers to trust in your brand, and the safety of financing without interest gives customers one less reason to bail out of the purchase. A large, “0% interest” banner is perfect for your price-conscious customers.

(Bonus: For expensive items, incentives like an offer or free gift are great ways of enticing the customer to complete their purchase — especially if that gift is an accessory matching the abandoned item.)

Also, make sure to give them contact information for your company if they have other questions, in case you didn’t cover theirs.

Call to action

Let them know exactly what you want them to do once they open your email (i.e. purchase the items in their cart). Do that by making the CTA prominent in your design. The components of a good CTA for an abandonment email are:

Here’s an example from Bearsville Soap Company that uses the “Return to your cart” CTA:

The CTA emphasizes how easily they can finish the checkout process they started, without being pushy. We also like the bear emoji in the subject line, which helps the message stand out and reinforce branding.

Frequency

Frequency

You can set up a series that goes out all on its own – and wins back revenue that would otherwise have disappeared. Like we mentioned above, you’ll want to send the first email fairly soon after they leave their cart. You should also continue to follow up with them using a series of emails if they don’t complete their purchase after the initial email.

This example sequence is one that many brands, including Target, use following a cart abandonment. It starts on Day 3:

As you can see, an abandoned cart email strategy includes way more than just one message. You want to use the information you have on them, like what they’re interested in, to provide the most targeted emails possible.

Here’s an example of an email series Wayfair sent after we added curtains to our cart:

They sent a total of five abandoned cart emails spanning nearly two months. These are the subject lines they used:

This is the email they ended the campaign with, which was similar to the first one we got:

They not only showcased the product we had originally added to our cart (curtains), but they also included other popular home items.

Show proof

Show proof

What do you do before making a purchase? We’d venture to say the vast majority of you look at reviews to see what others have to say about a product first. We all want to see that social proof, so use that to your brand’s advantage by including reviews in your abandoned cart emails.

Go through your reviews, and pull out the best ones for the product or service they’ve looked at. If you don’t have any, reach out to your top customers for one. The subject line could be:

Unsubscribe

Like with any of your email marketing campaigns, you’ll need to include an Unsubscribe button or link somewhere in the body of your email. Make unsubscribing as easy as possible, so don’t try to hide it or make it super small.

It doesn’t help you or the shopper if they aren’t interested in receiving your emails, and they can always resubscribe later if they choose. If you try to force people into receiving your emails and buying your stuff, you’re destined for complaints, failures, and a struggle to maintain profitability. Let people opt-out before they start to distrust or dislike your brand.

An effective unsubscribe button usually is at the bottom of an email. That’s where readers will look. Try to use a different color, font, or even use italics to make an unsubscribe CTA stand out. You don't need to go overboard with font size. You can keep a smaller size font if you want, but make sure it’s readable.

In summary

Abandoned cart emails are about more than getting the shopper to complete their purchase. The email should also be helpful and answer questions so they can complete the purchase when they're ready.

Take this opportunity to create a lasting relationship with your customers and aim to convert your shopper into a loyal brand fan. You want them to become promoters of your business, not just a one-time customer.

While short-term profits from discounting and sales promotion are great, what happens when your promos run out and it’s just a regular day? If you have an effective email cart abandonment strategy in place, you won't have to worry about not having a sale to lure them in.

  1. You'll know your customers agree with the price you sell your products for.
  2. They'll be willing to purchase for the full price.

You’ve seen the stats, best practices, and tons of examples. You have power and knowledge. We’ve given you everything you need to make your abandoned cart emails the best they can be.

Remember...

Even if you follow these steps to a T, you might not be able to capture every single abandoned cart user. Not every shopper is serious about making a purchase, or maybe they are just comparing products.

Even if you don’t close every sale, you’re creating a solid foundation that will help the visitor learn about your brand, that you care about current/prospective customers, and make it easier for them to find your products if and when they decide to make a purchase.

It takes several interactions with a consumer before they ever convert, and abandoned cart emails are a great way to start engaging with them. So, it’s time to get started, and add them to your marketing strategy!

https://youtu.be/EH9X69rYARE

What Retention.com Does

Retention.com identifies up to 35% of your website’s anonymous traffic via a code snippet that’s placed on your website.

How Does it Work?

There are two parts to Email-Based Retargeting:

  1. Identification. We use cookies, but this can also be done with cross-device ID.
  2. A contact database. We have a large network of over 15,000 websites that we are partnered with that generate around a million records a day in total.

When a live body that we’ve previously cookied shows up on your website, we take the hashed email address in the cookie and see if it matches any hashed email addresses in our database. Hashed is a fancy word for saying the email has been encoded for privacy.

If it does, we give you the entire, unencrypted contact record. Email, first, last, postal record, and landing page.

Is the data any good?

Yes! The magic of Email-Based Retargeting is that the identification piece brings what would otherwise be worthless, untargeted data to life.

How?

If an email address is in a cookie in someone’s browser, and that person hits your website, there is a live body that is still connected with that email address.

Those live bodies open emails. We know because we have several hundred customers using the technology. They are getting strong open rates with low complaints and unsubscribes.

How Does the Code Snippet Work?

The Javascript code snippet is added, by you or your webmaster, to the webpage where you want to collect emails. These email addresses belong to real people who have opted in via third party websites for email marketing offers. For examples of these offers, click here. When one of these contacts visits your website, our script matches them to a database of more than 500 million contacts and we give you those records daily, in a downloadable CSV file.

What Data Do I Get?

The email addresses that we identify are personal, not business, email addresses. You will get First Name, Last Name, Email address, postal address (address, city, state, zip), first seen date (opt in date), last seen date (when they hit your website), the landing page URL they hit, and the landing page domain.

How is this legal? Is it CAN-SPAM Compliant?

Yes, Retention.com is both legal and CAN-SPAM compliant. For more information, click here.

How do I mail to it? What do I do once I get the record?

Even though the prospect left your website without subscribing, we recommend you send them a welcome series of three to five emails. Then, once that’s done, add them to your regular mailing program.

Lead with as much value as possible, and keep in mind it’s a different journey from someone who has raised their hand and subscribed to your newsletter.

We provide you with the landing page of the contact record, and through our “complex integrations,” you have the ability to send records from a given landing page to a given list in your ESP and trigger automations accordingly.

It’s critically important to send to these contacts as soon as possible.

The only complaint problems we have ever observed have been from our customers who have accumulated contacts over several weeks, waited to send to them, and sent a normal newsletter, all at once.

For more about how to have success with Email-Based Retargeting, click here.