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The Holiday Season is a big time of year in the ecommerce calendar. Deloitte has projected that ecommerce sales will total between $278 billion and $284 billion between November and January. Don’t let the opportunity to capitalize on this slip through your fingers. Let’s take a look at some Holiday Season ecommerce best practices and how R! can help optimize your ecommerce business heading into the holiday season.
The holiday gift buying rush is now in full swing with many racking their brains about what to get for friends and family and trying to avoid having to do any last minute shopping the night before.
This is the perfect opportunity to set up multi-touch campaigns for curated holiday gift ideas.
Ensure that you set up your Retention.com email flows to reflect the kind of offerings you have. If you’re giving certain discounts or promotions for certain holidays, if there’s a site wide sale, make sure that the flows you have in your Retention.com account mirror these new deals and you’re not giving the same old discounts you have for other points in the year.
As the holiday approaches, there's a surge in urgency among shoppers to complete their purchases before shipping deadlines. Using Retention.com’s cart abandonment feature can help in segmenting customers who've abandoned carts close to critical shipping deadlines. This allows for targeted reminders through email campaigns, emphasizing the urgency and offering shipping incentives to prompt customers to finalize their purchases.
Retention.com's features enable businesses to time their communication effectively, reminding customers of looming deadlines and driving them back to complete their purchases, especially during crucial periods like the last days before shipping cut-offs.
At a certain point it’s likely too late for your customers to buy anything and have it arrive before Christmas Day but that doesn’t mean you can’t still make sales. Some customers might have abandoned their carts due to uncertainties or indecisiveness about gifts arriving on time. Retention.com can help identify these potential customers and enable you to target them with reminders about the availability of gift cards or vouchers. These reminders can serve as an alternative solution for last-minute shoppers or those unsure about specific gifts.
After Christmas, there's a window for post-holiday sales that you’ll surely want to capitalize on. Retention.com can assist in segmenting customers who abandoned carts before or during the holiday period. This segmentation will allow you to craft personalized email flows offering post-Christmas discounts or exclusive offers, encouraging customers to return and make purchases.
As we brace for the holiday season, utilizing Retention.com throughout the holiday season enables businesses to identify, and re-engage potential customers who have abandoned their carts at various stages, even if they haven't filled out a form on your eCommerce site. This approach helps in maximizing sales opportunities during the critical holiday period by strategically re-engaging with customers and offering tailored incentives or reminders to complete their purchases.
If you own and operate an e-commerce business, customer retention should be at the forefront of your marketing strategy. After all, the buyer's journey doesn't end at acquisition.
Engaging with your customers to build long-term relationships increases customer loyalty. Not only that, but those customers will become more valuable to your business over time.
Customer acquisition versus customer retention is like dating versus marriage. Dating is a chance to get to know people. Once you find that person who fits you perfectly, you want to nurture that relationship.
Similarly, your brand has an ideal customer. When you understand them, you can build a retention marketing strategy to keep them happy.
The best way to dominate your retention marketing strategy is by thinking long-term. Customer retention means developing extensive insights about your ideal customer.
In other words, understanding how your brand can add value to the buyer's journey is vital. Using a customer relationship management platform (CRM) like Salesforce enables your business to manage customer relationships using data.
Gathering data is essential to developing insights about your customers' demographics, shopping habits, and what they need from your brand. Storing data in one location gives you a complete picture of your customers in real-time, with insights into their patterns.
CRM software organizes all your customer data, customer service notes, and metrics. Additionally, a CRM helps you identify different types of customers and their interests.
That way, you can segment audiences, track customer activity, and work proactively to maintain those meaningful relationships. It's typically easier to upsell and cross-sell to returning customers.
However, remember that the bottom line is to deliver value, not overload them with too much information.
Consider this. Retention starts with your customers' first purchase. You can begin a new relationship with a personalized thank you email, welcoming them to your community.
Then direct them to helpful content, such as product demonstrations or articles responding to their specific needs. Providing educational resources such as e-books, downloadable PDFs, how-to guides, and tutorials reinforces your brand's credibility.
When you know your audience, you can create relative content in various formats to enhance their experience with your brand.
Also, invite them to your social platforms to build a community that interacts with one another. After that, continue communicating by providing offers that show you appreciate their business.
For example, celebrate specific milestones and special occasions, and include little surprises, such as loyalty discounts. Loyalty programs offer customers points for their purchases and incentivize social shares.
Gamification and loyalty programs track customer purchase history and set milestones as they complete certain steps. Let them know about specific discounts and prizes as well as how close they are to reaping their rewards.
All e-commerce businesses face the reality of cart abandonment. Statistics reveal that 70% of online shoppers abandon their carts before making a purchase.
This lost revenue equals around $18 billion yearly. Why miss out on those potential sales?
Instead, make a cart abandonment email strategy part of your retention plan. First, you need to understand why your customers abandoned their shopping carts in the first place.
In general, 2023 statistics reveal that a significant part of these high cart abandonment rates is that consumers are browsing. They often load their shopping cart and save it for later as they explore their options.
One of the latest studies found that a little over 58% of online shoppers in the U.S. abandoned a cart because they weren't ready to buy. Here's the thing, sending cart abandonment emails is an opportunity to illustrate to these consumers that your brand has the most to offer.
You can also discover their reasons for not completing the purchase and use this information to improve the process. Ultimately, it's your brand's chance to make an impression.
Use abandoned cart emails as a customer connection moment and make a positive emotional connection. There's no better way to build brand loyalty and dominate your retention marketing strategy.
If executed properly, you'll be able to get 10% of customers to complete their purchases.
What do you do when an unidentified customer abandons their shopping cart? Identity Resolution connects a user's identity through transactions, devices, browser behavior, and other data.
Identity resolution creates a customer profile by analyzing data across channels, including:
Without identity resolution software, touchpoints from the same customer would read as if they were from different people. However, this software collects anonymous and personally identifiable data, then stitches algorithms and analysis to create a customer identifier.
In short, identity resolution software gives you a holistic view of customer interactions with your brand across channels. For instance, if the user is unauthenticated, you might have a phone number that the software recognizes. Then it will trigger an SMS.
Identity resolution can also trigger a separate journey from the existing flow on your messaging platform and collect data.
As our name implies, at Retention.com, we focus on retention marketing solutions. We're in the business of helping to grow Shopify stores.
Our software integrates with over 50 leading marketing automation platforms, including Salesforce, Klaviyo, and Google Tag Manager.
Our retention marketing solutions can help you reactivate lapsed accounts, maximize customer retention, and reclaim abandonment revenues across all channels. Check out these case studies to discover how we've helped clients in various industries build their e-commerce businesses.
Contact us when you're ready to dominate your retention marketing strategy.
Online competition is growing every day. From retail sales to consulting services and healthcare, most industries are heading to the internet to find more customers.
While new customers are essential to building any business, there's even more success in keeping your current customers happy.
If you're wondering why retention marketing is essential to your e-commerce business, here are four things you need to know.
Both retention marketing and acquisition marketing are strategies to grow your business. What sets them apart is the type of customer each plan targets.
Acquisition focuses on landing new customers, and retention marketing centers around keeping your customers coming back.
Also, acquisition drives new customers to your website to get them to make a purchase.
Some of these strategies include:
The thing is, new customer acquisition typically takes time and investment, as consumers must first find you. Then they consider your service or product, usually comparing it with your competitors before buying anything.
In contrast, retention marketing campaigns deepen your brand's connection to its customers. These strategies revolve around building a loyal repeat customer base, considering the overall lifetime value of those relationships.
Retention marketing encourages customers' repeat business and concentrates on the customer's experience. In short, it builds brand loyalty.
First, customer retention costs less than acquisition. Estimates show it's five to 25 times more expensive to gain new customers than to keep existing ones.
The thing is, customers are more likely to be comfortable spending money with brands who've proven they're trustworthy and reliable. According to ThinkImpact, 56% of consumers say they're more loyal to brands that understand them.
You can only really get to know your customers by repeatedly engaging with them. And when you do, something remarkable happens. Their lifetime value grows over time.
That's because the longer they stay with your brand, the more money they spend on upsells. Additionally, loyal customers not only tend to make repeat purchases, but they are also more likely to become brand advocates.
A referral from a loyal customer is gold.
It's a snowball effect that makes acquiring new customers easier. That's because referrals are four times more likely to convert than leads. And it didn't cost your business anything to acquire those new customers.
Retention marketing requires using success metrics such as:
Finding out which success metrics work best for your industry is vital. Not only that, but you'll need to know what the averages are for your industry.
For example, online retail has an average customer churn rate of 22%, and e-commerce businesses have an average retention rate between 30% to 40%. You can use averages for your industry as a benchmark to measure against your retention and churn rates.
To figure out customer retention rates, you measure the percentage of repeat customers over a set time. You could calculate it over a year, by quarters, months, weeks, or whatever time you choose to collect the information.
Customer churn is the opposite of retention, and you measure it over a length of time, as well.
The churn rate equals how many customers you have at the end of the year minus new customers. Then you divide that number by the number of customers you had when the year began.
Understanding why customers don't return is an essential aspect of retention marketing. It can help you make improvements to your products and services.
When your repeat customers stop buying, it could be for reasons from poor customer service to slow shipping. Additionally, it might be something out of your control or a standard in the industry.
There's an average retention and churn rate for every industry.
You can use various tactics to improve customer retention, including
Reengaging customers who have abandoned their carts is one of the most successful ways to ensure repeat business. In fact, one of the most significant problems e-commerce businesses face, regardless of the industry, is cart abandonment.
To that end, an abandoned cart email strategy is not only a good idea, but it's also vital to building your business.
Similar to customer churn, there are many reasons why consumers abandon their carts. For one, they may get ready to buy, then find out that add-on fees cost too much.
How many times have you changed your mind because shipping and taxes increased the cost of an item? Another big reason is that delivery should be shorter.
And sometimes, their credit card gets declined. Part of customer retention is understanding the variety of reasons your customers abandon their carts.
The good news is identity resolution software can help you re-engage customers who've shown interest. Identity resolution is about examining the data to determine your buyer's identity and what matters to them.
Ultimately, retention marketing is all the work you do to understand your customer better. Then you can give them an overall experience that keeps them returning for more.
Your e-commerce website needs tools to decipher and measure all of that data. For example, tools like Google Analytics and Retention.com work together to gather information and measure your efforts.
Retention.Com is a retention marketing solutions provider. We provide technology that helps you measure and track cart abandonment and recovery rates.
You can keep all of your customer data in one place, enabling you to use historical data and learn more about your customers' behavior.
Understanding your customers means that you can build campaigns that speak directly to their needs. It takes the guesswork out.
Retention.com's dashboard integrates with over 50 platforms, and you get real-time reports to assist your retention marketing efforts. Find out more about how we can help and book a demo today.
Take a moment to think about the trillion of dollars — yes, trillion, with a “t” — that ecommerce businesses lose out on each and every year due to online shoppers abandoning their carts. (Don't worry, we have a solution coming for you in the form of abandoned cart subject lines.)
In June 2022, 88 percent of online shopping orders were abandoned, with the cruise industry having the highest cart abandonment rates at 98 percent.
Now that you’re having a panic attack (deep breaths), let’s talk about what you can do to eliminate a big chunk of that lost revenue. You can send them back to their cart to complete their purchases with an email marketing campaign using engaging abandoned cart subject lines.
Maybe you’re thinking, “My sales funnels are great.” And that might be true. But, with cart abandonment, you’re losing revenue from people leaving your site before they finish a purchase. So, start recovering some of that revenue with abandoned cart email campaigns. Why an email campaign? Well, abandoned cart emails are the No. 1 way to encourage shoppers to complete their purchases. No worries: We’ll walk you through all of the steps to crafting a winning subject line to bring them back to their carts.
In this guide, we’ll cover topics like:
Before we jump into some of the best techniques and practices, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what cart abandonment means.
When an online shopper adds one or more of your e-commerce store’s products to their digital cart and then leaves without making a purchase, that’s cart abandonment. They obviously had enough interest in the item to add it to their cart, since that’s taking them one step closer to purchasing it. However, something prevented them from converting. So, your job is to find a way to get them back to their carts so they can complete the purchase — hence abandoned cart emails.
Just be sure you don’t confuse them with browse abandonment, which is a tad different. Browse abandonment is when an online shopper views a product and leaves your site before ever adding it to their cart. Those shoppers are one step behind a cart abandoner in the purchasing process.
So, let’s get back to the topic at hand (i.e. cart abandonment) and how to bring those shoppers back (i.e. email campaigns).
Sure, earning engagement from your email campaigns is great. But, the real ticket is when you can earn revenue for each of the emails you sent. And that’s what you’ll be able to do with cart abandonment emails. Check out these averages for abandoned cart emails:
Businesses with an average order value (AOV) ranging from $100 to $500 recover an average of 4 to 5 percent of their abandoned carts. For basket sizes with less than $50, they capture around 3 percent of their abandons.
Abandoned cart emails are a powerful tool brands can use to convert shoppers who have expressed an interest in a product but haven’t yet finished their checkouts. If you aren’t emailing them, you’re leaving money on the table.
But for these email campaigns to work, they actually need to be opened. No subscriber is going to simply see your message pop up in their inbox and automatically go back to their cart, without ever opening the email to see what’s inside. That would be nice though, wouldn’t it?
And that’s where abandoned cart subject lines come into play. We’ll show you the components of successful subject lines, other best practices, and more than 160 examples of good subject lines you can use with your next campaign.
To solve a problem, which in this case would be the abandoned carts, you first need to know what caused that issue. For you, the problem is that they didn’t convert. But for the shopper, the problem or reason they abandoned their cart could be a number of things. And to create abandoned cart subject lines that best engage your shoppers, you need to get to the root of the issue so you can provide a solution.
So why do shoppers leave their carts before they complete their purchases? The exact answer will be as different as the shoppers themselves, but there are some common reasons this happens, according to Statista:
Whatever the reason is for them abandoning their cart on your website, chances are, it isn’t because they are no longer interested in your brand’s products. A lot of these issues can, and should, be addressed proactively on the back-end.
With that information in hand, you can then shape your subject lines to address those issues. Because if that’s the reason they left, providing a solution could be the ticket to bringing them back. So by taking a proactive approach and staying persistent, you can use cart abandonment emails to convert shoppers, capture revenue that would have been lost otherwise, and build relationships with these customers.
Does that sound like a good plan? Then it’s time to start talking about some of the best practices around abandoned cart subject lines. And where better to start than with how long the subject line needs to be.
When it comes to subject lines, shorter is better. That’s in large part because the majority of subscribers are viewing their emails on their mobile devices, which have smaller screens. So, while your subject line may fit perfectly on a desktop, you won’t have the same view on a phone or tablet.
For example, here’s what these three subject lines look like on a desktop:
Now, take a look at the same subject lines on a mobile device (iPhone X):
Pretty big difference, huh? Only one of the subject lines was seen in full on both a desktop and phone. And the screen of older phones would have shown even less of the subject lines.
Aim for a subject line that uses no more than nine words and 60 characters. But really, we’d recommend shooting for even shorter than that to ensure they can read the whole subject line, no matter where they are viewing their email. For example, “Come back to your cart,” is only five words and 22 characters and gets your point across.
If you’re having trouble shortening your subject line because you’re worried you aren’t packing enough information into the limited number of characters, there’s a solution. You can include more information in your preview text. Sure, it may be cut off, depending on the length and the device the shopper is viewing it on. But, it’s another way to give them additional information, without stuffing everything inside of your subject line.
And if you’re still worried you can’t trim your subject line and fit everything you want to say, you can make sure the most compelling parts of the message are toward the beginning. That way, the shopper can still get the main point of the email, even if the subject line is cut off. Though, we would still suggest making it as short as possible.
Of course, the best length for your abandoned cart subject lines will depend on your specific audience.
We’ve all seen an email subject line like this in our inboxes:
If it caught your eye, it’s for all of the wrong reasons. It’s a visual eyesore, to say the least. And at worst, it comes across like spam. You don’t want to come across like you’re yelling at your customers or aren’t professional. Plus, what’s up with the “+” signs? This isn’t a math equation.
Maybe the worst part is that this subject line leaves the reader wondering: “If this is what the subject line looks like, what on earth will the email look like?” We’re guessing they don’t want to find out, which means no open — and no heading back to their cart.
So, where does this email go wrong, and how can you avoid making these same types of mistakes? For starters, let’s all make a pact to never use random symbols in subject lines that don’t have anything to do with what you’re saying.
With that out of the way, the next thing you can do to ensure your subject line is visually appealing is to not put the whole thing in all caps.
And while exclamation points can convey a sense of urgency and aren’t all bad in subject lines, you shouldn’t use multiple ones in a row. They’re fine, even good sometimes, in moderation.
Take these findings: A subject line with a single exclamation point had about a 1 percent boost in open rates. However, subject lines with more than one exclamation point caused open rates to drop about 6 percent.
Having too many exclamation points can also trigger spam filters and hurt your email deliverability. So, stick with one or none exclamation points in your subject lines.
And if you want to see what an acceptable version of the above subject line would look like, try this instead:
This subject line — unlike the first one — properly communicates a sense of urgency and excitement.
The best way to see if your subject line is performing well is to try out different versions using A/B testing. Your ESP should give you the capabilities to test different components of your email marketing campaign to see what is and isn’t working so you can create the most engaging campaign for your audience.
There are several different factors you can try out with your subject line testing. You can try completely different subject line approaches: “Did you forget something” or “Hurry before your cart expires!” Or, you can try out different subject line lengths, the use of emojis, or asking a question vs. making a statement.
You can also play around with capitalizing the text: “Come back to your cart” vs. “Come Back to Your Cart.”
Come back to your cartAs you can see, there are a variety of ways to change the look and feel of this short subject line. Once you find an approach that works, try it with future ones to get the most engagement.
The best way to figure out what will work best with your customers is to keep creating experiments to test your subject lines, and refine your messages based on the data you collect.
In addition to testing the subject line on your emails, you can also test how many emails you send and when you send the emails. A good rule to remember when trying to figure out how soon you will send the email after the abandoned cart action is that sooner is better. Emails sent within an hour of them leaving their carts have higher conversion rates than ones sent 24 or 72 hours later.
That’s in part because people forget things, like that they left a product in their cart. And the longer you wait to remind them about it, the more time they have to find what they’re searching for on another brand’s site.
We’ll talk more about personalization below in the examples, but before that can happen, you need to know who you are emailing. Here are a few ways you can segment your email lists to send them relevant, personalized abandoned cart emails:
Properly segmenting your lists will allow you to deliver content with the highest value to your subscribers, which is always a good thing. Then, you can tailor the subject line to best fit the specific segment the user falls in when they abandon their cart. Here’s a little more detail for each of these segmentation tactics.
Repeat customers are what every brand strives to have. They are the ones that keep you going. You know they like your products already, so you don’t always need to send them a subject line with an offer right off of the bat. Save your discount emails until later in the abandoned cart email series. Instead, you could try offering free shipping or giving them rewards points toward their customer loyalty account.
First-timers, on the other hand, don’t have an established relationship with your brand yet, so you have to work a little harder (and differently) to bring them back to their carts. You can start off with discount subject lines and emails to incentivize them to head back to their carts. Examples like, “15% off your first order,” are a great way to catch the attention of new shoppers.
These are the shoppers you want to roll out the red carpet for. How a brand defines a VIP varies, but most likely, these are the customers who spend a significant amount of money with your brand.
So, when one of your VIPs leaves something pricey in their cart, don’t miss out on this special opportunity. You can offer them a special discount or exclusive access to something that’s relevant to them.
If your brand sells a variety of products, try segmenting your messages by the type of products the shopper left in their cart. For example, if you sell pet items and a shopper adds dog food to their cart, keep your email relevant to dog food (not cat, bird, fish, etc.).
You can take that a step further by really honing in on what they added. So, if they added wet dog food, you could send them recommendations for other types of wet dog food — not dry food or treats.
You would want to treat someone who has one item in their cart a little differently than someone who has a dozen they left behind. If they have several items in your cart, it could mean they are extremely interested in your brand. Or, it could also mean they’re unsure if the products are right for them or not.
If it’s the latter, you could help them out by including customer reviews, product star ratings, or other proof that shows it’s a quality product.
Again, a shopper who has $50 worth of products in their cart isn’t the same as someone who has $200 worth of items — especially if your average customer order value is, say, $100. You could give this shopper something special like a free gift with purchase, free shipping, or a discount. And remember to let them know about all of those goodies in the subject line.
With some best practices out of the way, it’s time to start crafting abandoned cart subject lines that will make subscribers open your emails. Not sure where to start? Don’t worry: We have you more than covered.
We’ve broken up the abandoned cart subject lines into different approach categories, but of course, some of them could easily land in multiple categories. Feel free to copy and paste these into your next campaign, personalize them for your brand, or simply get ideas from this extensive list.
No two brands are the same, but their subject lines may be. The reason you see so many brands sending similar — or exact — subject lines is because these are proven winners. So, here are a few basic examples you might see on a variety of brands’ emails.
The last two subject lines were ones Target used in their abandoned cart campaigns. Inside of the last email, the body text says: It’s an *add-to-cart* kind of day, with the CTA, “Shop now.”
You know the answer to this question because you know exactly what the cart abandoner left behind. But for the shopper, it’s a playful way of reminding them there are items in their cart. And maybe they did simply forget to complete the purchase, so in that case, these subject lines would be especially effective.
Many of these could have ended up in the “Popular and effective” section because you have, no doubt, seen several of these subject lines in your inbox a time or 10.
These subject lines use the assumptive close, which concludes the shopper has made up their mind to buy the item(s) but was interrupted — not because of a factor like shipping costs, for example. With this approach, you’re simply reminding them that they didn’t quite complete the sale… yet. You can pose these as statements or questions.
Here are a few good words to use with this type of approach:
And here are subject line examples putting this approach into action:
We all want to feel important, instead of just being another name on a brand’s email list. Consumers no longer have to settle for impersonal, transactional businesses in today’s world. Now, they have more choices than ever before, allowing them to choose to shop with brands that are authentic and provide value.
To show online shoppers you know who they are (but not in a creepy way), care about their interests, and want to give them something of value, use a personalized approach with your subject line. A little personalization can go a long way toward developing relationships that will lead to long-term value for both your brand and the shopper.
In addition to using their first name and/or the product name or category, you can also use the word, “you,” to add personal touch.
A personalized subject line makes the subscriber feel like you’ve created the email specifically for them — and that’s a pretty nice feeling. That allows you to start establishing trust and building a relationship well beyond the abandoned cart email. (Hint: That’s the whole point.)
But beyond connecting with the subscriber, personalizing email subject lines can also lead to open rates as high as 50 percent. Personalized promotional emails can result in 29 percent higher open rates, as well. Plus, brands that personalize their emails saw an 18-percent increase in revenue.
Not sure how to add a touch of personalization to your abandoned cart subject lines? Take a look at some of these examples, and test out which ones work best with your audience.
That last example came from a DSW email. The text inside reads, “Hey [Name], you forgot your bag. Actually, you forgot the really good stuff that’s in your bag,” followed by a “Go to bag” CTA.
Remember: Make sure you use the correct merge tag for your ESP so that their names appear correctly. If you don’t have a first name for them on file, have your ESP plug in something like, “Hey there!” instead. Because if you don’t, you could end up sending them an email subject line that shows up like this in their inbox: [FNAME], you forgot something! And that’s way worse than having no personalization at all.
If the cart abandoner is logged in or you use cookies and already have their information on your email list, you’ll be able to pull that data and use it for your subject line and email. But, what if it’s an anonymous online user who leaves products in their cart? And since the majority of your web traffic probably is anonymous, you really don’t want to miss out on those shoppers.
Retention.com can identify up to 30 percent of your site’s anonymous U.S. site traffic. We share that information with you, allowing you to then create an email-based retargeting campaign (i.e. cart abandonment emails). Yes, it’s CAN-SPAM compliant. And yes, we get results.
So, if you want to be able to reach even more online shoppers who have abandoned their carts on your e-commerce site, give our service a try.
Another way to personalize the email is by including the product name, such as “picture frame,” or the product category, like “home and decor.” It doesn’t have to be the exact product name, like “Medium red Gap sweater,” but even just saying “sweater” or “clothing” can work.
One reason adding the product to the subject line is so effective is because it personalizes the text, and it also reminds the shopper what product they left behind. That could lead to an, “Oh yea, I forgot to purchase that sweater I really liked,” moment. Here are a few examples of subject lines to help you achieve that:
You can also personalize the abandoned cart subject lines to your brand like in these examples:
This type of branded approach works best if you have a recognizable brand that conveys quality and trustworthiness. If your brand name isn’t as well known, that might not be the best approach to take with your subject lines.
No one wants to miss out on something great, which is why FOMO is such an amazing sales tactic. So, if you can create a sense of urgency in your abandoned cart subject lines, your shoppers will want to open the message to make sure they don’t miss out.
For example, if there’s a flash sale at a brick-and-mortar store, people will rush there because of the urgency and because they don’t want to miss out on it. In addition to the element of urgency, showing scarcity is another successful tactic with subject lines. So, mention things like limited availability and time sensitivity to encourage those opens (and sales).
You can do that by mentioning the number of hours/days left, that the product’s nearly sold out, or that this is their last chance to purchase their item. Basically, you want to give them a compelling enough reason to go back to their cart, without saying, “BUY NOW!”
Here are examples of those techniques in subject lines:
Maybe they loved the product in their cart — that is, until they saw your shipping costs, return policy, taxes, total costs, or some other element that was a major turnoff. Beside being upfront on your site about any costs that could deter shoppers, you can also address these concerns with your abandoned cart subject lines.
For example, if shipping costs are a concern, you could use your subject line to offer the shopper free shipping. Looking at your data, research, survey results, and other information to figure out exactly what the pain points are for your shoppers. Then, address those issues via your subject lines.
Conversely, you can also tell them what is right with your brand from the start so they know they don’t have to worry about having concerns. That could mean using the subject line to highlight the quality of your products, demonstrate how easy it is to shop on your site, how your brand and/or site are different (in a good way), and show it’s a brand they can trust.
If price comparisons are something they are focused on, you can experiment with offering discounts to shoppers in the subject line. It can be easy to rely on giving customers discounts because they look so enticing. However, you don’t want all of your abandoned cart emails to include a discount because then it loses its value.
If it’s a first-time cart abandoner, maybe a discount is a great way to start off your abandoned cart series. Or, if you have a regular shopper, try the discount on the second or third email in the series. Play around with the emails to see what works best for your brand and customers.
These kinds of offers can be compelling and effective. Just be sure to use discounts strategically and not as the go-to, one-size-fits-all approach.
There’s something warm and fuzzy about a truly creative subject line. Or, maybe that’s just us. But, we can guarantee you that if you can craft a subject line that encompasses your brand’s voice with a touch of creativity, you’ll be miles ahead of the other emails streaming for your subscribers’ attention.
Use that pun, add a dab of humor, and send the type of fun email you’d like to receive. Because don’t forget, your subscribers are just people like you. So if you and your team like, chances are, others will too.
The Barnes & Noble email that goes along with that subject line reads, “Check out what you left in your cart!” That’s followed by the product photo and the CTA, “View my cart.”
If you don’t convert after that email from Barnes & Noble, the next one in the series has the subject line, “Your Cart is Waiting.” The inside design of the email is the same, except the copy this time reads, “Did you forget what you left in your cart?” The same CTA, “View my cart,” is there, as well.
Finally, if neither of the first two emails worked, Barnes & Noble sent out a third email contender to win the shopper back. The subject line for this one was, “Open for an Update on Your Cart.” The email’s text read, “Last chance to grab what you left in your cart!” along with the same CTA as the other two emails. As the text suggested, this was the final abandoned cart email they sent following the abandoned cart action.
While they might not have actually wanted whatever was left in their cart, now you can try to convert them with other products or sales you have going on.
If eyes are the window to your soul, does that make subject lines the window into your email? Or, have we had one too many coffees today? You tell us. Either way, we can’t overstate the importance of a great subject line, whether you’re sending an abandoned cart email or another type of email campaign.
There’s plenty of data out there showing abandoned cart emails work and help brands recover potentially lost sales. So, it’s crystal clear why every marketer should include an abandoned cart email series as part of their strategy.
You can try different approaches with the design, text, send times, and, of course, the subject lines. No matter which types of subject lines you decide to use, make sure you regularly test and refine them. What worked in the past might not work going forward, and vice versa. And what works for one brand might not work for yours.
So, try out these abandoned cart subject lines, see what works, nix what doesn’t, and create a plan that’s best for your brand. We hope these best practices and subject line examples give you inspiration and help you engage more of your online shoppers.
When you consistently test and optimize your emails, you will be able to drive the best results.
You know when someone tells you you’re amazing and that anyone would be lucky to have you, and then you never hear from them again? That’s kind of what cart abandonment feels like. To take away some of that sting, you can send them emails to hopefully bring them back. And to do that, you’ll need the help of some engaging abandoned cart templates.
Before we get to those, let’s cover some of the basics when it comes to these email campaigns — like why they are so important to your retention marketing strategy.
With cart abandonment rates as high as 80 percent for some companies, that’s a lot of revenue you are missing out on if you aren’t doing something to bring them back. That’s why it’s imperative you set up an automated cart abandonment email series to send those wayward shoppers back to their carts to convert.
But don’t just take our word for it. Check out some of these encouraging abandonment rate statistics that will help you forget that 80-percent one we threw at you already:
Those stats show you that when you reach out to customers with a targeted message after they take action, you can get results. You’re able to recognize when a customer is interested in a product (they did just add it to their cart, didn’t they?), and you can then reach out to them and send them to their cart.
Ready to start experiencing some of those numbers for your brand? We’ll walk you through ways to do that in this guide, covering topics including:
We’ll share tips, techniques, abandoned cart templates, and more that will help you improve the effectiveness of your abandoned cart emails.
The shopper has browsed your site, added one or more items to their cart, and left for some unknown reason, never completing their purchase. For example, we’ve added this item to our cart on Amazon. But instead of clicking the button to checkout and providing our billing and shipping details, we left the website altogether.
The idea of “cart abandonment” is the equivalent of someone walking into a brick-and-mortar store, putting items in their cart, and then leaving before heading to the checkout counter.
It’s pretty straightforward, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Luckily, there are things you can do to bring them back, and one of the best methods is via email.
This type of email marketing campaign helps you recapture lost sales by engaging shoppers who abandoned their carts. Basically, the email reminds them to complete their transaction — of course in a nice, fun way.
If you’ve ever added a product to your cart and then ditched it, you’ve seen exactly what we’re talking about. They have subject lines like, “Did you forget something?” or “Your cart misses you.”
Inside the email, you’ll most likely find some engaging copy that encourages them to head back to their cart, along with a photo and description of the product(s), and at least one CTA. Some brands also include information on their shipping, returns, and other selling points at the bottom of the email.
Abandoned cart emails are examples of automated campaigns. Here’s how they work:
So once the shopper adds an item to their cart and leaves your site, the platform will register this action (or lack of action, really) as an abandoned cart.
E-commerce sites like Shopify and BigCommerce will automatically track the shoppers’ actions and metrics, making your job that much easier. (And Retention.com has integrations with both of those platforms that allow you to track your revenue from contacts we provide.)
Some of these e-commerce platforms have basic abandoned cart emails, but you can also integrate with your email service provider (ESP) to create and house them there. That will give you more options when it comes to abandoned cart templates. You will simply need to integrate your e-commerce shop with your email marketing tool to create fully customizable, multi-step email campaigns that send multiple emails at certain times based on when they abandoned the cart.
Whether you use the basic abandoned cart templates available in the e-commerce platforms or in your ESP, these will automatically be sent out to potential customers who have abandoned their carts.
While you will be more limited when it comes to abandoned cart templates on sites like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, you can use these platforms to send your abandoned cart emails. So, we’ll walk you through how you can create emails on these platforms.
You’ll find some basic functionality on Shopify when it comes to creating and managing your abandoned cart emails by going to Settings > Checkout (under Abandoned Checkouts). However, if you want to be able to control the abandoned cart templates and content, you’ll have to install an app like Consistent Cart App, Abandoned Cart Recovery, Jilt, or Privy.
Since WooCommerce doesn’t have built-in functionality for cart abandonment emails, you could use either the platform’s official extension, Follow-Ups, or a free plugin like Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce.
If you go with the plugin option, you’ll see a new section in your WooCommerce dashboard: Abandoned Carts. That section will be where you can check recovered carts, edit your email content, change the sending settings, and other features.
Of these three e-commerce platforms, BigCommerce is the only one that gives you full control over your abandoned cart emails. You’re able to control the email design — like what products, text, and images they include — as well as how many emails and when you send them. You’ll find the settings in Marketing > Abandoned Cart Notifications.
If you want to go beyond basic abandoned cart templates and settings, it’s time to turn to a third-party ESP. That will give you full control over the look, text, and automation functions.
You can integrate your ESP with your e-commerce platform making it a seamless transition: They leave something in their cart, and the ESP triggers an automated email campaign series that will (hopefully) bring them back to their cart. There are dozens of ESPs to choose from, so find one that best fits your needs.
Now that you have a way to send shoppers an abandoned email, you need to know what tactics that email should include to increase your chances of bringing them back. Here are six ways to boost your recovery rate.
Now, let’s dive into each of these techniques a bit more to see how you can implement them into your cart abandonment email strategy.
In this day and age, it’s harder to earn online consumers’ trust because they’ve become accustomed to scams and unprofessional business practices on the Internet. If they’ve never done business with your brand before, you have to work even harder to earn their trust if you expect them to return to their cart and make a purchase. They aren’t going to turn over their credit card information to just anyone.
You can do that by showing them customer reviews and ratings for the product(s) they left in their cart. Make sure your site and emails look professional and include the basics: physical address, reply to email address, logo, and any payment verification information (showing it’s safe for them to use their credit card on your site).
Everyone loves a good discount. That’s why you see so many abandoned cart emails that offer shoppers a deal if they come back to their cart. For example, “We have great news! That [PRODUCT] you liked is now 20 percent off!”
But as consumers become accustomed to this tactic, it can lose its effect. So, instead of offering them a deal, try a different approach by giving them rewards in your loyalty program. Again, this is something you can try out to see if it works better than your regular discount message.
You could give them enough rewards points to move up to the first/next tier in your loyalty program — which then gives them a discount. Maybe 100 points is enough for a 10-percent discount. Or, 200 points will give them a $10 discount. They are still getting a deal out of returning to their cart and making a purchase, but you go about it in a different way — and they are able to move up in your program in the process.
It can be tempting to include both the item they left in their cart and also other recommended products in an attempt to up-sell the shopper or catch their attention. While it’s a good practice to try different approaches with your cart abandonment emails, try only focusing on one product when they add multiple, similar items to their cart.
For example, if a shopper has five different computers in their cart, you can bet they don’t plan on purchasing all five of them — or at minimum, they don’t have equal purchasing intent for all of them. So, your abandoned cart template could include one of the items as the main image, along with the product description.
Sending one email letting them know they forgot something in their cart is most likely not going to be enough. Just like you would send someone multiple welcome emails, you need to create an automated series to engage shoppers who have left items behind.
Don’t wait too long before sending the first email in the series. The moment an online shopper leaves their cart, your opportunity to engage this potential customer is narrowing. To make the most of this opportunity, make it a priority to reach out to shoppers within the first hour of cart abandonment. Make this part of a three- or four-email sequence to engage with the shopper.
For example, the first email can go out an hour after they abandon their cart. Then, the next one can follow up one or two days later if they don’t complete their purchase, using a different approach with the email’s content and approach.
If both of those email attempts don’t work, you can try a third (or fourth) campaign that focuses more on the product’s category or general new products. They might not have been that interested in what they added to their cart, so taking a more general approach might be a better way to engage them. The third or fourth email attempt is more of a last-ditch attempt to re-engage with a shopper who has been unresponsive to the first ones in the series.
Sending more than three or four runs the risk of annoying the recipient and getting placed in their spam folder. And we all know that’s the last place you want your messages to go.
There’s nothing like a reminder that a certain deal is about to expire or that the product in their cart is about to sell out to push them to take action. Use that fear of missing out and urgency as a marketing tactic.
Subject lines are a great place to include this method:
You can also let them know they only have a certain number of days until the items will be removed from their cart. And who really wants to have to go and add them back, right? Find a way to motivate them to head back, sooner rather than later.
There are a dozen reasons why they may have left their cart behind. Maybe they changed their mind or found something else they liked better. There’s not much you can do about those two things, but there are other potential roadblocks you can remove and/or address to get them back:
The more potential issues you can eliminate and be proactive about, the better your chances are that they will come back.
One of the best ways to get ideas for your brand’s abandoned cart emails is to see what other brands are doing and what templates are available in different ESPs. So, we’ve put together a list of templates and real email examples to get your creative juices flowing. You can find others in your ESP’s template library, depending on which platform you use.
We’ll also show you what we like about the actual examples and what they could have done better.
Robly has several pre-designed abandoned cart templates, in addition to other template options you can design to be for abandoned cart emails. Here’s the first of three template examples we’ll show you:
And being a template, you can edit the text, colors, images, links, and everything else to best brand your email.
Obviously, you’ll need to change out the photos, product descriptions, branding, etc. with your own materials. But what we like about this template is that it gives you usable text — like “Don’t Forget Me” and “Hey [FNAME], looks like you left some great items in your cart! Don’t worry, we’ve saved them for you below.” The CTAs even fit the content, so you can use what’s already there.
Subject line: Go ahead, take another look
This email from Topo Designs doesn’t scream “abandoned cart,” but that helps make it different and less forceful. (Though the subject line does allude to it.) When you first look at it, the email seems to be about offering customers a deal on items the brand thinks they will enjoy. But when you scroll down, you see that there’s an item that was left in the cart.
The approach in this abandoned cart template would be especially effective if it was used in the second or third email in the series.
What else we like:
What could have been better:
Another Robly option, this abandoned cart template shows how the email design can be as targeted and personalized as the text. The header image is a pair of headphones, the same thing they added to their cart.
Sure, you might not be able to have an image like that to match each product, but you could probably create one for your main categories — like a shirt for the clothing department, a computer for electronics, or flowers for the gardening/outdoors category. Anything you can do to personalize the email, the better.
This template also comes with filler text that you could use as is (after changing out the products and images, of course): “We noticed you found these [PRODUCTS] but haven’t checked out yet — here’s some more details to help you decide!”
The template then includes the product photo, price, a product review, and star rating. And of course, there’s a CTA to take them back to their cart.
Subject line: Nomad Gear is Selling Out Quick
Selling accessories for electronics, Nomad really nails its brand with this abandoned cart email example: “Did your Wi-Fi crash? Fret not — we saved that shiny Nomad product you were just ogling.” The Internet and electronic accessories go hand in hand, and it’s also a lot more fun to read than, “You left something in your cart.”
What we like about this email example:
What they could have done better:
The last of the Robly abandoned cart templates goes straight for a personalized approach with the header having their name front and center: “[FNAME], you left something behind!”
The design then gives you a spot to put the product photo, name, quantity, and price. While it’s not the main focus of the email, there’s also a place to give them a discount code at the bottom.
Subject line: You forgot something
Seeing this abandoned cart email from Public Rec makes us happy that a brand is addressing some of the consumer's top concerns right away. Right after their header text, “Take another look,” they go straight into, “Enjoy free shipping and free returns on all orders.” If a shopper failed to purchase the items in their cart because they were concerned about either of those things, now they know those won’t be an issue and can complete their purchase.
Here are more things we like about this email:
What they could have done better:
Mailchimp also has abandoned cart email templates, which include a default logo placeholder and Cart content block. That block inserts the abandoned item(s) into the follow-up emails. You can also use one of their other email templates. Just be sure to drag a Cart content block into the email layout.
They offer three pre-designed abandoned cart templates:
Here’s an up-close look at one of them:
You can also customize the email information:
Subject line: Your basket is having abandonment issues… 🙁
We were hooked on this email from Jack Wills as soon as we saw the subject line. You don’t want to be the reason your shopping cart has emotional issues as they grow up, right?
They carry over that tone into the email with text like, “Don’t worry, we’ve got you,” and “We know life can be hectic.” So, they prove the subject line isn’t just a gimmick to get the shopper into the email: They stay true to that approach throughout the messaging.
What else we like about this email:
What they could have done better:
Abandoned cart emails allow you to provide a targeted, personalized campaign to already engaged online shoppers. Anytime you can do all of those things, you have a winning recipe for ROI.
One question many people ask, though, is if these emails are too good to be true. In other words, are they compliant? To answer that question, we’ll ask you one:
The CAN-SPAM Act for the United States doesn’t require that a subscriber opt-in to your list, just that they can opt-out to any email you send. That’s why Retention.com can collect anonymous traffic off of your website and send you their contact information so that you can target them with emails. Just remember: This approach only works in the United States and isn’t GDPR compliant, which does require you to have explicit consent to email EU consumers.
To take that a step further, Retention.com is also Spamhaus compliant because, in part, we provide verifiable consent (the source record and opt-in date) of every email we pass along to our users. Those source websites’ privacy policies state that by opting in, the subscriber is agreeing that their information will be shared with a partner network for marketing purposes.
Now that you have a firm grasp on what does and doesn’t work with abandoned cart emails, it’s time to start creating some of your own and adding them to your automation series. Add your brand’s personal touch to the templates so your subscribers know exactly who it’s from, and test different versions until you find the winning combination. And if you want to start collecting engaged, anonymous traffic you don’t already have off of your site, we can help!
Customer retention refers to the number of people who make repeat purchases from a business. Growth hackers will tell you that by increasing customer retention rates, you can often increase your revenue faster.
The thing is, customer retention can be difficult for e-commerce businesses because there are so many alternatives available for consumers. However, a retention marketing plan can help you improve customer retention and increase your bottom line.
Without retention marketing, you're constantly prospecting for potential customers rather than focusing on building a loyal customer base. The truth is you need to do both, but many e-commerce businesses focus on the new consumer.
Here we discuss retention marketing and industry technology and offer five solutions to keep customers coming back.
Retention marketing focuses on engaging returning customers rather than targeting new ones. The goal is to increase customer loyalty by consistently giving them added value and more opportunities to purchase your products.
McKinsey Insights reports in 2022, more US consumers switched brands and retailers, looking for value. What's more, a little over a third of consumers opted to buy from private labels.
While your business needs new and returning customers, retention marketing will increase customers' lifetime value and long-term profitability.
Retention marketing is about communication with your customers and using available technology to leverage data for actionable insights. Technology is a driver in retention marketing.
It leverages strategies to keep customers engaged and loyal to your brand based on relevant data. Real-time reporting tools provide deep insights into:
Additionally, an integrated dashboard enables businesses to connect seamlessly to top email marketing applications, such as SalesForce and Marketo. Using technology to leverage insights and act on them is the foundation of customer retention.
If you want loyal customers, focus on building long-term relationships and delivering value throughout the customer journey.
Loyal customers spend more and will likely refer their friends and family to your brand. Reliable customer support is vital to building brand trust.
Today, customers expect to be able to reach customer support 24/7. Automation makes it possible to be there at all hours, and you can follow up if needed.
Provide customer service with easy access and accurate responses to solve customer issues. Listen and collect customer feedback. Then use it to improve customer experiences.
Nurturing customer relationships by providing ongoing service and support helps build lasting customer relationships that drive revenue.
When your customers give social endorsements, it increases customer retention. Encourage current customers to share their thoughts on your product or service, or implement a refer-a-friend campaign encouraging customers to endorse your brand.
Communities increase customer retention. Share your vision, and talk about topics your customers are interested in that naturally relate to your products or services.
Retention marketing is all about knowing your customers. To that end, you can leverage customer data to understand their preferences and motivations. Customers will come back to make purchases if they're getting value from your brand.
Use the data to build buyer personas that represent the type of person who uses your product or service. Then create campaigns that add value for them.
Loyalty programs reward your customers for buying your products and services. It can be anything from surprise swag to exclusive access that only loyal customers can purchase.
Loyalty programs and discounts show your repeat customers that you appreciate their business. Similarly, referral programs reward your customers when they send friends and family to your business.
E-commerce loyalty programs help brands build community and generate data to gain personalization insights. Consider implementing VIP benefits to increase customer lifetime value.
Social media contests encourage brand loyalty, build trust, and are a low-cost way to engage customers.
Email is an opt-in channel. Once they sign up, you can use customer emails to follow up, offer discounts, and find upsell opportunities.
To that end, it's essential to dedicate more attention to email campaigns to increase customer retention.
Email represents 50% of Latico Leathers' total revenue, and they wanted to dramatically increase their email list, drive a positive ROI, and maintain or increase their sending reputation. The company integrated Resolve with Klaviyo and experienced a 45% open rate from Resolve contacts.
You can customize email marketing campaigns and messaging for your audience. Analytics reveal which emails your customers open and don't open.
The data allows you to refine your email campaigns to suit your customers' preferences. Retention emails help build your email list, and you can segment it according to the most engaged to the least active recipients.
First, use data analytics to measure your cart abandonment rate. If it's high, revisit your email marketing campaigns to determine why they don't resonate with your audience.
Cart abandonment could also be website related. For example, checkout may not be a user-friendly experience. Once you gather insights into why customers abandon their carts, you can set out to re-engage them.
Leverage industry-leading identity technology to increase cart abandonment revenue. For example, GetEmails enables businesses to send abandoned cart emails to users, even if they still need to opt into your newsletter.
Retention.com specializes in retention marketing and e-commerce solutions, including cart abandonment and re-engaging potentially lost customers. We provide one-click integrations with leading marketing automation platforms.
Our dashboard features a user-friendly interface to easily connect to any email marketing application in under a minute. Retention's integrations automatically update and suppress contacts daily.
We can help you reclaim up to ten times more abandonment revenue by leveraging industry-leading Identity Resolution technology. When an unidentified customer abandons a cart, we identify them. Then a personalized flow automatically triggers in the messaging platform.
Scale up your abandonment flows and improve your retention marketing strategy. Get in touch with Retention.com today to find out how we can help.
In this article, we'll cover why email automation is important for your Shopify and Shopify+ business, especially when it comes to cart abandonment, and we'll walk you through how to do it on one of the most popular automation platforms out there - Klaviyo.
So let's get started!
Have you ever been shopping online, added an item to your cart, and then left the site without completing the purchase? We've all been there. Life gets in the way, or we get distracted, and before we know it we've abandoned our cart and moved on with our day.
Sometimes we don’t even get to the point of dropping something in the cart. We browse generally, dive deep into a specific category of products, or simply spend time pondering the purchase of just one product.
As an eCommerce business owner, it's important to have email automation in place to recapture shoppers who have abandoned without purchasing. It’s core to any retention marketing plan.
Statistics show that over 70% of people who add items to their online shopping carts abandon them before completing the purchase. That's a lot of potential sales that are being lost! Not to mention the other folks who spent time browsing then disappeared. They’re probably just as interested!
With email automation, you can send a series of emails to shoppers who have abandoned their carts, abandoned their browse, abandoned a category, or abandoned a product, reminding them of the items they were interested in and giving them a special offer or incentive to complete their purchase. Email automation is a highly effective way to increase sales and revenue for your eCommerce business.
Email automation can seem daunting if you've never set it up before, but there are many software platforms out there that make it easy to get started. In this blog post, we'll give you a step-by-step guide on how to set up email automation for your eCommerce business using the popular platform Klaviyo.
Email automation is important for Shopify businesses because it helps increase sales and revenue by recapturing shoppers who have abandoned their carts. By sending a series of targeted emails reminding shoppers of the items they were interested in and providing them with a special offer or incentive, you can encourage them to complete their purchase.
According to statistics, over 70% of people who add items to their online shopping carts abandon them before completing the purchase. That's a lot of potential sales that are being left on the table! With email automation in place, you can recover some of those lost sales and boost your revenue.
Email automation can also help you create more personalized experiences for your customers and build relationships with them over time. By segmenting your email list and sending targeted emails based on shopper behavior, you can create more relevant and engaging experiences that will make customers want to do business with you again and again.
Klaviyo is one of the most popular platforms for setting up email automation flows for eCommerce businesses. Klaviyo integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and custom stores built on other platforms like ReactJS. In addition, Klaviyo offers a wide range of features and customizable options to fit the needs of any business size or type.
Follow these steps to set up your first email flow in Klaviyo:
Now that your flow is set up, Klaviyo will automatically send out emails according to the schedule and trigger events that you specified. You can always go back into your flow at any time and make changes if needed.
Fortunately, we have a trove of resources to help you out at every turn. Check out these articles for deep dives on the following topics:
You should find everything you need in those links to build a robust marketing program around abandonment flows.
There’s still one question in your head, though… how do I even identify who these abandoners are, if they haven’t signed up or purchased something from me in the past?
Retention.com specializes in retention marketing and e-commerce solutions, including cart abandonment and re-engaging potentially lost customers. We provide one-click integrations with leading marketing automation platforms.
Our dashboard features a user-friendly interface to easily connect to any email marketing application in under a minute. Retention’s integrations automatically update and suppress contacts daily.
We can help you reclaim up to ten times more abandonment revenue by leveraging industry-leading Identity Resolution technology. When an unidentified customer abandons a cart, we identify them. Then a personalized flow automatically triggers in the messaging platform.
Scale up your abandonment flows and improve your retention marketing strategy. Get in touch with Retention.com today to find out how we can help.
Email automation is key for any eCommerce business that wants to boost sales and revenue. By sending targeted emails reminding shoppers of items they were interested in and providing them with an incentive to complete their purchase, businesses can increase their conversion rate and recapture lost sales.
If you're an e-commerce business owner, then you know that one of the most frustrating things is when a shopper puts items in their cart but doesn't complete the purchase. It's called cart abandonment, and it's something that all businesses deal with.
But there's no need to despair! There are ways to combat cart abandonment and turn those shoppers into paying customers. And one of the best ways is by using cart abandonment emails.
So let's get started!
There are a few things to keep in mind when crafting your cart abandonment email strategy.
First, you need to make sure that your emails are timely. You don't want to wait too long to send the email after the shopper has abandoned their cart, or else they may have forgotten about you altogether.
The general rule of thumb is to send the first email within 24 hours of abandonment. This will give you the best chance of conversion because the shopper will still remember their interaction with your store.
Of course, you will need to set up the right flows in your marketing automation software. We’ve got the goods on how to do that.
Your next step is to make sure that your emails are relevant. This means tailoring the content of the email to match what was in the abandoned cart.
For example, if a shopper abandonment their cart because they couldn't find what they were looking for, then your email should focus on helping them find what they need.
Or if a shopper abandons their cart because they were not ready to commit to a purchase, then your email should focus on giving them a discount or special offer that will persuade them to buy from you.
The key here is relevance; if your email does not address the reason why the shopper abandons their cart, then it is unlikely to convert them into a paying customer.
There’s a lot more to this, so if you want a bit of a deeper dive, check out our guide to abandoned cart email strategy. We’ve also collected a ton of great examples of abandoned cart emails and a set of can’t-miss best practices.
The last step is to make sure that your emails are persuasive. This means convincing the shopper that completing their purchase with you is the best option. To do this, you'll want to highlight why shopping with you is better than shopping with any of your competitors.
For example, you could mention free shipping or returns, exclusive discounts or offers, or superior customer service. Whatever it is that sets you apart from your competitors, make sure to include it in your email so that shoppers know exactly why they should buy from you instead of anyone else.
For more detail, read about some of the best methods for reclaiming abandoned cart revenue.
“But wait,” you’re asking yourself… “how do I even identify who these cart-abandoners are so I can email them?”
Great question…
Retention.com specializes in retention marketing and e-commerce solutions, including cart abandonment and re-engaging potentially lost customers. We provide one-click integrations with leading marketing automation platforms.
Our dashboard features a user-friendly interface to easily connect to any email marketing application in under a minute. Retention’s integrations automatically update and suppress contacts daily.
We can help you reclaim up to ten times more abandonment revenue by leveraging industry-leading Identity Resolution technology. When an unidentified customer abandons a cart, we identify them. Then a personalized flow automatically triggers in the messaging platform.
Scale up your abandonment flows and improve your retention marketing strategy. Get in touch with Retention.com today to find out how we can help.
If you're an e-commerce business owner, then chances are you've dealt with cart abandonment at some point or another. But there's no need to despair! There are ways to combat cart abandonment and turn those shoppers into paying customers. And one of the best ways is by using cart abandonment emails. Just remember to keep your emails timely, relevant, and persuasive, and you'll be well on your way to recovering lost sales and converting shoppers into loyal customers.
If you're a Shopify or Shopify+ brand and you don't have a solid abandoned cart recapture program, chances are you're leaving a lot of money on the table.
It's estimated that brands on Shopify miss out on around 70% of their potential sales due to shoppers abandoning their carts alone. This represents a massive segment worth targeting. But how do you capture, identify, and bring them back to seal the deal?
Let's walk through it.
Set up robust email retention and retargeting plans. What is retargeting? It’s making sure the right email goes to the right person at the right time. This is actually the hard part, even though it’s not that difficult.
It really comes down to a few things:
Okay, that may be a bit oversimplified. Want to know more? We've got you covered.
Fortunately, we set up a trove of resources to help you out at every turn. Check out these articles for deep dives on the following topics:
Now, the easy part...
Most marketers probably think this is the hard part, but it’s actually much easier than you think. The answer? Work with Retention.com.
Retention.com specializes in retention marketing and e-commerce solutions, including cart abandonment and re-engaging potentially lost customers. We provide one-click integrations with leading marketing automation platforms.
Our dashboard features a user-friendly interface to easily connect to any email marketing application in under a minute. Retention’s integrations automatically update and suppress contacts daily.
We can help you reclaim up to ten times more abandonment revenue by leveraging industry-leading Identity Resolution technology. When an unidentified customer abandons a cart, we identify them. Then a personalized flow automatically triggers in the messaging platform.
Abandoned cart emails are a powerful tool for Shopify brands looking to boost sales and close more deals.
By setting up an automated email sequence and offering a discount or other incentive, you can bring interested shoppers back to your site and convert them into paying customers.
Just make sure you're capturing everyone who stops by, not just those who sign up. And keep an eye on your metrics so that you can continue to optimize your emails for maximum effect.
Shopify brands need to focus on a few key things in order to build a strong email marketing plan that will result in more sales and conversions. Here are the five simple marketing steps for Shopify brands.
One of the most important things Shopify brands can do is to send relevant and targeted emails to their subscribers. This means segmenting your list and sending personalized emails that are relevant to each subscriber’s interests.
An automation platform will help Shopify brands save time and energy by automating email campaigns. This way, you can set up your email campaigns in advance and emails will be sent out automatically according to your schedule.
There are a number of automation platforms Shopify brands can use, but the following five are considered to be the best for Shopify and Shopify+ direct-to-consumer brands:
Each of these platforms offers different features and benefits, so brands should choose the one that best suits their needs. However, all of them offer great features that can help Shopify brands save time and energy by automating email campaigns.
Another important thing to keep in mind is to send your emails in a timely manner. This means sending emails when your subscribers are most likely to be engaged and checking their inboxes.
When are your subscribers most likely to be engaged and checking their inboxes?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as it will vary depending on the Shopify brand and its subscribers. However, there are a few general things to keep in mind.
For example, sending emails during weekday mornings or evenings is usually a good time, as people are more likely to be checking their inboxes then. Additionally, brands should experiment with different times and days to see when their subscribers are most engaged and make adjustments accordingly.
Your email’s subject line is the first thing your subscribers will see, so it’s important to make it catchy and interesting. This will entice them to open your email and read its contents.
What are some good examples of email subject lines that brands can use to be catchy and interesting?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best email subject lines will vary depending on your brand and its audience. However, here are a few examples of good email subject lines to get you started:
Every email you send should have a call-to-action (CTA) that tells your subscribers what you want them to do next. Whether it’s clicking through to your website or making a purchase, make sure your CTA is clear and concise.
The best CTAs will vary depending on the brand and its audience. However, here are a few examples of good CTAs:
But the most important tip of all?
Retention.com specializes in retention marketing and e-commerce solutions, including cart abandonment and re-engaging potentially lost customers. We provide one-click integrations with leading marketing automation platforms.
Our dashboard features a user-friendly interface to easily connect to any email marketing application in under a minute. Retention’s integrations automatically update and suppress contacts daily.
We can help you reclaim up to ten times more abandonment revenue by leveraging industry-leading Identity Resolution technology. When an unidentified customer abandons a cart, we identify them. Then a personalized flow automatically triggers in the messaging platform.
Scale up your abandonment flows and improve your retention marketing strategy. Get in touch with Retention.com today to find out how we can help.
Also, we have a trove of resources to help you out at every turn. Check out these articles for deep dives on the following topics:
This should get you started on the path to success.
