Picture this: you’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and money into building your online business.You got a website up and running, and you think it's perfect. A good website design, the right navigation options, great user experience — there’s no way this can go wrong! But we all know that’s not how it ended up.
You feel a pang of disappointment every time a shopper who seemed invested just drops everything right when it’s time to pay and leaves the website. Well, you don’t have to worry. It’s more common than you think. Over 70% of all shoppers on a website abandon their carts on checkout, and the numbers are only predicted to rise!
We know that statistics like this make you lose all hope in your business, but it doesn't have to be this way. With a simple trick, you can get at least some of these customers back.
In case you’re a new business owner, let us tell you what they are. Abandoned carts are known among people in e-commerce as online shopping carts that website users abandon halfwaythrough checkout, or right before they have to pay for their purchase.
According to recent statistics, the reason for over 50% of all abandoned carts is that the extra costs were too high. These costs can include shipping costs, taxes, or any hidden fee that can drive the cost of the items in a shopper’s list higher than they’re willing to pay.
Other reasons for abandoned shopping carts can be:
A little market research can let you know about all the possible reasons shoppers are abandoning carts on different websites, which will in turn allow you to make sure that they don’t face any of these problems on your website.
According to various researches carried out on the success rate of abandoned cart follow-up emails, the answer is yes! Almost half of all such follow-up emails are opened; 20% of them are used to navigate back to your e-commerce website, and 10% of them end up with a sale.
We understand how these numbers might be less than impressive to some eyes, but when an ecommerce website has visits in the thousands, it can mean huge sales. Besides, every businessman understands how every sale is important.
We have covered 10 Ways To Spice Up Your Marketing Emails, but now it's time to talk Abandoned Cart Emails.
Abandoned cart emails are short, to the point, and sometimes offer extra incentive for customers to follow through on their purchases.
Some of the most common features of a successful abandoned cart email are:
Now, let's talk about each of these points individually
As a salesman or a business owner, we're sure you've always wondered what it is about some subject lines that makes them so good. After all, they're just a few words, right?
Well, turns out there is a lot you can add to a subject line to make it more attractive to your fickle-minded customers.
Of course, this is all too much to do in an email subject line. Those should ideally be about 5-8 words long. You don’t want your subject line sounding like this:
“Hey Paul, buy your t-shirts in Shopping Website’s cart soon or you’ll miss out on great discounts.”
Now, this may sound like a good enough sentence, but its not the best email subject line for an email. It's too long, and it wont even be shown in full on a mobile phone. You can try out different styles and types of a subject lines to see what works for your particular customer base, but here are some good examples:
Now that we’ve (hopefully) gotten most recipients of your email to open them, we need to persuade them to actually follow through on their pending purchases. Most abandoned cart emails aren’t too heavy on the copy — they consist of one or two lines, some cool graphics, and photos of items straight from the customer’s cart, ready to go to them.
That said, they do contain a call-to-action. Something like “return to your cart” or “check your items out!” We suggest avoiding words like “buy” and “purchase” in your email — these high friction words don't have a good chance of working. These not-so-subtle reminders can make all the difference. Couple that with a very obvious and clickable link going straight to their cart on your website, and you’re good to go.
Every one of your customers loves extra incentives, discounts, or free shipping. Including a special promo code or any kind of similar incentive will only increase their chances of buying from your website.
If you let your customers believe the items in their cart are high in demand, or that a particular promotion on them is ending soon, you'll have more chances to sell them. The technique only works if you're honest, and its never a great idea to lie to your customer anyway.
Doing away with people’s objections to buying something before they even come up with themis a great tactic to attract buyers, but it can backfire pretty easily if not done right. You can find out what grievances they may have and then counter them with solutions in your email.
Internet usage trends have changed dramatically in the past years, and most emails are opened on smartphones. Seeing this, it's an awful idea not to take into account what your email would look like on a phone.
This means not adding any graphics in the email that would take too long to load, any graphics that aren't the right size, adn text that is too big or (more commonly) too small.
If your website has a discernable brand image, make use of it in your email. Make the copysound fun, interesting, and friendly but still concise and to the point. The three things to keep in mind when writing emails are that
Once you’ve set up your automated abandoned cart emails, you’ll see your sales rising with time. The results aren’t evident at first but they are evident eventually, so don’t worry. You’re doing it right!