Using Cart Recovery Emails To Your Advantage
More than 88% of shoppers ditch their carts before they even hit checkout. While cart abandonment cases might appear harmless at first, they actually cost businesses billions of dollars. Uncompleted orders take away a whopping $18 billion from their annual revenues. Aside from that, they also add to the steep cost of retargeting efforts.
Since abandoned carts can cause major financial losses, many businesses use retargeting ads to recover these lost sales. Typically, they allocate at least 10% of their marketing budget to re-engage their shoppers. But while these paid campaigns are effective, some marketers still prefer using cart recovery emails to recapture their customers.
Cart abandonment emails are valuable in regaining lost revenue (plus they’re cheaper than retargeting campaigns). Cart recovery emails perform above average across key marketing metrics. It can be said that customers are more receptive to these types of emails, compared to other campaigns. They have an impressive average open rate of 47% and an average click-through rate of 29%. In addition, these types of campaigns yield a conversion rate as high as 5%.
Indeed, businesses can turn lost sales into quick conversions through the use of cart abandonment emails. However, this can only be done when campaigns are 100% optimized. To make sure you successfully win back your customers, there are some important considerations that must be taken into account.
Be quick on your feet
When it comes to cart abandonment emails, it all boils down to one thing—timing. The effectiveness of campaigns depends on how fast they reach customers’ inboxes. Ideally, cart recovery emails must be sent to shoppers a few hours after they’ve abandoned their carts. According to Rejoiner, e-commerce stores report the highest success rates for cart abandonment emails sent after 30 minutes to one hour. Furthermore, sending these campaigns within this time frame has been reported to boost conversions to at least 16%. In truth, waiting too long to send them out can reduce the chances of winning shoppers back. So you have to be quick, because once they set sail, it’s almost impossible to reel them in.
Sweeten up the pot
Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Incentives make cart abandonment emails irresistible to consumers. Whether it’s a free trial, shipping voucher, freebie, or loyalty point, incentivized campaigns are highly appealing to customers. But to make them more enticing, make sure your offers are time-sensitive. Limited-time incentives create a greater sense of urgency and make your cart abandonment emails more effective. Knowing these offers will expire soon will nudge customers into action. The truth is, it’s just hard to say “no,’ especially knowing the rewards they can reap in the end.
Wipe out the skepticism
There are many reasons why customers walk away from their carts: high shipping costs, unclear product descriptions, unreliable websites, or technical issues. But the good thing is, you can always change their minds. Cart abandonment emails can be used to bring customers back into the fold and hit checkout. More than 88% of customers are swayed into purchasing products just by reading customer reviews. From simple star ratings, to detailed testimonials, to media mentions, inserting these forms of social proof in your cart abandonment emails can give them that extra push they need to complete their purchase. This goes to show the critical role credibility plays in re-engaging customers and capturing their trust.
Line it up in bundles
Much like other email campaigns, segmenting the recipient list is crucial to the success of your cart abandonment emails. This is because customers have different reasons for ditching their carts. They also have different preferences on what will make them continue their purchase. So grouping them helps you determine which areas to address or which campaigns to send. Some divide their contacts based on their user status (e.g. first-time abandoners, repeat abandoners, or defectors). Others segment based on their cart value or frequented product category. Depending on your data, there’s no denying that using segmentation can help you turn skeptics into sure shoppers.
Going big on small screens
More and more consumers are switching to smartphones to carry out their shopping. However, cart abandonment cases continue to soar to 86% on handheld devices. This is telling of the need to make online stores more mobile-responsive. But aside from online stores, email experiences must also be mobile-optimized. It goes without saying that a problematic mobile email experience can decrease businesses’ chance of recovering lost sales. That’s why it’s important for your cart abandonment emails to be as responsive as your checkout experience. Ensure that all email elements are fast-loading, intractable, and seamless—from the images all the way down to the CTAs—so you end up gaining customers rather than losing them.