Did you know that a whopping 88% of eCommerce carts get abandoned? Sure, you might be generating more sales than ever before due to the recent eCommerce boom, but you are also losing more than three times your sales to the “abandoned cart syndrome.” You can solve the abandon cart challenge in many ways, but one of the proven ways eCommerce businesses use is sending their cart abandoners reminder emails to complete their purchase.
What Is An Abandon Cart Email
An abandon cart email is a descriptive term for the reminder email you send to potential buyers who visited your online store but stopped shopping midway before checking out. Cart abandoners leave for many reasons, whether technical reasons such as limited payment options at the checkout stage or frivolous reasons such as getting a call and forgetting to continue shopping. So don’t be quick to write off your cart abandoners. Send them abandoned cart emails instead.
Features of Effective Abandon Cart Emails
The concept of abandon cart emails goes beyond each abandon cart email you send. Hence, you need to see the concept of abandoned cart emails as a strategy to boost sales. Before we talk about examples of abandon cart emails you can use, let’s discuss the essential features of effective abandon cart emails so you can know the factors to consider when creating an abandon cart email.
Segmentation and Personalization: use analytics tools to take note of the behavior of your cart abandoners. What pages they visit, the products they check out, their demographics, and at what point they quit shopping. For example, a cart abandoner who quits after trying the payment options on your checkout page has a different experience from a cart abandoner who quits after adding an item to their cart from the product page before reaching the checkout page. Acknowledge the differences in your cart abandoner groups and create segmented and personalized abandon cart emails for each group.
Timeliness: your cart abandon email should be timely. Send a short and precise abandon cart email a few hours after a potential buyer abandons their cart to remind them to continue shopping.
Repetition: most of your cart abandoners won’t respond after the first abandon cart email, which is why you should prepare to send multiple abandon cart emails at intervals.
Catchy Subject: Most emails don’t get read by email recipients; emails only have an open rate of 21.33%. Before your abandon cart email can work, your cart abandoners have to open and read them. Use your creative juice to create catchy email subjects.
CTA: what’s the point of an abandon cart email that doesn’t ask recipients to do the ultimate action of concluding the order? Always include a CTA in your abandon cart emails to ask recipients to take a single action that will lead to them completing their order.
Incentives: sometimes, what your cart abandoners need is a little motivation to complete their order. So, don’t hesitate to include incentives in your abandon cart emails. You can add a discount, free shipping, or whatever your target audience will appreciate.
Detailed and Convincing Body: your abandon cart email body should be catchy, confident, witty, and detailed. It should be detailed because you want recipients to see that you know what they were buying and why they stopped. Use images, gifs, and emojis, and remind them about why they should buy the product. You can also use psychological tricks such as FOMO and urgency.
Product Recommendation: sometimes, cart abandoners quit because they realize they don’t want the product, so trying to get them to complete their order can be futile. This category of cart abandoners will appreciate product recommendations more than your persuasive abandon cart emails. Use analytics tools to evaluate the behavior of your cart abandoners to determine other products they might be interested in and include them in your abandon cart emails.
Examples of Abandon Cart Emails
Now, let’s look at some abandon cart email templates to see why they are effective and highlight a few things you can learn from them.
Adidas
Adidas is witty but also confident in this abandon cart email sample. The email subject says; “Forget something? Make it count now…” then the email body shows off an image of the shoe the recipient wanted to buy with a witty caption saying; “IS YOUR WI-FI OKAY?” In the email body text, Adidas brags about the shoe but also suggests to the recipient that they can customize the shoe to their taste, in case they abandoned the cart because of its style. Check out how Adidas also mentioned customer reviews to convince the buyer that there’s no need to worry.
Virgin Atlantic
In the Virgin Atlantic abandon cart email sample, the email author builds on personalization by starting the email body text with the recipient’s name; “Smiles Davis, you’re so close…” Reading further, you will see how Virgin Atlantic used urgency tactics to remind the buyer that they should complete their order now because prices can go up. Notice how Virgin Atlantic added three CTA buttons with the same text so that anyone the buyer clicks will redirect them to their basket?
Google used this abandon cart email sample to kill multiple birds at once. The email author added a survey link, an opt-out link, and a “SUBSCRIBE NOW” button for Google Store updates. But let’s focus on the customer service buttons in the “Have questions?” section and the free shipping offer reminder in the grey box at the bottom. If you can’t convince yourself to complete your order, don’t worry, our customer service officers will convince you when you request a call. Complete your order now while the free shipping offer lasts.
Of course, Google used the urgency tactic in the email title “Going, going, (almost) gone.”
Target
Target goes for the kill by offering an incentive with the bold text “New price alert — time to check out.” Target displays the regular prices of the products in the buyer’s cart and the discounted price they will pay if they complete their order immediately. Target also includes product suggestions and a 5% discount that will still apply.
Moschino
Moschino takes a different approach than others in this sample list by highlighting its secure payments and easy returns. Moschino wants to assure the recipient that they can shop safely, so you can assume that the buyer probably quit at the checkout stage and also looked at Moschino’s return policy.
Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club uses a witty subject line for this abandon cart email sample; “Where did you go” and includes a bullet-point list of reasons the recipient should complete their order. The bullet points include free shipping, 3-5 business days delivery, and more. Dollar Shave Club also takes a different approach than other samples in this list by including an image of the product box. Using the number of views YouTube unboxing videos get, that’s a sweet attempt at convincing the recipient.
Mitch is an experienced eCommerce Project Manager specializing in delivering seamless online experiences and driving digital growth. With expertise in project planning, platform optimization, and team collaboration, Mitch ensures every eCommerce initiative exceeds expectations. Passionate about innovation and results, Mitch helps businesses stay ahead in the dynamic digital landscape.