Should You Be Sending Abandoned Cart Emails?

Many business owners overlook abandoned cart emails. However, if you aren’t sending cart abandonment emails, you could be missing out on a lot of sales. 

 The truth is you can be doing everything right to guide consumers through their buying journey to purchasing, but 75% of consumers who put items in their cart will still leave your website without checking out. This means that you can optimise your products, promotions, and ecommerce website to drive conversions as much as possible, but you will still be missing out on 2/3s of your possible sales. 

You will never be able to win back every single one of these sales, but if you’re able to effectively use an abandoned cart email strategy, you will be able to win back enough to justify the extra effort— especially because abandoned cart emails are a relatively low-cost solution. 

what is an abandoned cart email?

If you’ve ever put an item from an ecommerce store in your cart but not completed the purchase, chances are you’ve received an abandoned cart email. 

Abandoned cart emails are personalised emails sent to consumers who have visited an ecommerce shop, placed items in their cart, but did not complete their purchase. The emails are meant to re-engage the shoppers by reminding them of their interest in the products they expressed interest in earlier. 

Often, these emails are sent with an incentive, calls to action, and dynamic images of the abandoned products to help nudge the customer closer to their purchase. 

Abandoned cart emails are a simple retention strategy that can be used in conjunction with retargeting ads to capture potentially lost sales, and they can be an effective way to generate quick wins for your business. A recent report from Klaviyo found that businesses using cart recovery emails earn back 3-14% of lost sales. While that may not seem like an astounding percentage of recovered sales at face value, when you think about that multiplied by the 75% of your customers that are abandoning their carts, the value adds up quickly.

When is the best time to send an abandoned cart email?

One of the most important things to consider when sending abandoned cart emails is the timing. Unlike most other types of email marketing, there is no specific time of the day that is more beneficial to send abandoned cart emails. Instead, the timing is all about the amount of time after the consumer abandoned the cart. 

Ideally, you want to be able to send your abandoned cart email to the consumer while their intent to purchase is still high. This is the time when they can most easily be nudged into finalising their purchase. This period of high intent can vary by industry, and it may take some testing for you to discover what delay yields the best results.

As a general rule of thumb, the less the order value is, the less time the customer needs to consider the purchase. This means that the consumer’s intent to purchase will be high right after abandoning the cart. If the purchase value is more expensive, the consumer will likely need more time to consider the purchase, so reaching out to them right away will be striking while the iron is cold. They won’t be ready to make the purchase until later. 

Let’s think about this by industry. In the world of fashion ecommerce, the order values will likely be less than in an industry such as travel. 

When a potential customer goes to buy some clothes online, they may put several items into their cart to see what their total amount will be, or to save the items while they look on other sites. Either way, they are intending on buying the items right away, not conducting research for a later purchase. Therefore, you want to catch this customer with an abandoned cart email right away— you want to get their attention before they leave their web browser or before they purchase from your competitor instead. An abandoned cart email will be more effective right away. If you wait too long to send the email, say the next day, they won’t be thinking about buying the same clothing anymore. Likely, they will have bought elsewhere already. 

This is different from other industries where products cost a lot more. If someone is researching a vacation package and proceeds to checkout without finalizing the purchase, it’s likely because the total amount is higher than they anticipated, or because they need to confirm with their travel partners. Therefore, they need more time to think about whether the product is right for them. If you send them an abandoned cart email right away, you will actually be chasing a cold lead, because the consumer is not ready to purchase yet. Sending the email the next day instead could be better as they will have had time to think about it more, talk to anyone else involved, or at the very least the email could be the reminder they need to start thinking about purchasing more seriously. 

Many companies who are benefiting from abandoned cart emails are favouring a multi-cycle approach to sending the emails. This involves sending a series of abandoned cart emails to the same user at different times to maximise the chances of them returning to complete their purchase. 

Generally, ecommerce companies that use a multi-cycle schedule follow a plan something like this:  

Email 1: sent 30 minutes to 1 hour after the cart being abandoned. This email’s main purpose is to offer additional support to the customer if the barrier to conversion was a technical issue or because they needed some type of help. 

Email 2: sent 24 hours after the cart was abandoned. This email should install a sense of urgency within the customer through clever copy and calls to action. The idea is to create a sense of urgency to incentivise them to buy at full price.

Email 3: sent 48 hours after the cart was abandoned. This email is your final punt at winning back the sale and is generally sent when the customer’s intent is low, therefore it should include an incentive for the customer to return to buy, like a discount on the abandoned cart items or a gift card towards their next purchase.

what is the best way to write an abandoned cart email?

Abandoned cart emails are a powerful sales tactic that you can implement right away. The more clever you’re able to be with the design and copy of the emails, the more successful you’re going to be. 

If you’re not sure where to start, check out this article on Shopify for 16 examples of amazing abandoned cart emails.