How to write the best cart abandonment sequence and increase sales

Regardless of what eCommerce platform you use or what niche you’re in, statistically, most of your shoppers abandon their carts without buying. According to SalesCycle, about 75.6% of carts were abandoned in 2018. That means that if you don’t have an abandonment cart email sequence set up, you might be losing even three out of four potential buyers. That’s a lot of money left on the table, so this article will help you deal with that.

People who intended to buy are more likely to act on abandoned cart emails

Now, with 46.1% of people who read abandonment cart emails, the good news’s that you can easily recuperate a lot of the lost potential just by sending your list a few engaging e-mail reminders. Further, to the SalesCycle’s research — out of 46.1% people who open your follow-up emails, about 13% click the call to action and 35% of those who click end up buying something.

The simple truth behind why this works is that most people who add items to their shop cart usually have an intention to buy. Your job is only to reignite their desire.

So we established how important it’s to have a few emails lined up for that occasion. It’s time to talk about how to write such emails to get they opened and generate your sales.

So here comes the lowdown on how to write compelling cart abandonment emails, that people can’t resist.

Abandoned cart sequence best practices

• Make sure your timing is accurate. In most cases, this abandoned cart sequence consists of three emails. According to Omnisend, best times to send them are after an hour from an uncompleted purchase, then after 12 hours and finally the last call — after 24 hours. Having less than three messages is likely to decrease your chances while having more than three will not necessarily increase them.
• Start with a catchy subject line. One of the research studies showed that approximately 64% of people decide if they open an email or not based on the subject line. So make sure your list knows who the email came from and what’s the context i.e. what items they abandoned. One of the most effective techniques is to use prospect’s first name, which also makes you sound like a friend (and you wouldn’t ignore your friend’s emails, would you?). Lastly, use good old urgency. Tell people to hurry before their cart gets cleared within, for example, 24 hours. Simple yet very effective.
• Use pictures of abandoned products. Sometimes “one image tells more than a thousand words” and showing your product again will do the job.
• Give a clear call-to-action. Make it easy for your prospects to finish the order by making the call-to-action button big and explicit.
• Write great copy. If you want to shine in someone’s inbox, you can’t do what everyone else does. Most of eCommerce emails are bland and scream at people with big product photos and discount coupons but fail to talk to you like to a person. So infuse personality into your emails and make them fun to read. One of the coolest emails I’ve seen were written from the product’s standpoint. So the product was basically “telling me” how sad it is because I forgot about it. The funniest thing about it was that it felt like an emotion-laden conversation. It also warmed up my perception of that brand.
• Use clients’ testimonials & reviews. Nothing builds credibility so well as opinion of people who already enjoy the product. Testimonials answer upfront some objections in the prospect’s head, without you having to do it in the copy. The more detailed the description, the more vivid the image in someone’s head. Sometimes this is enough for people to sell themselves on an item they want.
• Include some FAQ. Answering a few most common questions can dissolve many objections and tip the scales in your favour.
• Optimize layout and visuals. 61% of email opens happening on mobile devices. Definitely, you want to make sure that user experience you provide is seamless. Remember that nowadays, everyone is just one click away from another shop, website or app. It is good to treat people’s attention like gold.

Are you ready to introduce these tips into your abandoned cart sequence?

So that is about it. Every point on this list can give you an advantage over your competitors. That’s because they look for the easy way out and don’t put in the effort to optimize their abandonment cart emails for sales. The truth is, that often all we need to do to make the buying decision is just a spark. That makes us FEEL good about a product.

And as the old marketing adage says, people buy based on emotion and then justify with logic. So make sure you tick all the boxes and give them as many good reasons to buy as possible.