Cart Abandonment Emails: 12 Best Practice Tips
Cart Abandonment Emails: 12 Best Practice Tips
If you have an ecommerce website, you’ve probably experienced the frustration of abandoned carts. Those carts, once brimming with potential sales, often end in lost revenue, making them a constant headache for any ecommerce business.
Unfortunately, this issue is widespread. 2024 saw an average of 70.19% of abandoned carts (Baymart Institute) while it’s reported that ecommerce businesses lose a staggering $18 billion in revenue annually due to cart abandonment.
This means you’re losing valuable conversion opportunities and missing out on huge amounts of potential revenue.
However, with the right strategy in place, you can cut down the number of abandoned carts by giving your customers the nudge they need to come back and complete their purchases and recover those otherwise lost sales.
Cart abandonment emails are a valuable tactic for online retailers, helping them to recover sales from the 79.53% of visitors who leave without completing a purchase.
In this article, we’ll look at how to convert abandoned carts, cart abandonment emails, tips to make them more compelling, and some great examples of email design.
What is cart abandonment?
As the name suggests, cart abandonment happens when a customer adds an item to their cart but clicks away from the website before completing the purchase.
Shoppers will abandon carts for a variety of reasons, and the good news for retailers is that many of these problems can be addressed.
For example, while shoppers conducting research may have no intention of making a purchase on their first visit to a site, there are still ways to keep your site in their minds.
Sites can ensure that the information they need is accessible on site so they don’t need to head for competitors for research. This includes reviews, plenty of images, detailed product descriptions and buyer’s guides for sectors like travel and finance.
They can also ensure that details are saved for return visits, and even offer assistance when customers need it.
Some of the factors cited by customers as reasons for abandonment are simply common ‘mistakes’ made by retailers.
Among the most common reasons for cart abandonment include:
- High shipping costs
- Complex checkout process
- Limited payment options or concerns over payment security
- Long delivery times
- Ambiguous return/refund policy
- Site performance issues
Many of the problems here can be addressed by better site design, information and features – and the better sites will have lower than average abandonment rates – but there will always be a proportion of customers that abandon.
This is where cart abandonment emails can help. They offer a way for sites to reconnect with customers and address some of the issues that caused them to abandon.
What Are Cart Abandonment Emails?
One effective way to reduce cart abandonment rate and encourage abandoners to come back to your website to complete their purchase is through email marketing, more particularly cart abandonment emails.
Cart abandonment emails (also known as cart recovery or remarketing emails) are automated messages sent when a shopper adds items to their shopping cart but abandons before completing a purchase.
They remind shoppers of the items they left behind, and offer them a way to return quickly to complete the purchase..
In many cases, a timely prompt through a cart abandonment email can be just what’s needed to persuade them to return to the site and complete a purchase.
Due to their relevance and the interest already shown in the product, cart recovery emails have some of the best open and conversion rates of any marketing email.
The average open rate in 2024 is 54.02% whereas in 2023 the average cart abandonment email open rate was 50.36%.
Best Practices for Abandoned Cart Emails
The average customer most likely receives plenty of emails a day so there’s high competition in your customers’ inboxes and only a limited amount of time to grab their attention.
Using a multi-cycle email strategy you are able to boost your conversion rates by helping you time your emails better, allowing you to get the most out of your campaigns. For example, sending messages 1 hour, 24 hours and 72 hours after an abandonment can increase your campaign performance by up to 30%. This way you get three chances at hitting the best time to send a cart abandonment email.
Why? Because your messaging will arrive to the customer within a timely fashion, when they still have high intent and your emails have a better chance of being opened at different times.
However, it’s not enough just to fire off emails once customers abandon a purchase. The best performing examples contain a combination of great design, smart use of data, and persuasive copy.
12 Best practice tips for basket a abandonment
Let’s look at some of the key success factors for abandonment emails.
1. Provide a Clear Summary of Cart Contents
The key aim is to remind people of what they were about to buy, so the products should be front and centre of emails.
Show shoppers the products they were thinking about buying, and be sure to include the key information they need, such as price and details like size or delivery cost.
Images are important to provide a quick reminder for shoppers. People may have abandoned several other baskets, so it’s important to provide a strong visual cue.
It’s also important to consider how products are displayed. For example, some retailers may prefer to prioritise higher value items, or those which the shopper is more likely to buy.
In some cases, shoppers may add multiple items to shopping carts. To display every single one would create problems with length of emails and too much choice.
Instead, cart limiting can automatically restrict the number of items displayed to avoid overloading the customer with too many options.
Here an example with the Mexican brand Grupo Andrea:
The brand improves significantly the results with:
- Open rate of 22%
- Click rate: 24%
- An upsell of 5,4
Find out more with the success story of Grupo Andrea here
2. Clear Calls to Action
A second key element is the calls to action on cart recovery emails. It’s about making the action you want users to take as clear as possible.
As a general rule, CTAs in emails should be:
- Placed as high up as possible.
- Be large and easy to read – contrasting colors can work well.
- Repeated throughout the email.
3. Don’t Overdo Discounts
It may be tempting to offer discounts or promo codes in cart abandonment emails to tempt people back to the checkout, but it’s important to think carefully about using this tactic.
Discounting too much and too often can affect profit margins, and could ‘train’ shoppers to abandon with the expectation of discounts. But it’s important to explore some abandoned cart discount code ideas to maximise revenue.
Besides, the simple act of reminding shoppers about their purchase is often all that’s required to persuade them to return to their shopping cart.
Instead, it’s best to use discounting tactically. If you already have an ongoing offer, it’s worth highlighting it in emails; otherwise, selective discounts in second or third cycle emails, centred around customer acquisition targets, can be a better conversion rate strategy.
Here an example with the french brand Marionnaud that integrated the Black Friday discount with the deadline to highlight the promotion available:
The brand increased their sales using a discount linked with the Black Friday:
- Click rate: 22%
- Conversion rate: 60%
Read more about the Black Friday strategies here
4. Send the email at just the right time
How to write abandoned cart emails is one thing, but there’s also the dilemma of the best time to send abandoned cart emails.
Your customers should receive your cart abandonment email while their purchase intent is still high. Online buying habits can give you a better guideline when it comes to choosing an abandoned cart email timing. Providing a nudge at the right moment can help influence the customer to return to the purchase. Traditionally, low average order value items generally take less time for the customer to consider and can be quickly forgotten.
Whereas higher value purchases tend to take more consideration, such as consumer fashion and luxury fashion items.
Timing of emails can play a big part in their performance. There’s no right or wrong answer, but your email should be arriving in the shopper’s inbox while they’re still considering a purchase.
Understanding the peak times for online shopping can also be a great insight that can help you decide the best time to send cart abandonment emails.
There’s also the question of whether they still need the product, and this can vary according to the type of purchase.
The results from our client data suggests that abandonment emails are most effective when sent within or just around an hour after abandonment.
However, this is just an indication, and the same may not hold true across different industries or price levels. For example, products with a higher average order value may require more consideration by shoppers, and sending within an hour may be too soon.
The only reliable answer is to conduct an A/B testing to find the one which performs best for your target customers.
5. Use Dynamic Content
The use of dynamic content in remarketing emails can ensure that copy and visuals are up to date and optimised for the individual user.
Dynamic content allows you to:
- Use context and data to show your customers live information such as pricing.
- Adjust the visuals and information based on where in the world the shopper is, or the products they’re considering.
- Update the information and design of emails for the device they are using.
- Use real time results to make sure you are using the highest converting images.
- Display up-to-date trends information such as product popularity or stock levels.
6. Segment and Personalise
A high-performing email should be relevant to recipients and the use of segmentation and personalisation can help to achieve this.
First, let’s explain the difference between segmentation and personalisation:
- Segmentation can be used to divide (potential) customers into distinct groups in order to target them with specific content or products. This can include age, gender, geo-location, propensity to purchase and more.
- Personalisation aims to provide relevance at the individual customer level, using customer data to target them more effectively. This data can be used to recommend relevant cross-selling options based on a customer’s purchase and browsing history.
Make sure to personalise your abandoned cart email by featuring the contents of the customer’s cart as well suggestions for other products they might like based on their interests and purchase history.
Boost your open rate by also personalising the email subject line to grab customers’ attention, which includes incorporating the customer’s name and the exact product they left behind to remind them immediately of what they left behind.
7. Send in cycles
Boost the performance of your campaign by adding an extra email cycle. Sending messages 1 hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours after an abandonment can improve campaign performance by up to 30%. Therefore, make sure to send more than one automated reminder to visitors who abandoned their cart.
Consumers’ inboxes are busy places, so the first emails may be missed, or may arrive when customers aren’t ready to purchase.
Sending emails in cycles can achieve the best results, though it is important to adapt the messaging for each cycle:
- First cycle emails should focus on reminding shoppers of the items they abandoned.
- Second cycle emails can be used to add some more urgency and detail like reviews to persuade shoppers.
- Third cycle emails are an opportunity to try something different, perhaps by focusing on reviews, or by changing tactics and gathering useful feedback via abandonment surveys.
8. Use Customer Reviews
According to research from Bright Local, 84% of people trust online reviews from other consumers as much as personal recommendations. This is part of your social proof strategy because reviews show your customers you are trusted and used. Customer reviews are highly effective in aiding conversion.
They offer reassurance for customers that the product they’re thinking about buying is a good one.
They’re perfect in recovery emails, where many recipients may still be in research mode. In this context, reviews can tip the balance and persuade people to buy.
9. Create urgency
In cases where prices or extras like shipping offers are time-limited, it can pay to make this clear to customers, particularly as part of the second or third email cycle.
It can help to speed up a purchase decision. For example, if they know prices may rise soon, or they need to order in time for an occasion, then reminders can do the trick to entice customers to come back and complete their purchase.
Therefore, incorporating incentives into your cart abandonment email campaigns, such as a limited time promo code, is an effective way to recapture a customer’s interest and increase conversions.
Here an example of the iconic french brand Claudie Pierlot which, with the help of SaleCycle, set up a countdown timer as part of an email campaign to recapture “abandoners” and create urgency so customers would take advantage of the winter sales before it’s too late.
The email comes with a message that the user’s basket is still available with a timer counting down the days until the end of the sale as well as offering a code for an additional 10% discount to entice them further.
Compared to the default campaign with no countdown timer, which had a much lower conversion rate, the email perfomance was very strong:
- Click rate: 22%
- Conversion rate: 60%
Moreover, by doubling its traffic and revenue from abandoned cart emails, Claudie Pierlot generated a 98% increase in revenue from cart recovery emails compared to 2023.
For a deeper dive, read their success story about How Claudie Pierlot Doubled Their Remarketing Revenue with SaleCycle's Abandoned Cart Campaigns here.
10. Test and Improve with A/B testing
There’s no such thing as a perfect email. It’s all about testing and refining to find the best-performing emails.
Use techniques such as A/B testing to test different elements and combinations within cart abandonment emails. These areas include:
- Subject lines: These are a big factor in whether people choose to open emails in the first place: Testing things like personalised subject lines or reminding people of promotions can make a difference.
- Calls to action: Placement, size and copy used on calls to actions can improve click through rates.
- Timing: How long should you wait before sending emails?
- Copy: Email copy can be the difference between recipients clicking through or ignoring emails. Copy style, length and tone can all be tested.
To analyse their performance, set up trackable KPIs that align with your goals including open, click-through or conversion rates.
Here an example of the brand Ferragamo using 2 different introduction contents and images:
11. Add irresistible and actionable CTAs
Keep your emails concise and to the point. The objective of abandoned cart emails is to nudge customers to finish their checkout journey. Make sure to mention the abandoned product and craft persuasive copy that aligns with your brand voice while emphasising why customers need to finalise their purchase now.
Use clear, visually-appealing calls to action that are impossible to miss to let customers know exactly what action you want them to take. In this case, a well-designed CTA that sends customers straight back to their cart, making it easy for them to continue and complete their transaction.
Here an example of CTAs that are clear and well integrated into an email:
At the end of the email, multiple CTA's have been added to give other possibilities to the reader to finalise their purchase.
CTA 1: Click & Collect
CTA 2: Information on Secure payments
CTA 3: Information on Easy Returns
CTA 4: Information on Fast Delivery
12. Use high quality product Images
Images can make a difference, and good imagery can highlight products more effectively.
It can show products in a good light, or remind people of what they left behind through the use of attention-grabbing, attractive images of the abandoned product.
There are a lot of design considerations when using images in emails. For example, it’s important to consider how file size affects email load time, as well as how images render across different email clients.
Here's an email example from the brand L’Occitane en Provence which reinforces the quality of the abandoned product through the use of high quality, impactful product imagery:
This type of email generates 30% of conversion rate per click!
Conclusion
Addressing cart abandonment should be an essential part of your strategy to enable you to re-engage nearly converted customers and recover lost sales.
With a well-crafted email sent at the right time specifically targeted to the right people, you can effectively address shopper hesitation and lead them back on the right path to conversion.
Not every customer can be incentivised in the same way which means you’ll need to carefully design emails that cater to each customer’s needs and interests.
SaleCycle’s abandoned cart solution gives you the power to re-engage otherwise lost customers.
Engaging campaigns can be created and scheduled to re-target those visitors via Email in optimised cycles with wide targeting capabilities. These can be fully personalised with dynamic content from specific visits in order to provide a unique level of personalisation, designed to drive engagement and revenue by recovering those abandoned sales.
