How to Convert an Abandoned Cart
Imagine owning a grocery store and happily watching customers fill their carts on their way to the checkout lanes. Suddenly, one customer abandons his cart and instead of leaving the store with groceries, he leaves the store empty-handed. Fortunately, this does not happen often in grocery stores.
However, it happens far too often in the world of eCommerce shopping.
If you spend some of your company’s hard earned revenue on pricey Google and/or Facebook ads to drive more customers to your eCommerce store, you want to make sure the customers purchase a few of your products and/or services.
You want to make sure none of your eCommerce customers abandon their online shopping carts.
According to a recently released study, you can expect around 70% of your eCommerce customers to abandon their online shopping carts. The key to lowering the staggeringly high number is to learn how to convert an abandoned cart.
Overview of an Abandoned Cart Email
A large majority of eCommerce operators have heard of abandoned carts. However, you might not have heard that an abandoned cart email can put your back on track to earning revenue from your eCommerce store.
An abandoned cart email represents the electronic message you send to a customer that added some of your products to an online shopping cart, but for some unknown reason left the car full, without paying for the merchandise.
You send an abandoned cart email as a subtle reminder that the cart remains full for the completion of a sale.
How do you convert abandoned cart emails? Let us count the ways.
Converting Abandoned Cart Emails
There are a few instances when coming upon an abandoned cart is unavoidable. Some consumers are simply browsing through your eCommerce store and in the process, put a few items in their online shopping carts. Most of your eCommerce customers that abandon their carts are candidates for getting them through the virtual checkout line.
Get Personal
You know how spam emails can turn you off faster than a traffic jam during rush hour. How do you overcome the tendency many people have to delete emails, without first opening them to see what the message is all about?
The answer is to personalize the subject line and make sure the abandoned cart email is from a real person.
By personalizing an abandoned cart email, you will make your customers feel special because you are taking the time to reach out to them. Sending a personalized email also builds trust in your brand, since it demonstrates you care about your products and services. As you know, building trust is the most important factor in developing long-term relationships with your customers.
When you send a personalized abandoned cart email, remember to include a direct link to the products your customers had in their shopping carts at the time of abandonment.
Add Value to Motivate Your Customers to Take Action?
Why do so many consumers abandon their online shopping carts? The answer is not clear, but one factor is always present.
The cart got so full it went over the shopping budget.
How does your business motivate your customers to take action by completing online ecommerce transactions? By throwing in a little financial incentive that saves your customers money on an eCommerce transaction.
Send abandoned cart emails that include coupons and invitations to participate in discounted promotions in return for the completion of an online sale. When a customer sees an email that contains a way to save money, chances are good he or she will return to the abandoned online shopping cart to take advantage of the savings.
This is an especially effective way to convert a cart that was abandoned online by one of your regular customers.
Send Automated Emails
As a business owner or operator, you wish there were more than 24 hours in each day. You have to juggle dozens of responsibilities simultaneously, which makes tending to the issue of abandoned carts a mere blip on your hectic radar screen.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
In fact, you can reduce the number of abandoned carts by not even having to check your eCommerce store on a daily basis. Automated emails, which you write well in advance of sending them, offer a highly effective way for you to stay on top of abandoned online shopping carts.
You might be asking “Doesn’t automation make personalizing emails out of the question.” Good question, but no, automating your emails does not eliminate the conversion strategy called personalization. You can pre-write personalized abandoned cart emails to be sent out weeks from now.
Automating the emails that convert abandoned carts not only saves you time, it generates more revenue for your business.
Insert Customer Reviews within Abandoned Cart Emails
Sometimes, some of your customers just need a gentle nudge to get them through the checkout lane of your eCommerce store. What is the most effective strategy for gently nudging your customers? The answer is by including a few customer reviews in the emails you send out to convert abandoned carts. We like to feel our purchasing decisions are validated by the positive experiences other consumers have enjoyed using the same products and services.
It’s the opposite of peer pressure; it’s called peer support.
You can start the customer review section by writing something like this: “Let’s see what some of our customers have to say after using our XYZ product.”
You have several ways to gather customer reviews. A site such as Trustpilot puts customer reviews from different platforms in one convenient place for quick access. You can also use the customer reviews left on your business website, as well as glean customer reviews from popular sites like Yelp and Google.
Turn Abandoned Carts into Cash Cows
Rest assured, abandoned carts will represent an issue you will have to deal with when you open an eCommerce store. Instead of scratching your head wondering why some of your online customers disappeared, implement the best abandoned cart email practices to motivate your customers to pick up where they left off shopping at your eCommerce website.
You got them to come into your eCommerce store. Now, send them off with a cart of your high-quality products and services.
Have a marketing question? Contact us today.