The other evening I was in bed doing one of my favorite self-care activities: listening to my new podcast and browsing a couple of sites looking for a new pair of jeans. Not just any jeans though, specifically priced reasonably and made from quality materials that wouldn't wear down easily or fade in the wash.
As it often happens, most of these webshops didn’t get my money. The next day, one of the first posts on my Instagram feed was a carousel of product suggestions from a shop I didn’t buy from. Unfortunately, its product recommendations were either items I'd already bought from the site months ago or wasn't interested in. Needless to say, this did not make me any more likely to purchase from the brand.
But alas, this isn’t about my grievances with this business (or most online businesses for that matter). It's about how you can turn window shoppers into actual buyers and do it right. Because only 5% of visitors on your site will end up adding products to their cart, and from that, only 1%, I repeat, 1% will actually complete the purchase.
So, what can you do about the 4% not going through with the transactions? In today’s post, we’ll discuss the reasons why you should focus on abandoned carts, as well as the three best ways to reduce cart abandonment in the first place:
- Why your webshop should focus on abandoned carts
- Utilizing powerful abandoned cart emails
- Personalizing your email messages
- Perfecting your timing
Sounds good? Let’s dive in!
Why your webshop should focus on abandoned carts
Converting prospects into new customers is much more costly and difficult than engaging with existing ones or reconnecting with dormant ones. That is why cart abandonment emails, also known as product retargeting emails, should be a critical part of your email marketing campaigns.
With Clerk’s pre-built logic, cart abandonment emails are automated emails sent out to customers who added products to their carts but didn’t complete the checkout process. Furthermore, Clerk makes it possible for you to personalize these emails too (more on this later). This type of email reminds customers of the products they viewed and/or liked and suggests other items that might interest them (upsell and cross-sell opportunities), driving them back to your webshop.
Abandoned carts are the biggest headache of online retailers and merchants. The latest data reveals the average shopping cart abandonment rate globally is 70.83%. But the silver line is that, according to BI Intelligence, 63% of that can potentially be recovered by savvy online retailers. Product retargeting emails can generate 90x more orders per contact than regular bulk campaigns.
To that end, here are 3 of the best ways your business can maximize recovering abandoned carts.
Utilizing powerful abandoned cart emails
Here is an excellent example of an abandoned cart email from Zalando reminding me of the sneakers I left in my cart the day before. Note that the email also touches upon a common point of friction for online shoppers - return policies - and attempts to reduce risks associated.
The fact that Zalando communicates their return policy in this email ensures me that if the shoes didn't work out, I would have plenty of time to return them for a full refund.
Now, did I open this email? Of course. And I am not alone in doing so, in fact, an astounding 46.1% of these abandoned cart emails are opened on average!
Moreover, the latest study by Omnisend found that abandoned cart emails (33.9%) are one of the three highest-converting messages of 2020 (see chart below). Sending cart abandonment emails can significantly increase the likelihood of turning window shoppers into actual customers!
Personalizing your email messages
As the following figure shows, the previous cart abandonment email from Zalando didn’t just stop there:
Right beneath the product I left in my cart, Zalando recommended several relevant alternatives, increasing my likelihood of making a final purchase.
As we've always said, you should never waste a chance to offer product recommendations, and they should be highly personalized. In general, personalized emails generate 6x higher transaction rates and revenue. They can also improve CTRs (click-through rates) by an average of 14% and conversion rates by 10%.
Through Clerk's technology, hyper-personalized product recommendations are automatically generated based on a number of behavioral data points (visitor's click history, order history, search history, etc.) as well as product data points (best sellers, trending, best-cross sell products, etc.). Recommendations based on these data points can not only make the customer feel appreciated and valued, but also allow you to upsell or cross-sell other products that the customer might find interesting too.
Perfecting your timing
Timing applies to many things in life, so why would email retargeting be any different?
Not everyone checks emails at the same time. Nowadays, technological advancements have transformed the way how people use emails. In particular, having access to the Internet via mobile devices allows people to check their emails anytime and anywhere.
In line with this thinking, Clerk’s pre-built and AI-enabled email triggers allow your webshop to tailor the timing of sending abandoned cart emails to each customer, based on customer behavior and purchase history.
Besides, Clerk also designed five other pre-built email triggers, such as abandoned search, abandoned to help you save time and maximize email marketing ROI. To learn more about Clerk’s smart email triggers that boost sales, check here.
To offer you further guidance concerning email marketing best practices, we’ve also prepared a data-driven guide to successful email marketing.
If you want to learn more about how Clerk can help you reduce cart abandonment and increase conversions, schedule a meeting with one of our specialists today:
