Every year, ecommerce stores lose around $4.6 trillion due to cart abandonment, while the actual total sales sit at $4.28 trillion. These figures very well explain why online stores treat abandoned carts as a serious challenge. It can be considered as one of the biggest leaks in their sales funnel, and emails come in handy fixing it. They provide a one-on-one, consent-based communication channel which provides unparalleled exposure at unbeatable pricing. We are already mid-way to 2021, and reopenings are finally becoming a reality.
This could be a bit challenging for ecommerce store owners as people may start returning to their normal buying behavior. In such a situation, focusing on hidden abandoned carts instead of merely driving more traffic to your website would be a wise decision. Today, I will share a few tips for revamping your abandoned cart email strategy for 2021. Right from your HubSpot email templates (or the ESP of your choice) to optimizing automation workflows, we will see how small efforts can bring a substantial improvement in your bottomline. Let’s get started.
#1 Begin With Understanding The Prime Reasons For Abandoning Shopping Cart On Your Web Store
Any well-performing strategy is based on rock-solid insights, and I recommend going into the depth of why visitors abandon carts on your particular website. Common ways to find answers to this question include the difference in the total price after adding shipping charges, misplaced USPs, lack of product-market fit, and lack of support for payment methods preferred by visitors. I recommend asking the reason upfront in-mail if possible or analyzing response rates for different cart abandonment emails. You can have a glance at the below infographic to understand the general state of the industry:
#2 Classify The Reasons And Devise Strategies To Counter Them
Depending on your analysis, you should come up with tailored solutions to counter the issues faced by your visitors. If they are finding your shipping charges high, you may want to waive them off for a higher ticketing size. If your prospects are indecisive, you may send social proof to increase your odds of conversion. You also have the ageless tactic of sending promotional messages with ladder discounts at your disposal.
It is necessary that your solutions meet the exact reasons for not completing the purchase and eliminate the pain points. Another great way to approach this aspect is by studying the results of past campaigns of similar nature. Revisiting email metrics can be a great way to throw some light on what worked for you historically and what didn’t. This will also help create discounting strategies as showing the carrot is an inseparable part of these emails.
#3 Restack Your Cart Abandonment Templates
Once you go through the issues faced by your visitors, identify their pain points, and create corresponding solutions, the next logical step is to get the right templates. HubSpot email templates and the ones from Mailchimp are available in huge numbers, but you can also go for custom ones if needed. Just make sure that they match with your design language and allow you to include the features/content that helps address your lead’s concerns.
Also, look out for their ability to integrate with your ecommerce store’s database, CRM, and ERP to ensure a flawless marketing experience. Stacking the right email templates goes a long way in successfully implementing your abandoned cart email strategy. The below infographic clearly displays why this is a worthy investment:
#4 Optimize The Technical Portions Of Your Abandoned Cart Email Campaigns
Here, we are talking about the end times, the automation workflows (especially in the case of nested ones), frequency, personalization, and segmentation. The most common way to approach send times is within one hour, 24 hours, three days, and a week. However, this varies for different industries depending on their sales cycle. You should also check if your automation workflows are in line with your overall strategy and that your emails contain all necessary datasets.
Since a lot of third-party tools are involved, ensuring that everything falls in place is a must. Next, you may want to see if you are utilizing the user data appropriately for implementing personalization and segmentation. This is essential as you might want to treat your paying clients differently from mere window shoppers who haven’t spent a dime on your web store yet. Be more generous with traits like loyalty and try to interweave them in your technical aspects.
Wrap Up
Most email marketers struggle with building a logical approach to revamping abandoned cart email campaigns. Everything else can be taken care of but making efforts in the right direction pays huge when fixing your cart abandonment email strategy. If you go by these four tips, you can improve the results of your email marketing efforts even if you don’t invest too much of your time and resources. I hope that this article adds to your understanding of the strategic portions of running abandoned cart emails and brings you great success in 2021.
Author:Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.
