Make Abandoned Carts Work for You

Carts get abandoned. It’s a fact. In fact let’s start with some facts. (Did I say facts enough yet? I think, in fact, I did).

The Baymard Institute did a study on cart abandonment. Their study found an average rate of 68.63%. So almost 70% of all carts are abandoned before checkout.

Imagine for a moment if this happened at the grocery store. For every ten people that went shopping, 7 would fill up their carts and just leave them while only 3 would actually purchase what was in their carts. This is absurdly high.

If this happened at a brick and mortar they would be doing everything in their power to fix the problem. But Ecommerce stores just accept that this is part of the equation for doing business.

Now, I’m not hear to tell you that I can drop that rate to zero (though if you think I can then I have some land on Luna that is ultra-cheap) but I can tell you that you can reduce that rate for your Ecommerce store. And even more importantly you can use the abandoned cart as a way to engage with your customer.

There are a lot of things you can do to mitigate cart abandonment from streamlined checkout processes to using testimonials to build trust but here I want to cover what to do if the cart has already been abandoned.

Example

Let’s take the brick and mortar example again. If you saw someone just walk away from their cart and head towards the exit what would you do? If you were a good salesman (which hopefully your website is) you would go up to the customer and ask if there was a reason they were leaving their cart behind. Then you would take the appropriate action based on their problem or concern.

Now at first glance it seem like you can’t do the same thing on your Ecommerce store. There’s no way to talk to your customer when they abandon their cart. But there is something you can do. Send an abandoned cart email.

There are a bunch of methods you can use to do this: an automated email system like Klaviyo or by using a simple plugin. Today though I’m not going to go into the mechanics of setting this up but I want to focus on what you should do with this email.

Bad Email

First off don’t do what most people do which is just use the stock email for cart abandonment that reads something like this:

Dear [Customer Name],
Thank you for shopping at [Store Name]. We noticed that
you left without checking out. Your cart has been saved
at [shopping-cart-link].
Thank you,
Customer Support

I think I just threw up in my mouth! Seriously is that the best we can do? I don’t think so.

Better Email

Let’s take a look at a cart abandonment email that has had a lot of success.

Hi [Customer Name]!
First let me introduce myself. My name is [Owner Name]
and I am the owner of [Company Name].

I wanted to personally take the time to thank you for
shopping at our store. I saw though that you didn’t get
a chance to check out. Was there some issue that kept
you from checking out? Anything I can help with?

Please email me back if there is anything I can do to help.
I answer all of my emails so feel free to contact me.

Cheers!
[Owner Signature]

Now you know and I know (and let’s face it the customer probably knows too) that this is just an automated email but do you feel the difference. Do you see how this email builds trust with the customer? And on the flip-side how the first email does nothing to enhance the buyer’s trust.

These emails can be built upon with second and third follow ups that are automatically sent at pre-determined intervals. The real secret though is to make your customer feel like they are the center of the universe. If you do that then you have a fighting chance to bring them back to finish up that purchase that they started.