Getting people to complete their shopping carts is one of the more direct ways to lift your profits. Writing the email that does it is harder when you don’t know what’s going wrong underneath. The job is to get customers to finish a purchase they already started, so these emails go to the people who added items to their cart and then abandoned the checkout. Here’s how to write messages that reassure customers and get them to finish.
Shoppers often add items to their carts out of interest, without really meaning to buy. For a lot of them the cart works more like a wish list. Moving them from browsing to buying is on you. Without some encouragement, more than half of your customers may leave without completing the purchase.
The customer journey
Understanding the customer’s journey is what makes a follow-up strategy work. These are the stages somebody typically goes through before buying:
- Awareness, when the customer recognizes the need to buy something.
- Evaluation, when they compare prices and quality across the market.
- Intent, when they decide they want a particular product.
- Decision, when the purchase is made.
Common issues behind cart abandonment, and what to do about them
Several things can push a customer into abandoning a cart, and the good news is that all of them can be dealt with. Here are the usual ones:
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A slow website. A slow site is frustrating, and frustrated customers abandon carts. Make sure your page loads quickly, and keep monitoring and improving its speed.
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A complicated checkout. Asking for too much information puts people off. A guest checkout option is essential. Keep the checkout to a few clicks, and let customers decide whether they want an account after they’ve bought something.
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Hidden costs. Unexpected costs, and high shipping fees especially, lead to abandoned carts. Be upfront about shipping charges. A free shipping threshold encourages customers to add more items to the cart rather than pay extra for delivery.
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Payment methods people don’t trust. If your payment process looks complicated or unreliable, customers hesitate. Keep the payment options simple and secure. Fast, trusted payment services work best.
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A poor mobile experience. A lot of customers shop on their phones, so your website has to work there. If it doesn’t display properly, people leave before they buy. Run a mobile friendly test to check that your site is responsive and displays correctly across devices.
How to follow up when a customer abandons their cart
Recovering an abandoned cart comes down to following up quickly, and with some thought. A few things you can do:
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Send a reminder email. Follow up about an hour after the customer abandons the cart. You can also send it at the end of the day, with details of the products in the cart and an offer of customer service support. A second email can go out 48 hours later, letting them know it’s their last chance and possibly offering a discount.
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Reserve the items in the cart. Holding the items for a limited time gives customers a reason to hurry. A countdown timer, or showing how many items are left, pushes them to act.
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Create an attention-grabbing email. What the email looks like matters. Keep it in line with your brand and show the products with clear, attractive images. Put the product details up front, so the decision is easier to make.
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Use remarketing. Show customers ads for the products they left in their cart while they browse other websites. Personalized emails alongside those product displays make it harder to forget about the abandoned items.
You can put all of this together with HTML email templates, which saves a lot of the work. Prebuilt, HTML-ready templates give you a professional design that already follows the best practices.
Get these right and you end up with targeted emails that reduce cart abandonment and turn potential customers into buyers. If you want more tips on writing effective emails with HTML-ready templates, take a look at Tabler Emails.
