If you’ve been a digital entrepreneur or even a traditional retailer with an online shop, you know that cart abandonment can be an issue.
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how attractive your website is, how intuitive your user interface is, or even how easy it is to receive and process payments; cart abandonment still happens.
But what if I hyper-optimize my product and landing pages?
Still happens.
What about a constant, steady stream of traffic to the site?
Customers are still leaving with items in their carts.
It’s just a part of the process as an online seller.
Understanding why cart abandonment happens and how to minimize it is a discussion that needs to take place, as well as what to do when customers leave your products in their carts and you are watching potential sales just slipping away.
In other words, let’s discuss how to best combat cart abandonment with your follow-up email sequence and how ClickFunnels is the perfect solution to get your sales back on track.
What is Cart Abandonment (And Why You Should Care)
When a customer selects items and products from your site to purchase and then the customer leaves without finalizing the transaction, this is known as cart abandonment.
In the real world, it’d be like loading up your shopping cart, walking down all the aisles, and instead of paying at the register, simply leaving it and walking out.
There are a variety of ways people abandon their carts online, including:
- Hidden fees and unexpected costs: People expect that to be the final cost when a price is listed online.
- It can be considered the “Amazon Prime” effect, where, for the cost of Prime memberships, Amazon sets the price of an item based on what’s listed. There aren’t any hidden costs or charges to scare away the potential customer.
- Complicated checkout processing: People want simplicity and speed of use (more on that in a moment). When checkout processing is slow or has several steps, it creates a higher level of cart abandonment.
- Again, like with Amazon Prime, the “buy now” feature is simple and speedy, greatly increasing sales for the retail giant.
- Slow website loading or other page issues: As mentioned, when tech things don’t act immediately, people get frustrated and want to leave, which increases the chance of cart abandonment.
- Lack of trust: People who don’t know you aren’t as inclined to give you their money. It’s a simple fact of online business. Getting your brand familiar with your potential customers is the key to closing more sales.
- Distractions: Look, life happens. People like to shop online in various situations, from sitting on the couch before they get distracted by friends or family to working right before the boss walks in. Distractions are one of the key reasons for cart abandonment.
Though there are many reasons for cart abandonment, the good news is that you can try to recapture potential customers’ attention by crafting a well-thought-out email sequence.
Better yet, an engaging email sequence can be the secret weapon entrepreneurs and marketers of all experience levels use to boost conversions and generate interest in their product offerings.
Now that you understand what causes cart abandonment, let’s turn attention to the 5 essential elements of a cart abandonment email sequence that will help you reclaim those potential sales and boost your revenue.
1. A Gentle Reminder
The first email in your sequence should act as a simple reminder to your potential customers that there was something they left behind.
The key is timing; your first touch point should be while the interest is still there. You need to contact them within 1-2 hours of their abandoning the cart so that your product stays at the top of your mind.
Look, they could have abandoned the cart for several reasons, but you want to remind them as soon as possible.
Your initial reminder should:
Showcase the benefits of the product left in the cart. Use images of the item – and when possible, showcase it being used successfully – to reignite interest in your offerings.
Highlight how easy it is to return to your cart. Have a call-to-action (CTA) that takes them directly back to the point they left, minimizing the steps they need to take.
Stay easy-going. Be friendly, not salesy or pushy.
This is the initial contact point, the pleasant little reminder that it’s not time for hard-sell tactics.
Tools like ClickFunnels, a CRM segmentation platform, allow you to personalize these reminders based on the customer’s preferences and behaviors.
This makes your reminder appear more tailored to the customer and less generic, further heightening interest in returning.
2. A Sense of Urgency
Your second email in the sequence should be written within 24 hours of your first one and address the fear of missing out or FOMO.
To create FOMO, you’ll want your reminder to include a sense of urgency that consists of a reason to act and a benefit.
You can craft your sense of urgency by some of the following:
- Promote a limited-time offer: If you are willing to offer a discount or other offer, make it time-sensitive. For example, if you’re offering free shipping, include a time limit: to receive free shipping, they must act within 24 hours.
- Highlight limited supply: Highlight that the item is popular and that there are “Only a few items left!” or “Almost sold out!” as these can help spur immediate action.
- Include a timer (and maybe add an incentive): Creating a timer in your email can create that sense of urgency that a potential customer may need to act.
Also, if you tie an incentive in addition to the product they abandoned, but only within the time frame you provide, your potential customer has added interest to act.
With ClickFunnels, it’s easy to integrate and install countdown funnels within your sales funnels to boost the sense of urgency and need to act for your potential customers.
3. Speak Personally and Directly
When you’re trying to figure out why someone abandoned their cart, and you are trying to get them to come back to close, if your product isn’t compelling enough, then your content will need to do the heavy lifting.
You’ll want to create content that speaks personally and directly to your potential customers using words and content that has an emotional response to convince them about the need to purchase your product.
To craft effective messaging, consider:
- Personalized tone: Include your customer’s name in the subject line and throughout the body of the email. Make the language warm and personal to build trust in your brand and offerings.
- Clearly state the value: State a problem your potential customer may be facing and how your product can solve it. Include how your offering will save time and money, and highlight the benefits they will receive from using your product.
- Compelling subject lines: Making your email stand out from a crowded inbox can be challenging in 2024, so consider subject lines such as “We miss you?” or “Forget something?” or “Your (product) is waiting–complete your order now.” to capture interest and lead to higher open rates.
Utilizing analytics tools and A/B testing your messaging is a great way to increase your conversions through optimizing your messaging, and this is a feature included in all ClickFunnels templates.
4. Sweeten the Deal: Offering Incentives
To get people to return to their abandoned carts, consider a sweetener, an incentive, or a discount that can gently nudge a hesitant customer to purchase.
You can provide a free upgrade, add-on, free shipping, discount code, or other benefit that fits your offer and brand.
For incentive ideas, consider the following examples:
- Discount code: Provide your potential customers a discount code of 10% or 15% to complete their purchase, but make it time-sensitive to create urgency.
- Free shipping: Offering free shipping can reduce the “hidden costs” seen as a hurdle and cause cart abandonment.
- Exclusive offer: People enjoy being special. Providing an exclusive offer as a gift with their purchase can make your potential customer feel valued and special, increasing the likelihood of making a purchase.
5. Timing is Everything
The final aspect to make your cart abandonment email sequence succeed is the timing of your touchpoints. You want to remind your potential customer early and often and should follow this timeline:
- First reminder: Your first email in the sequence should be 1-2 hours after the cart is abandoned.
- Second email: Your second email should be sent 24 hours after your initial one, using scarcity elements and creating a sense of urgency.
- Third email: If you still need to send emails to motivate your potential customer to complete a purchase, your next email should include a sweetener. This email should be sent within 48-72 hours after the initial cart abandonment.
- Final email: After 3-4 days from the cart abandonment, you send your final email follow-up.
This email should provide a nudge that includes incentives, urgency, and scarcity to motivate them to act. An email like, “This is your last chance to get X before it’s gone! Act now and receive 10% off and FREE shipping!”
With ClickFunnels, you can easily create an email sequence or choose from a variety of pre-written sequences to send to anyone who abandoned their carts.
Optimizing Your Success
Now that you have the 5 elements of a cart abandonment email sequence in mind, the final step is to optimize your messaging for the best results.
Just because you’ve sent an email doesn’t mean the process is over.
You’ll want to refine your messaging and optimize your emails continuously to get even better results.
To do so effectively, you’ll want to incorporate analytics into your decision-making to optimize your email sequence. The easiest and most integrated tool available is ClickFunnels, which provides analytics tools for every sales funnel.
Some ways to optimize your email sequence include:
- A/B test: A/B testing your subject lines to see which ones generate higher open rates using ClickFunnels A/B testing tools.
- Different incentives: Another way to optimize your email sequence is to test different incentives and see which ones lead to higher conversions. For example, compare results with a discount code versus offering free shipping to see if you get better results from one over the other.
- Monitor engagement: You’ll want to track email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. ClickFunnels provides you with all the tools you need to properly gather and track all the data to make informed decisions with the analytics tool included with every sales funnel.
When you monitor, track, and tweak your email sequence to match the results you’re getting, you can further reduce cart abandonment and recover the potential revenue from that abandonment through an effective email sequence.
By utilizing these five elements in your email sequence strategy, you can boost your revenue by recovering lost opportunities.
Turn abandoned carts into completed checkouts using this strategic email sequence and see your sales and revenue jump.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool to set up and launch easily, you need ClickFunnels.
The inclusive sales funnels from ClickFunnels provide users with state-of-the-art funnel building optimized for conversions.
They also include all the tools needed to follow up with potential customers at every stage of their journey, including those who have abandoned their carts.
Try ClickFunnels for FREE for 14 days and see your conversions skyrocket!