An ecommerce business owner, you should be quite familiar with cart abandonment rates, as it is a major concern that impacts their business revenue.
Cart abandonment signifies a customer choosing to shop, adding some products in the shopping cart and then abandoning the process right before payment.
According to reports from Shopify Plus, as of August 2017, 77.3% of all online retail orders were abandoned instead of purchased.
Is your online store’s checkout process complicated? Isn’t it mobile friendly? What must have made shoppers leave it half way?
Some common reasons may be higher shipping costs, and lack of a preferred payment option. Mobile-friendliness is also a concern.
While most ecommerce sites have adopted responsive web design now, there are stores that still haven’t really made the checkout process work well on a phone or tablet.
Perhaps a better survey could help to know the real problems customers face. The 2017 survey report from Baymard Institute shows that a large portion of cart abandonments is simply a natural consequence of how users browse e-commerce sites – many users may be engaged in window shopping, price comparison, saving items for later and exploring gift options.
Once Abandoned, How do Shoppers Buy the Product?
According to the VWO eCommerce Cart Abandonment Report 2016, a total of 41% of respondents would go on to purchase the product from a different site.
I’m done with statistics and now, let’s see what can be done to reduce this cart abandonment rate and bring the customers back to your store.
An Interesting Fact
According to the VWO ecommerce report, 58% of respondents said that emails and ads that offer a discount on an abandoned product bring them back to the website. So emails would be an ideal way for retargeting potential customers and help reduce cart abandonment.
Most leading online stores offer discount coupons to attract more customers.
Here’s a discount coupon in Groupon:
As the customer knows that a discount code has been made available to them, they wouldn’t feel surprised or left out once they reach the checkout phase.
These email addresses can be collected and used for ads and email remarketing to follow up, even if those shoppers abandon the cart. Building trust and credibility during checkout also adds peace of mind to users.
Implementing a shopping cart abandonment email campaign could turn a good percentage of those carts into actual sales. Email marketing is still one of the leading lead generation strategies to reach B2B prospects and customers. You can choose an email marketing service like MailChimp, Constant contact, or Moosend and implement some campaigns.
Alright, so before sending your first cart retrieval email, determine the necessary time delay by putting yourself in the shoes of the shopper. Remember:
- 1-3 hours after a cart has been abandoned is the optimal time to send the first retrieval email, if your product requires a lot of research
- While sending the email so early can confuse the user, sending it too late can result in the customer purchasing the product from a competitor site
- 24 hours after the first reminder is a good time for sending more than one cart retrieval email
Drip emails
Drip emails are pre-written email messages sent to prospective customers at fixed intervals. For instance, when your cart is abandoned, automated emails go out at various intervals to help move that lead through your pipeline.
Drip campaigns can also be used to offer more content to users who sign up to your email list, thus bringing them back to your website. Drip email marketing campaigns can provide several advantages such as higher engagement, automated funnel movement, and thus delighted customers.
Creating a Drip Campaign with Sendloop
Step #1: Set Up Segments
To classify subscribers based on the action you’re carrying out, you’ll create segments.
Click “Subscribers” in the top navigation bar of the Sendloop dashboard.
- This step will show the list of Subscribers associated with your account
- Click on the name of the list for which you want to create segments, which brings you to the List Overview page.
(Start off by creating a new list; create one by clicking “Create a new list” on the top right corner)
Clicking on the “Create New Segment” in the Overview page takes you to the Create Segment page.
Provide the appropriate configuration settings for your new segment and click Create to proceed. You can exit the configuration screen by clicking Cancel.
Step #2: Set up drip campaign for your segments
Choose email options by returning to Sendloop dashboard. Click “Send Email” at the top right corner. Choose the email campaign mode from options such as
- Choose a ready-to-use email template
- Import your email design
- Code your own email
Clicking on “Choose a ready-to-use email template” will take you to the Email Template Gallery. Choose one template and click the Create Email link that appears. This launches the email builder, where you can compose your email message, upload photos and edit the content of your email.
Address, schedule and send Emails
In the email builder, click the “To” field to select the recipients of the email. A drop down list of the segments associated with your account will be presented and, from the list, choose the one to whom you want to send this particular email. Click Save after choosing your segments.
To schedule Email, click Send Repeatedly at the top right-hand corner to open up the scheduling options.
Select Every Day in the When column and set the time you want this campaign to be triggered in the Time of day.
Underneath these options, choose Repeat indefinitely
Finally, click Schedule to save changes and schedule your campaign. At this point, your rule triggers every day at your desired time, and Sendloop will send your email to the recipients who match the rules of the selected segment.
Such drip email campaigns will help reduce your cart abandonment rates to a great extent and improve your earnings.
Here are my two cents on drip email marketing and I hope it was helpful for you.
Do you have any such strategies to reduce cart abandonment rates? Share your comments below.
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