Craft Abandoned Cart Emails that Stand Out

Depending on whose research and statistics you trust, between 70–80% of all online shopping carts are abandoned. It’s frustrating when you’ve spent time and money to get visitors to your store and purchase, only for them to abandon their cart on the final step.

The most popular way to combat this is to automatically send an email—or email sequence—to follow up with prospects who abandon their cart. This works pretty well and also scales efficiently since it’s an automated tactic that doesn’t require ongoing time.

In fact, a quality abandoned cart series can help you recover 5—15% of your abandoned carts, which will give any store quite a nice revenue boost.

But here’s the problem: With so many good tools available for abandoned cart recovery, every merchant uses similar best practices and sends emails that look the same. Now ecommerce marketers have conditioned customers to expect an email if they abandon a cart.

This results in greater ignorance, less engagement, and ultimately lower efficacy in converting.

That problem is then compounded. In any week, your customers get abandoned cart emails from you, but they also receive them from plenty of other retailers and brands.

So how do you stand out in the crowd?

Supercharge your recovery rate with these easy methods.

Nearly 70% of consumers rely on reviews and ratings when making a purchase. Yet when it comes to recovering abandoned cart email sequences, product reviews and ratings are nowhere to be found.

Probably because most email marketing solutions don’t have their own product review functionality or native integrations with review providers. 

This is precisely why CM Commerce was built with features beyond email, storing your reviews and showing them at clutch opportunities.

But we practice what we preach, so we have some social proof of our own. Consider these two recent testimonials from CM Commerce-powered businesses.

“From the range of features (I mean, how many apps give you email flows, reviews, and search functions among others) to the easy integration and the great notifications, CM Commerce not only makes business more efficient but so much more effective. It literally prints money! And a 33% abandoned cart recovery rate? That’s INSANE! But I’ll take it.”

— Adam Milikins, Owner at Roasted Fox

And another from Colette & Lola:

“I remember reading your reviews when we were still deciding whether to go with CM Commerce or not and thinking to myself ‘are these reviews for real or not?’ Well, I can definitely say that we’ve received world-class service from you and your team. Your tech is already making a big difference, especially with abandoned shopping carts. Our cart recovery is 17% when the average rate is 7%.”

— Arvid Yap, Ops Director at Colette & Lola

What would your business look like if you could increase your abandoned cart recovery by 10%?

To breathe some new life into your abandoned cart emails, here are two things you can start doing with our tools right away:

1. Get a ★★★★★ open rate.

With CM Commerce, you can include the best ratings for products that were abandoned right in your subject line. You can highlight how well other customers have rated your products and provide the initial social proof customers might need to convert.

For instance, here’s a subject line that we tried with some of our customers, and we’ve already seen open rates get a boost:

 “You left some ★★★★★ products in your cart! :(“ 

And you can see why. Imagine how different that looks in your customer’s inbox compared to all the other subject lines they see. 

Use the merge tag {{highestAverageRating}} to show the star rating as part of your subject line.

2. Remind your customers what they’re missing.

In addition to your subject line, we’ve spruced up the abandoned cart details block.

For every product that was abandoned, you can now show the star rating in the actual email messaging.

This is a two-pronged sales approach: Use clever marketing copy to re-sell your customers by highlighting your product USPs and get your happy customers to independently reinforce that with positive reviews.

Regardless of how compelling your marketing copy is, or how wonderful your products are, some customers will remain skeptical and might just need a little nudge to persuade them. The best way to do that is through reviews or social proof that act as an independent advocate for your brand and products.

Want to start using these new tools? Sign up for your free 30-day trial of CM Commerce today. You can start sending these emails with our smart defaults within three minutes. Guaranteed.

3. If you can’t convert them, nurture them.

We’re going to be honest with you: Even with these awesome tools, you still won’t convert all your abandoned shopping carts.

Maybe the time isn’t right for prospects to purchase. Or maybe they need a nudge or a reminder of your brand and products in the future.

Here are two ways CM Commerce can help:

1. We previously limited abandoned cart email sequences to three emails in order to discourage pushiness, a tactic we know doesn’t work—and often backfires—with today’s consumers. 
2. However, you can now send a fourth email, which we recommend you send after seven days.

Additionally, we adapted our opt-in module for receipts to now work in your abandoned cart email sequence, too.

What does this mean? If you can’t convert an abandoned cart after the first three emails, it’s probably not the best time for that prospect to buy. In that case, why not get them to subscribe to your newsletter and keep them engaged over weeks or months with some great content?

Having that connection increases your likelihood that the timing may be right for them to make a purchase in the future.

4. Go back to sales basics.

We went back to 1940 to give the unique selling proposition (USP) a new lease of life. With the new Featured Product Block, you can craft up to three primary benefits (all which support the USP) of your product. When a customer then abandons a cart with a featured product, you re-sell them on the benefits of the product as well as the primary reasons to buy that product.

This is how you should—and would—sell in real life. And now you can sell like this in your CM Commerce-powered abandoned cart emails.

It’s as simple as adding the benefits and USP text for your products (we recommend starting with your best sellers). The platform takes care of the rest.

Wrap up

Your abandoned cart emails don’t have to feel so generic and impersonal anymore. There are ways in which they can still be automated but feel more like an actual salesperson talking to a customer about your products.

Abandoned cart emails are still a great way to recover lost revenue. But not if you continue to do the same old thing as your competitors day in, day out. On the other hand, both of these features are available today and can be activated within minutes.What are you waiting for? Try it out in the free trial.