“Abandoned cart” emails can help you boost online sales.

More and more small businesses are using automated email marketing to quickly respond whenever a customer reaches out online.

Sign up for a company’s email newsletter, and you’ll probably get a “welcome” message that includes FAQs and other useful information. Make a purchase, and not only will you receive an order confirmation, the company might send you an email showing other items to buy or an offer for 10 percent off your next order.

But you can also use automated email when a customer takes no action or doesn’t finish an action. If your company’s site includes any kind of eCommerce, you should consider creating an “abandoned cart” reminder email.

These messages can be automatically sent whenever a customer puts an item in an online shopping cart, but then, for one reason or another, doesn’t actually purchase. By simply reaching out to them, you could recuperate otherwise potentially lost sales.

You’re Actually Providing a Service

Online shoppers abandon carts for all kinds of reasons: bad user experience design in the checkout process that slows a shopper down, expensive “hidden” fees that only show up as they’re about to check out or, frankly, they might just get distracted.

Shopping in one’s pj’s with a house full of distractions is very different from having a physical shopping cart and walking the aisles of a store. It’s possible that someone called mid-checkout, a child needed attention, or the dog wanted to be let out. Maybe dinner was boiling over on the stove.

These abandoning shoppers aren’t saying “no” to your online product. They just didn’t quite finish the job. Here’s where abandoned shopping carts can drive revenue. Many shoppers actually feel as though an abandoned cart reminder is a service to them: It reminds them they were supposed to buy diapers or that they meant to shop around for a better price, but perhaps never found one.

Sources like Marketing Sherpa and Experian share case studies of retailers who captured nearly 15 percent of “abandoned cart”
revenue by sending an email and an additional 50 percent with a second follow-up.

Do You Need to Discount?

You don’t have to offer a discount to make abandoned-cart automation work. In fact, many retailers have stopped including coupons because they can often (re)capture the shopper without offering a discount.

Some retailers save the coupons for a second reminder, as a way to persuade those that need a little extra incentive. Sometimes that coupon can combat the “friction” in your online sales process. A 10 percent discount might balance out $8 in ground shipping fees, for example, or make a three-page checkout process worth the time investment after all.

When you’re ready to get really fancy, you can set up automation rules so that when an item on your website goes on sale, anyone who had ever shopped and abandoned that item would get a triggered email alert.

That way, you’re not offering a bounce-back discount to those who abandoned their carts, but you are targeting those most likely to take advantage of a sale when the item is nearing clearance.

A close relative of the abandoned-cart reminder is a customer follow-up survey. Rather than try and close the sale, this email links to a one-question survey to find out why the shopper didn’t buy. By asking, you can find the issues in your product, pricing model or buying process, rather than guess or assume.