12 Secrets of Effective Cart Abandonment Emails +Examples

If you run an eCommerce store, you’ll already know that far too many shopping carts are abandoned before purchase.

In fact, 70% of all shopping carts are abandoned (Source)

That’s far too many in our opinion.

You can’t eliminate cart abandonment altogether but you can do something about it. 

You can send cart abandonment emails to help reclaim some of that lost revenue.

That’s what this post is all about.

We’re going to share 3 cart abandonment email templates you can copy, adapt and use yourself.

We’re also going to share 12 best practices we have developed over our decade or so of being in business. 

Everything is tried and tested and should work for you too!

Example of an Effective Cart Abandonment Email Sequence

If you just want to get to the good stuff, here’s a 3 email sequence similar to the ones we use.

Feel free to copy and adapt to your unique needs and brand voice. 

You don’t have to send 3, you could send any number you like. As long as you send at least one, you should recover some lost sales.

First Email Example

We recommend sending your first cart abandonment email within an hour or two of the visitor leaving your site.

Second Email Example

We typically send the second email 24 hours after the cart was abandoned.

Third Email Example

The third email should typically hit the customer’s inbox around 48 hours after the second mail.

You can send more or fewer emails if you prefer. Three is just a recommendation.

If you decide to send more, monitor unsubscribe rates to see how many is too many.

There’s a big difference between offering reminders and clogging up a customer’s inbox!

12 Tips for Writing High Conversion Cart Abandonment Emails

What follows are 12 copywriting tips to help you write high conversion cart abandonment emails.

Use them, along with your own personality and tone of voice in everything you write for your business. 

It’s a key way to differentiate yourself from competitors and can seriously improve the relationship you have with customers.

Oh, and it can boost store profits too, which is nice.

1. Be Timely

When you send your cart abandonment email is just as important as what the mail says.

There is no magic formula but this timing sequence seems to work well for us!

Why This Works

The first email strikes while the iron is hot. The second email reminds them just in case and the third is a final attempt timed so as not to annoy the recipient.

2. Personalize

Use the customer’s name and mention the items they left in their cart. This creates a more personalized experience which many respond well to.

Which of these two would you relate to best?

Or

Many eCommerce platforms can work with email to fill in essential information for personalization.

That can include the customer name if they are logged in and items left in the cart.

Why This Works

Most people don’t react well to corporate style emails that read like an email autoresponder. Personalization creates the impression of a relationship, which can help convert.

3. Offer a Clear Call to Action

Tell the customer exactly what you want them to do, whether it’s completing their purchase or exploring other products.

Why This Works

Calls to action can be that final push that encourages the reader to take action. It can also work as an instruction, ideal if someone needs a gentle push to convert.

4. Highlight Benefits

We don’t usually buy something because of its specifications. 

We buy it because of how it makes us feel, how it makes life easier or how it helps us achieve a goal.

Those are the benefits you need to highlight on your page copy and in emails.

Why This Works

Buying decisions are usually more self-centered than we think. Highlighting how the product can benefit us is a core tenet of sales.

5. Address Common Objections

Identify common objections from reviews or feedback, or address universal ones. 

Common objections include high shipping costs, limited payment methods or an unclear returns policy.

Why This Works

There is often a simple reason someone didn’t complete a purchase. The more reasons you cover in the email, the more likely they are to convert.

6. Include a Special Offer or Discount

People love a bargain and offering a deal or discount is a key way to recover lost sales.

There is no magic number, but percentages seem to work best as the number is usually bigger than the dollar amount.

It doesn’t have to be a discount either. It could be free shipping, expedited shipping upgrade or something else entirely.

There’s a lot of thought that needs to go into discounts around affordability, timing and so on. 

Why This Works

People love a bargain. If price was getting in the way of the purchase, the discount could make the difference. 

If you charge for shipping, offering free shipping could also be enough.

7. Create a Sense of Urgency

Using limited-time offers or scarcity to encourage the customer to complete their purchase is a tried and tested conversion method.

Urgency works better if you use a countdown timer or can highlight limited stock.

Why This Works

People hate the idea of missing out. That’s FOMO at work and why it’s such a powerful psychological trigger in eCommerce.

8. Provide Excellent Customer Service

One common barrier to purchase is the remoteness of eCommerce. 

If something goes wrong, it can be very difficult to get in touch or prompt remedial action.

Highlight options in your cart abandonment mail like this:

Make sure to mention this on your product and checkout pages to help initial conversion.

Why This Works

Reassurance sells. When a customer can’t come to the store or there’s no phone number, the more reassurance you can offer, the fewer objections there’ll be.

9. Use Social Proof

We recommend using social proof everywhere, on your website, on store pages and especially on checkout pages.

The power of social proof simply cannot be overestimated, which is why we recommend using it in your emails.

Space can often be limited, so a single sentence with links to your review page or star ratings can be useful.

Why This Works

There’s lots of psychology around social proof. We find reassurance knowing people like us liked a product and it makes buying easier.

10. Use Images of Cart Items

We all know how powerful imagery can be in eCommerce and it’s the same for cart abandonment emails.

When we can see what we’re buying, or potentially missing out on, we are often most stimulated to buy.

Why This Works

Humans are visually stimulated and seeing what we’re missing can be enough to trigger action. 

11. Test and Optimize

Test different subject lines, content, and calls to action to see what works best in your cart abandonment emails.

Some email marketing tools include A/B testing, some don’t. Either way, testing is well worth doing to make sure your emails are performing as they should.

Why This Works

Unless you test, you’re not using data to drive decisions. Guesswork is fine to a point, but it won’t generate maximum results.

12. Upsell or Cross-sell

Adding an upsell or cross-sell to a cart abandonment email can be effective but difficult to pull off.

To make it work, your eCommerce store needs to be able to provide reliable data to your email marketing platform so it can recommend relevant items.

Recommend a relevant product and the customer could buy that instead. Get the recommendation wrong and it will be ignored.

Why This Works

The customer may have abandoned the cart because they didn’t like the initial product. An upsell or cross-sell could show us something we like better.

Set Up Cart Recovery in Your Store

If you use WooCommerce, you’ll need a cart recovery plugin as there is no built-in mechanism for it.

A plugin allows you to link incomplete purchases with follow up emails in order to recover lost sales.

If you use SureCart, cart recovery is built in.

As long as you have Abandoned Checkout enabled you can set up your cart recovery emails, configure the sending schedule and add discounts from your dashboard.

Alternatively, manage your own emails with SureTriggers. 

Whatever method you choose, make sure to choose one. 

Cart abandonment emails may take a little work to get right, but the number of sales they could recover makes it very worthwhile!

Writing Cart Abandonment Emails

As you can see, writing effective cart abandonment emails is part art and part science.

It helps if you know your audience and have a good idea why they didn’t complete the purchase, but it isn’t mandatory.

Using the tips in this post and your own creativity and imagination, you can craft emails that can claw back some of those lost sales.

Feel free to use the three email templates in this post however you like!

Do you use cart abandonment emails? How effective are they? Have any tips for other store owners? Tell us in the comments below!

Cart Abandonment Email FAQs

Your abandoned cart email questions answered.