An abandoned cart email campaign is essential for e-merchants wanting to boost conversions and fight eCommerce cart abandonment.
The customer has already found your site and identified a product they liked, the hard work should be over! Don’t accept failure at the last hurdle, bring lost customers back to complete the purchase with an abandoned cart email campaign.
The days of mass messaging are over. Customers have grown to expect relevant marketing content addressed to them personally, and a retargeting email should be no different.
To write content that customers truly engage with, e-merchants need to do a few key things:
Engaging, personally relevant content is not just a great way to drive home a sale. It also helps brands build a relationship with customers, and retain their business long term.
Continuing with the theme of personalization and relevancy, e-merchants need to tailor product recommendations to each individual customer.
A marketing automation tool is a great way to ensure that each customer receives product recommendations that are relevant to their needs and interests.
Such a tool analyzes a customers’ browsing history and past purchases to recommend products that will either compliment something they’ve already bought or is similar to something they’ve previously shown interest in.
Personalized product recommendations are a great way to drive sales and increase the value of each order. This level of tailoring also shows customers that your brand understands them in a real way, and helps build brand loyalty.
A common problem with online shopping is that dodgy e-merchants misrepresent their products, leaving customers disappointed when their order arrives.
E-merchants can use retargeting emails to show high-quality images of the product to reassure the customer that the product is exactly as it’s described.
Include images of your items from many different angles, in different lighting, or worn on different consumers.
Better yet, show images of your existing customers using/wearing your products in different ways. Include a link to your Instagram page so that the potential customer can see customers just like them using and loving your product.
Email is the most visual marketing medium, so seize the opportunity to showcase your brand and what it represents in every email you send.
In an abandoned cart email campaign, this means including more than just images of specific products that customer has shown interest in. Consider the header, footer, background, and logo as opportunities to let your design shine.
Be sure to use the same artistic direction, color scheme, and fonts as you use on your website to ensure that branding is consistent across all platforms.
Even if you’ve written the best copy in the world, never assume that customers will read an entire email. Sure, some will, but others will glance for a matter of seconds before moving on to the next email in their inbox.
From this mere glance, customers need to know exactly what action you want them to take next. When a customer opens an abandoned cart email, they need to know where to click to complete the purchase.
Place a big, bold, colorful button in the center of your retargeting email to tell customers exactly what you want them to do.
Keep the text in a call-to-action to a minimum, like the following examples:
When a customer abandons a cart, you need to remember just how close they came to making a purchase. They found your website, identified a product they like and placed it in their cart. Chances are, they only need a small push to convince them to purchase.
Include a small discount or an offer of free shipping in your retargeting email to incentivize customers to complete the sale.
Avoid sending discounts to customers who would have made the purchase anyway by sending an initial retargeting email without a discount code, waiting a day or two, then sending the email with a discount code only to customers who still haven’t completed the purchase.
In the footer of your abandoned cart email, include linked icons of all your social media sites. Not only is this is a great way to build your social media following, but it also gives all-important ‘social proof’.
When customers see other people just like them using and loving your products, it makes them trust your brand and gives them faith in the quality of your products.
Getting customers engaged over social media is also a great way to give your brand some personality and make customers feel connected to more than just what you sell.
Once you’ve created your retargeting email campaign, schedule it to send automatically every time a customer abandons a cart on your site.
Your message needs to reach the almost-customer while their intent to buy is at its peak, and before they find a similar product on a competitor’s site.
A great way to increase audience reach and engage with customers fast is by utilizing multiple marketing channels within your abandoned cart campaign.
Customers open messages sent over SMS much faster than email, so reach out immediately over one of these channels, then send a retargeting email to drive home the purchase with visually appealing content.