3 Mistakes You’re Making with Your Abandoned Cart Emails (And How to Avoid Them)

Spend any time running an online storefront, and you’ll quickly learn that the vast majority of people who visit your site will leave without buying anything. Even if someone puts a product in their cart, the abandonment rate is around 70%.

Those numbers aren’t great, but abandoned cart campaigns were designed to help recapture some of those people who didn’t buy the first time. Estimates are that sending out a cart abandonment email series can recapture between 3% and 10% of your lost customers. 

That’s a pretty good revenue boost. But, many brands are making some common mistakes that could hamper the impact of your emails. If you want to consistently win back and convert abandoned cart customers, here’s what you need to avoid.

Getting the timing wrong

For most marketers, conventional wisdom around abandoned cart campaigns is to follow a similar pattern. Send out three emails: one an hour after abandonment, one a day later, and the last one a week later. 

For the most part, those work. That’s why most brands follow that advice. But it’s also important to understand how your customers approach your product. If they’re buying an edible arrangement, sending that third email after a week may be too long, but sending the second email a day later may be too soon if they’re buying a mattress. 

So look at your products and your customers and determine when is the best time to send your series to capture their attention at the right time. 

Not making it easy to convert

At the end of the day, an abandoned cart email is about getting your customers to complete their purchases. If you make that part of the process difficult, then they aren’t going to buy — simple as that. 

So when you create your emails, do it with conversion in mind. Make sure your customers know exactly what they’ve left in their cart, include photos of the products, and have a bold and clear call to action to bring them back to your storefront.

Also, view your email on mobile. Studies show that the further down a reader has to scroll on a mobile device, the less likely they will click. So if you’ve buried your call to action at the bottom of an email, you’re reducing your chances of conversion. 

Ignoring personalization

If you want to get traction on your emails, you can no longer send the same old generic messages. These may work well at first, but over time, your customers are going to get tired of that messaging and stop responding to it. 

That is why you need to add variety to your abandoned cart emails. One way to do that is to change up your messaging and include more personalization in what you’re sending to your customers.

Personalization comes in many forms, but in abandoned cart emails, you can add quite a bit of it to your content. For example, include customer ratings and reviews for the products left behind, add testimonials and other user-generated content, or highlight how they can use their loyalty points to complete the purchase. 

Smart Banners™ make a difference

You can easily counteract all of these mistakes with Smart Banners™. Smart Banners™ allow you to always get the timing of your messaging right, and with built-in personalization and a clear call to action sitting right at the top of your customer’s email, it’s effortless for them to click and convert. 

Adding Smart Banners™ to your email marketing strategy can help you boost your engagement on your abandoned cart messaging, lifting your conversion rates and increasing revenue.

Interested? We’d love to show you how Smart Banners™ work in action. Give us a call today, and we’ll walk you through the Zembula platform and set you up with a demo to try for yourself.