How To Use Reviews in Your Abandoned Cart Emails

One of the best ways to increase your sales rate is to create an abandoned cart email campaign. 

You probably know the stats. 

The vast majority of people who visit your site will leave. Of those who stay, only about 25% will go through the full check out process and complete the transaction.

The rest will put items in their shopping cart and never return…unless you ask them to. 

That’s where an abandoned cart campaign comes into play. It’s a series of emails that connect with shoppers and asks them to finish their purchase. 

If you aren’t using abandoned cart campaigns, you should start. Over the last few years, estimates are that abandoned cart emails can see a conversion rate between 15-18%.

That’s a pretty significant lift in sales, just from sending out a few emails. 

So what’s one way to approach your abandoned cart emails? 

Reviews.

Let’s look at a few ways you can do it.

Highlight ratings

Many of the best abandoned cart emails include a lot of information in them. Rather than saying, you’ve got stuff in your cart, and nothing more, they feature product information like the name of the product, price, and an image. 

Now add to that by including ratings for each product. You can list all the standard product information, along with an image. But take it a step further and then add that all the stuff they’ve left in their cart is rated 4.75 stars. That can catch a consumer’s eye and potentially make them more interested in the products. 

The email above is a great example of this. Having the star ratings next to each product really stands out, and adding customer comments to them makes an even more convincing case.

Showcase a featured product

Another approach is to let your customers know that they’ve got a featured product with very high reviews sitting in their cart right now.

You can list all of your abandoned cart data, just like you would with a normal email. But using content blocks, you can personalize each email to showcase the most highly rated or popular product at the top of the email, and include it in the subject line.

An email like that helps prominently feature a product and offers an extra level of personalization, which matters to customers today.

Use social proof

It’s been proven that consumers respond better to reviews and testimonials from people just like them compared to hearing the same information directly from a brand.

This sort of user-generated content, often in the form of social media reviews, images, and videos, that helps build trust and drive purchases. Consider mining for user-generated content and featuring it in your abandoned cart emails. You can even help generate some by promoting contests and other events that encourage users to create content.

It’s even better if you can tie specific examples of social proof through user-generated content to particular products. But even generally positive content about good brand experiences and customer service can help too.

Customer quotes or testimonials

While star ratings are great, you can also feature specific customer reviews and testimonials in your emails.

There are two approaches you can try here. One is to have a generalized testimonial about the company, product, or service. Check out this example below:

Another approach is to get specific reviews about the products left in the shopping cart, especially high-priced items or best-sellers.

Gather your reviews

If you haven’t been adding reviews or user-generated content to your abandoned cart emails, it’s never too late to start.

First, go through your site and check a few places online to find the review and star ratings you can start using in your campaigns. You can pull these into your emails pretty easily using modular email.

If your brand hasn’t been getting reviews and testimonials, you’ll want to reach out and ask your customers as soon as you can. A good way to do this is to add an email to any post-purchase campaigns you have and ask customers for feedback and reviews.

Reviews can make a huge difference in converting customers, so you’re going to want to use them every chance you get.