A Complete Guide to Cart Recovery Program and How to Prevent Gamification

​It’s difficult to see them go, isn’t it? Well, I’m speaking about what you as an online business feel when you see a prospective customer load a cart with awesome stuff and then just randomly abandon it without completing the purchase on your website. Yes, it is painful but it isn’t the end of the world. And like they say ‘always look at the positive side’, this can be seen as an opportunity to further push the prospects, who are already convinced enough to add products to the cart, to go ahead and make the purchase. ​

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Cart abandonment exists. The numbers put forth by a Statista study thus do not come as a surprise. 74.58% of online retail orders were abandoned in 2018. Yes, that’s huge. But you, taking this in your stride, need to take a proactive stance. 

To begin with, let us rush through a few of the reasons why people abandon an online shopping cart in the first place. 

• Too high, unexpected shipping costs
• Complicated checkout procedure
• Just conducting research
• Can’t use the preferred payment method
• Found product at a lower price, elsewhere
• Got distracted or forgot
• Website crashed
• Return policy unsatisfactory

If you understand that prospects were really close to making a purchase before something distracted them, you will also understand that many of these purchases can be recovered. How? Well, through a series of cart abandonment emails. Well-timed cart abandonment emails can persuade prospects to come back and complete the purchase.

The first email should be sent within 30 minutes of cart abandonment. This email should be more of a support email just to find out why they abandoned and help them if it was because of an error on your part. The second email should be sent if the first isn’t successful in converting or generating a response in 24 hours. The third email is your last attempt at converting the prospect and should be sent around 3 days post-abandonment.

But what should an ideal cart abandonment email look like? Here are some Best Practices to follow:

Win them over with a great Subject Line 
Writing a subject line in a friendly, informal tone can be a good way to start off. However, what you need to make sure is that the subject line is personalized, clear and crisp, and helps in achieving your motto of drawing your recipients back to their cart. Your brand name along with a friendly reminder is also a great combo for a cart abandonment email subject line. A study by Salecycle revealed that when it comes to cart abandonment emails, a personalized subject line with the recipient’s name gives a whopping open rate of 46% whereas the name of the product in the subject line leads to a 44% open rate. That’s huge, isn’t it?
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This email from Massdrop is a great example of personalization. The subject line that says ‘Smiles Davis, still interested in the Massdrop x MiTo SA Pulse Custom Keycap Set?’ not only uses first name personalization but also mentions the product left in the cart. ➡️

Source: Really Good Emails

Let the abandoned products take center-stage
Your prospects have added certain products to the cart because they have genuinely liked them. It is thus essential to prominently highlight these products in which they are already interested. Add high resolution and large images of these products in the email body. Sometimes, it so happens that prospects add quite a few products in the cart before abandoning it. While it may not be a good idea to feature all of these products in your cart abandonment email, you can focus your email on one particular product in the cart that is maybe a bestseller or highly-rated product on your website. This will enhance the chances of conversion. 

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This email from Winc uses a very friendly tone. Covering the maximum portion of the email body are images of the products the prospect left in the cart.

Also, you can create urgency to buy the particular product in the cart, just like Google Store does in this email: ➡️

Make the CTA/s prominent 
Call to Action or CTA is an essential element of any marketing email. Make sure your CTA/s in the cart abandonment emails are straightforward and take the prospect directly to the cart to complete the purchase. Make the button-bright and prominent. You can always do an A/B test to figure out what works for you best. 

In the email by Winc, the CTAs not only stand out due to the bright pink color but also due to the casual tone. While one says ‘LET’S DO THIS’ the other goes ‘I’M READY FOR WINE’. Now, isn’t that cool? 

Source: Really Good Emails

Source: Really Good Emails

Add recommendations to lure them
Recommending other products in a cart abandonment email is indeed a winner, as it can increase the click-through rates and get the prospect back into the buying mode. However, this needs to be done diligently. 

Consider recommending products in the same product category that a customer has abandoned. While these can be similar products, you can also feature add-ons. Another way to go about this is to showcase products frequently purchased together.
The email from Massdrop (featured in point 1) very cleverly recommends another keyboard that the abandoner may like. Also, they have recommended a different product from the same category, giving the prospect an option to check out more products through the ‘See More’ link.   

Remind them about the USPs of your brand while showcasing trust 
The prospect has subscribed to your emails, added products to the cart and maybe even bought from you earlier. Remind them about the awesomeness of your brand or the product that made them add it to the cart.  

This email from Adidas is a superb example in this case. Look how they have tried to rebuild love for a certain product by featuring the factors that make it unique. They also give an option to customize the product in case the color options provided were not what the prospects were looking for. What can’t be missed is the friendly tone with which the email copy begins.​ ➡️

Social proof can help you convince and convert the new visitors or those who aren’t sure about buying from you as yet. You can always use product reviews and ratings to push them to buy the product they are eyeing. A study by Statista states that 41% of respondents surveyed stated that they read reviews for new products most of the times before buying. Also, 38% consider online reviews as an essential factor influencing their decision to buy. By telling them that they have left highly-rated products in their shopping cart, you can give that extra push they need in order to make a decision. 

Source: Really Good Emails

Offer a discount or a coupon
A strategy that has been prevalent for some time now to recover abandoned carts is that of offering a discount coupon to lure the prospect. A great option that helps people overcome the dilemma of making the first purchase, coupons have worked for innumerable businesses. 

⬇️ In the below email from Bonobos, they are offering a 20% discount coupon to the email recipient who is a first-time buyer.

Source: Really Good Emails

To discount or not to discount? 
Let’s try to find an answer to this one.
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Since the cart abandonment email is your last chance to convert a prospect, it is obvious that you would want to do all you can to lure them back, and a discount or coupon can be a great idea in this regard. Coupons and discounts have given great results as far as conversion is concerned more so when they are specifically targeted towards first-time buyers. However, there is a downside to this effective tactic when overdone. Let’s see how regular discounting can work against you: 

• It tends to dig into your profit margins
• It can lead to the tactic losing its effectiveness
• It may devalue your product in the long run
• It may train your customers to expect deals on abandonment (gamification)
• It may attract the price-conscious customer base

Like mentioned above, there is a possibility that your cart abandoners will get trained to practice gamification to obtain a discount if they find out you do so on abandoning carts. So, while offering a discount/ coupon is an upbeat option, doing so in the second or third email seems to make more sense. The first email should always be about reminding them of the products left in the cart. You never know the reason for cart abandonment, which could be anything from a poor internet connection to a distraction. There’s no need to be ready to eat into your profits at this stage. 

If there is no response to this email, you can send a second email and then a third in which you can include a discount/coupon to give a chance to the price-conscious customers to convert. 
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Wrap-up
The cart abandonment campaign is an essential aspect of your email marketing strategy not only because it is easier to convince an already half-convinced prospect but also because it has proven to convert prospects sitting on the edge. While discounts can work for you in this regard, beware of gamification. A discount or a coupon should be presented mindfully in the second, or even better, the third of your cart abandonment emails, not in the first.
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Author Bio:

Chintan is Head of Operations at InboxArmy LLC. He has been into email marketing domain from last 7 years. Chintan is connected to InboxArmy, a professional email marketing agency that specializes in providing advanced email marketing services from email production to deployment. Chintan's success track record covers building email programs at competitive email marketing pricing and using data-driven strategies to turn around underperforming accounts.

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