It’s more than just an abandoned cart email once you bring predictive analytics into the mix — it’s the entire customer experience

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If you’ve ever worked in eCommerce, you’re familiar with the idea of abandoned carts. A customer was browsing your website and placed one, or sometimes many, items into their cart — but then they leave.

It’s a problem that all eCommerce companies have. In fact, 67% is the average online cart abandonment rate, which means more than half the people doing online shopping are abandoning their carts.

This is a huge problem for companies trying to make it in the eCommerce space.

Luckily there is a simple, yet effective solution to help bring back a portion of your customers who are abandoning their carts. It’s something your already doing, but with the right strategy in place, it can help you recover a large number of missed sales.

We’re talking about abandoned cart emails. And now, with the help of predictive marketing tools, you can take your abandoned cart strategy to the next level.

Interested in learning more? Here’s a quick glance at what we’ll cover in this article:

The opportunities that abandoned cart emails and predictive analytics offer companies
Best practices for abandoned cart email timing and content and how predictive marketing can help improve this experience
How you can know what customers will be incentivized by discounts and coupons and who will purchase at full price

Abandoned Cart Emails and Predictive Analytics

The abandoned cart email. It’s something we’ve all received as an online shopper and it’s a digital marketer’s secret weapon to boosting conversion and increasing sales numbers. You have an opportunity to win back those customers who didn’t quite make it to the finish line.

With the right strategy in place, it is very possible to bring some of those customers back and see them finalize their purchase. There is an estimated $4 trillion lost in abandoned shopping carts, but $260 billion of that is recoverable.

That means that there is a big opportunity to turn those site visitors who weren’t ready to complete their orders into purchasing customers. But what if we told you that with the help of new technology such as predictive analytics, your abandoned cart strategy can be even more successful?

When you breakdown the stats, the majority of your site visitors don’t actually convert. But with the help of an abandoned cart strategy, you have the ability to reach those customers who may have been interested in a product but did not complete the sale. Image courtesy of Listrak.

By putting predictive marketing tactics such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to work, you can see an even more substantial increase in sales. Let’s take a look at how you can turn abandoned carts into a new opportunity with predictive marketing.

Improve Your Abandoned Cart Email Strategy

Abandoned cart emails are not necessarily a new concept. In fact, you’re probably already using these types of emails to bring customers back to your site to revisit the products they showed interest in.

In this section, we’ll take a look at some best practices around traditional abandoned cart marketing and provide insight into how predictive analytics can help you land more sales. Predictive marketing is all about knowing your customers and building a more personal customer experience — let’s dive in.

Re-Engaging Customers and Improving the Shopping Experience

Knowing when and how to re-engage with your site visitors is one of the most important steps in the abandoned cart process. If you wait too long to send a message, they may have already moved on and make a purchase elsewhere. On the other hand, if you re-engage quickly but don’t clearly communicate the message, you can still lose the customer.

So what are the best practices around when and how to re-engage your customers after they’ve abandoned their cart? Here are a few tips to help you improve your re-engagement emails.

Send multiple abandoned cart emails. Don’t just stop after one friendly reminder, it’s been shown that three abandoned cart emails provide the best results. This practice will also allow you to provide more touchpoints with your customers. Three abandoned cart emails also result in 69% more conversions.
Send your first email within one hour. The first email should be sent to your customer within an hour of the time they abandoned their cart. It’s realistic that in this timeframe they may still be browsing for the item they abandoned. It gives you a chance to remind them of your product and bring them back to your site.
Wait to send the second and third emails. A second email should be sent out within 24-48 hours of the initial abandoned cart. While the third should land in their inbox a few days to a week later. This will serve as another reminder about the products they were interested in without being too pushy.
Remind them of the product. Always include an image of the product to remind the shopper of what product they left behind. An image can help them quickly identify what the email is about and recall the products they were browsing.
Write enticing email copy. Make sure the content of the email, especially the subject at enticing and attention-grabbing. A boring email won’t get opened let alone help bring a customer back to their shopping cart.

Reminding customers about the product they placed in their cart will refresh their memory of the products they liked on your site. Many people will add items to their cart to compare items from different stores — send them a reminder of your product and show them why it’s the best option. Image courtesy of Target Marketing.

Targeting customers at the right time with the right content is a great way to bring them back to your site. This is where predictive analytics comes into the picture. The more you can learn about your customers, the more likely you are to provide them with the content they want to receive.

That means you not only have an opportunity to bring a customer back to your site to complete a purchase, but you can also use this chance to provide them with predictive product recommendations based on their previous shopping and browsing history.

You now have the ability to upsell and cross-sell products within an abandoned cart email. The more products they add to their cart, the higher your return on investment will be. On top of that, you can begin to learn when customers are more likely to open and read emails. Meaning you can send them emails when they are most active — increasing the chances your messages are read.

Providing Promotions and Discounts

Next up is providing an incentive to your customers. While you may not include a product discount or free shipping in the first abandoned cart email you send you, it’s a great way to try and bring people back in the second or third email.

Discounts are a powerful tool. When asked how likely they are to complete a purchase if they received a discount code, the majority of people said very likely. Showing that discounts and promotions help drive abandoned cart strategies. Image courtesy of Neil Patel.

The fact of the matter is, that people love to get a good deal. In some cases, providing free shipping might be enough to encourage a shopper to come back and seal the deal. Others may not be swayed until they see a deeper discount like 15 or 20% off their order.

But does every customer need a discount to make a purchase? You could be giving up a percentage of a sale you might not need to be, just to bring one customer back. Well, predictive analytics can help you determine what customers are more likely to complete a purchase if they have a discount code, and who may be more willing to pay full price for an item they want.