One of the most pressing issues facing ecommerce vendors is abandoned shopping carts. One study found over 74 percent of all items placed in a shopping cart never sold. You’re leaving a lot of cash on the table if you don’t try to get people to come back and purchase those items.
Thus, it’s good to know when is the best time to send an abandoned cart email.
Why Carts Are Abandoned
However, it’s also a good idea to try to figure out why shoppers didn’t buy before you contact them. In most cases, it comes back to unexpected additional costs, such as shipping fees and sales tax.
Shoppers are also put off when a site wants them to create an account to make a purchase. A lengthy checkout process will send customers running and screaming away from your site as well.
Other turnoffs include the inability to see the total price before checkout and credit card information security concerns. Slow delivery options, deficient returns policies, site errors and the lack of a variety of payment methods will stymie sales as well.
Whether you sell electronics on a platform like Shopify, makeup, books, sporting goods or toys, you’ll do well to eliminate those problems from your site.
Your First Message
With all of that said, the best time to send a personalized message to cart abandoners in which they are addressed by name is 60 minutes after the abandonment. To facilitate this, you need to ask for an email address when they create a shopping cart on your site. Otherwise, you won’t be able to follow up.
This timing works because you need to catch them before they find what they want on another site and give them a reason to feel better about yours. However, you must also give them time to come back on their own, just in case they were distracted for a moment. Waiting an hour has proven to be the sweet spot within which you can accomplish both of those.
This first message should come across as if you’re simply trying to help them. You don’t want to hit them over the head with it and drag them back to your cave; you want to entice them to return of their own accord. Play it as if you’re just checking in to see if they’re OK. Ask if there’s anything you can do to help them learn more or facilitate the purchase?
Your Second Message
If that first one doesn’t trigger a conversion, send another one approximately 24 hours later to move you back to the front of their minds. This one should be friendly too, but it should also introduce a fear of missing out. You want to introduce a sense of urgency to move them toward making the purchase.
Say something along the lines of their hot deal is about to expire, the cart will be emptied, or supplies are running out. Whatever you say, just make sure it’s the truth because you don’t want your veracity to be called into question. This could ruin your reputation.
Your Third Message
If you still aren’t getting any traction, your last ditch move should be to offer them a discount or some other incentive to return and make the purchase. Let message number two marinate for about a week before you send message three. The last thing you want to do is get shoppers trained to hold out until you offer them a better deal.
If that doesn’t bring them back, it’s likely nothing will. Anything over three messages just makes you look desperate and weak. Besides, what else can you do once you’ve offered them a discount—give it to them for free?