With the emergence of e-commerce, many consumers add products to their shopping cart without finalizing their purchase. This phenomenon is known as "abandoned shopping baskets".
For online stores, it's crucial to find ways to follow-up with these potential customers and encourage them to return to the site to complete the purchase. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to use follow-up e-mails. In this article, we'll explore how you can use e-mail to relaunch abandoned shopping baskets. All thanks to targeted, relevant follow-up e-mails.
5 reasons for your abandoned shopping baskets
Abandoned shopping baskets in e-commerce can be the result of a variety of reasons. To better understand these reasons and implement effective e-mail follow-up strategies, let's take a closer look at some of the most common causes of abandoned shopping baskets.
1. High delivery costs
High delivery costs can be a major deterrent for many customers. When your customer adds items to their shopping cart, they may be surprised by the delivery costs that are added to the total. In many cases, these costs can represent a significant proportion of the price of the products themselves. Your customer may then abandon his basket because he feels the total cost is too high.
2. Complex payment process
A complex checkout process can also be a major obstacle for your customers. If the checkout process takes too long, requires too much personal information or features technical errors, your customers may become frustrated and decide to abandon their shopping baskets.
3. Trust issues
Trust is a crucial element in e-commerce. Your customers may abandon their shopping carts if they don't feel confident about making a purchase on a specific site. This may be due to payment security problems, negative reviews on the site or a bad reputation for the company.
4. Price comparison
The Internet offers consumers the opportunity to compare prices easily between different sites. Your customers may add items to their basket on one site, then abandon them to look for a better offer elsewhere. In this case, the main reason for abandoning the basket is often linked to a better price offer on another site.
5. Indecision or prolonged reflection
Sometimes your customers add items to their shopping baskets without any real intention of making an immediate purchase. They may hesitate, want to think things over or wait for a promotional period. In many cases, however, they end up abandoning their basket.
The importance of e-mail follow-up
Follow-up e-mails offer a unique opportunity to communicate directly with customers who have shown an interest in your products, but who have not made a purchase. Follow-up e-mails allow you to :
- Remind customers: Reminder e-mails serve as a friendly reminder to your customers about the items they've left in their shopping cart. They may have been distracted, interrupted or simply forgotten to finalize their purchase. By sending a reminder e-mail, you subtly remind them of the existence of their shopping cart and give them the opportunity to return to your site to complete their purchase.
- Increase conversion rates: e-mail reminders have proven their effectiveness in increasing conversion rates. By reminding your customers who have abandoned their shopping cart, you give them a second chance to make up their mind and go ahead with the purchase. Well-designed, personalized and persuasive follow-up e-mails can positively influence your customer's decision and encourage them to finalize their purchase.
- Personalize the customer experience: Follow-up e-mails allow you to personalize the customer experience by taking into account the specific products left in the shopping cart. By including relevant details in the e-mail, such as product name, image and price, you show the customer that you care about their interest and needs. This personalization strengthens your customer's commitment and may encourage them to return to your e-commerce site.
- Creating a relationship of trust: By sending relevant, well-designed follow-up e-mails, you show your interest in their satisfaction and your willingness to support them in their purchasing process. This attention to your customers reinforces their trust in your brand, and may encourage them to return for further purchases in the future.
- Increase your sales: Abandoned shopping baskets are literally lost sales for your online store. E-mail reminders help reduce these losses by encouraging your customers to return and complete their purchase. Every sale recovered thanks to e-mail reminders represents a gain for your e-commerce and contributes to maximizing your sales.
Effective strategies for relaunching abandoned shopping baskets by e-mail
To maximize the effectiveness of e-mail relaunches, it's essential to follow certain key strategies. Here are a few tips for successfully relaunching your abandoned shopping baskets by e-mail:
Segment your customers
Rather than sending the same reminder e-mail to all your customers, segment your list according to your customers' behaviors and preferences. Based on this segmentation and the segments you've created, adapt your emailing and abandoned-cart follow-up strategy.
For example, you could send different e-mails to a segment of customers who have recently abandoned their shopping cart, versus those who "forgot" about it weeks ago.
Personalize your e-mails
Personalization is essential to make your follow-up e-mails more engaging. Use the customer's name in your e-mail and include specific details about the products left in their basket. You can also use the customer's purchase history to recommend relevant products.
As I said earlier, personalizing your customer's experience shows that you want to take care of them.
Use persuasive language
Use persuasive language and an e-commerce tone in your emails to encourage your customers to return and complete their purchases. Highlight product benefits, use clear calls to action and create a sense of urgency with time-limited offers.
Offering incentives
To keep customers coming back, you can offer incentives such as discounts, promotional codes or free delivery. These additional benefits can play a decisive role for your customer.
Make your buying process easy
Make sure the buying process is smooth and simple. Eliminate obstacles such as complex registration forms or multiple payment steps. The easier it is for customers to finalize their purchase, the more likely they are to return. Generally speaking, the fewer obstacles there are in the checkout process, the more your ecommerce visitors will buy.
Test and optimize your reminder e-mails
Run regular tests to optimize your follow-up emails. Test different titles, content and layouts to determine what works best for your audience. You can even A/B test two different mails to the same segment to see which one converts more. Don't forget to analyze the performance of your campaigns over time.
KPI for follow-up emails
Once you've sent your follow-up e-mails, it's crucial to measure and analyze your results. To monitor the performance of your follow-up e-mails, here are the KPIs to track:
- Open rate A key indicator of recipient engagement, it shows how many people have opened your e-mails in relation to the total number of e-mails sent.
- Click-through rate This indicator measures the number of recipients who clicked on the links included in your follow-up e-mails. This gives you an idea of how engaged and interested your customers are in your content.
- Conversion rate This is the percentage of recipients who complete a purchase after receiving a follow-up e-mail. This is the most important indicator to track for your relaunch campaign, as it measures the real impact of your relaunches on your sales.
You have several analysis tools at your disposal to track these performance indicators, including the tools you can use to send e-mails, such as Hubspot or Kiliba.
Kiliba sends reminder mails for you
Kiliba is an email automation tool specially designed for e-tailers. The aim of this SaaS is to make it easier for e-tailers to carry out their email marketing campaigns, by proposing predefined scenarios with HTML templates customized as much by your brand image as by the behavior of each of your customers. Then, thanks to AI and advanced analysis of the data collected on your customers, Kiliba automates the sending of emails.
The Kiliba scenario: relaunching abandoned baskets
Unlike other tools, where you have to configure the scenario for sending reminder emails, Kiliba offers you a predefined scenario for reminding abandoned shopping carts.
You don't have to do a thing, other than connect your CMS (PrestaShop, Shopify and Adobe Commerce) and activate the abandoned basket reminder scenario. Kiliba takes care of abandoned basket detection, customer segmentation, e-mail content, personalization and even marketing pressure: i.e. the time at which the e-mail is sent, as well as the number of times the customer needs to be recontacted. All this is based on the customer's behavior both on the site and in response to the e-mails they receive.
This tool is proving highly effective, generating an average of €16 per email. Kiliba also offers other scenarios, such as the no-purchase visit, which is the most profitable. You can request a demo to find out more about Kiliba.
Conclusion
E-mailing abandoned shopping baskets is a powerful strategy for boosting your e-commerce sales. By segmenting your customers, personalizing your e-mails and offering attractive incentives, you can encourage them to return to your site and complete their purchases. Don't forget to constantly optimize your follow-up e-mails according to the results obtained.
By using these strategies (or Kiliba for ease of use), you can significantly improve your conversion rates and thus increase your revenues!
You are on the verge of making a killing
