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Pauliny Zito
Planner, copywriter, and copydesk

A customer enters a store, walks through the aisles looking at the products, chooses one or two items, and his cell phone rings. He answers the call and, after a few minutes, hangs up and hurries out of the store.

The sales assistant observes the situation but does nothing. He can’t leave the store and go after the customer to ask if he’d like him to keep the products to pay for and pick them up later.

Lost sale.

This is just one of the many situations in which a purchase in a physical store is abandoned. On the internet, in online stores, so-called cart abandonment also happens, and that’s the subject of this article.

Pauliny Zito
Planner, copywriter e copydesk

A customer enters a store, walks through the aisles looking at the products, chooses one or two items, and his cell phone rings. He answers the call and, after a few minutes, hangs up and hurries out of the store.

The sales assistant observes the situation but does nothing. He can’t leave the store and go after the customer to ask if he’d like him to keep the products to pay for and pick them up later.

Lost sale.

This is just one of the many situations in which a purchase in a physical store is abandoned. On the internet, in online stores, so-called cart abandonment also happens, and that’s the subject of this article.

Regardless of the cause of cart abandonment, it’s important to try to recover that sale through an email strategy. But before we talk about exactly that, let’s take a look at the e-commerce landscape in the world and in Portugal.

E-commerce in the world

Data Reportal’s Global Digital Report 2023 reveals that 4.11 billion people shop online, reaching an estimated total spend of 3.59 trillion dollars in the year.

The average annual spend per person on online consumer goods is 873 dollars.

E-commerce in Portugal

Of the more than 8 million users in Portugal (85% of the country’s population), more than 5 million shop online, with an estimated total annual spend of 5.04 billion dollars.

The average annual spend per person on online consumer goods is 930 dollars (around 848€).

The decisive factors influencing online purchases are:

  • Free delivery (69.2%)
  • Coupons and discounts (51.7%)
  • Easy return policy (34.7%)
  • Easy and quick checkout (32.2%)
  • Online reviews from other customers (31.8%)
  • Next-day delivery (31.3%)

44.8% of users between the ages of 16 and 64 shopped online every week, and 30.8% made price comparisons on existing platforms.

The 7th edition of the CTT e-Commerce Report 2022, a document that brings the results of the market study on e-commerce in Portugal promoted by CTT, which took place between August and September 2022, reveals that:

The vast majority of users who buy online are aged between 18 and 44, but the majority of new adherents are in the higher age groups.

Women are the biggest buyers (52% of all online purchases).

The average value of the last purchase was €55.3 in 2022.

The preference for the online channel is due to the convenience of the purchase, namely the ease of buying (68.2%) and the possibility of buying at any time (61.4%), followed by promotions (60%) and lower prices on online platforms (55.8%).

The most popular categories were Clothing and Footwear (73% of consumers), followed by Electronic and Computer Equipment, Books and Films and Hygiene and Cosmetics.

The payment method most used by the Portuguese is MB reference (43.6%), followed by PayPal (43.4%) and MB WAY (33.8%).

The main reasons for repurchasing are “lower prices” (62%) and “promotions” (57%), followed by “security” (49.2%).

Cart abandonment statistics

According to Checkout.com, the main reason for abandoning a purchase is a lack of confidence in the payment as well as a lack of options for making it.

The Baymard Institute gathered 49 statistics on the rate of shopping cart abandonment in e-commerce and calculated that the average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%.

Source: Freepik

As for the main reasons why customers abandon their shopping carts, according to the 7th edition of the CTT e-Commerce Report 2022, the “final price being more expensive than expected” continues to be the main reason for abandonment at the checkout (67.8%).

Source: CTT e-Commerce Report 2022

 

The biggest difficulties with online shopping are: “delivery costs” (48%), “uncertainty about the returns policy” (36.6%) and “needing to register on the site to make the purchase” (36.6%).

Source: CTT e-Commerce Report 2022

 

B2C email marketing statistics

Almost 22% of all email campaigns are opened within the first hour of being sent. (GetResponse, 2020).

59% of respondents say that marketing emails have influenced their purchases (Salecycle, 2022).

Email marketing demographics

99% of email users check their inbox every day – some of them 20 times a day. Of those, 58% check their emails first thing in the morning (OptinMonster, 2020).

84.3% say they check their emails at least once a day (Pathwire, 2021).

Consumers spend an average of 10 seconds reading brand emails (Statista, 2021).

Effective email marketing strategies to convert abandoned carts into sales

The main purpose of remarketing is to convince the potential customer that it is worth completing the purchase with you.

One of the remarketing actions is to send emails to remind the customer of the products that have been left in the shopping cart.

The thing is, a lot of emails are received every day, and the challenge here is to stand out by getting the person to open and read your email.

Abandoned cart emails have an average conversion rate of 18.64% (Barilliance).

Number of e-mails

Sending a single cart abandonment email is not enough. If you want to maximize conversions, you need to send at least three. 

Data collected by Chadwick Martin Bailey – CMB indicates that 64% of people open your emails based on the subject line, which we’ll see below.

The first email should be sent one hour after cart abandonment; the second, 24 hours after cart abandonment; and the third, 72 hours after cart abandonment.

Email subject lines

The subject line is the most important factor in each of these emails. 

Effective subject lines increase the open rate of shopping cart abandonment emails.

Write a short*, direct, and optimistic subject line, with clear and concise language.

Action verbs at the beginning of the email subject tend to be more attractive to click on.

Create an email subject that arouses interest or curiosity so that the customer opens your email.

In the second email, use the urgency trigger, informing them that the cart will expire soon.

In the third email, with the cart about to expire, offer the customer a free shipping benefit to encourage the purchase, or a discount, with a clear call to action.

Using personalization tokens such as the recipient’s name or location in the subject line increases the click-through rate (HubSpot Research).

Another tactic is to focus on a product that is in the cart and has limited stock (scarcity trigger).

Everyone likes to feel special and to have a sense of belonging, so use this tactic to your advantage when writing email subject lines.

Use data and numbers to get your email noticed.

And don’t forget to always use a friendly tone. Above all, be human. And, if your brand allows it, use humor.

Remember the KISS approach – Keep It Simple, Stupid.

*Although shorter email subject lines are generally better, according to Gartner, “longer and more detailed subject lines, with more than 70 characters, perform just as competitively as those with 11 to 20 characters”.

However, it’s best not to exceed 50 characters, as 41% of email opens come from mobile devices, according to research from HubSpot’s blog in 2022.

Source: HubSpot Blog – Estatísticas de marketing móvel

 

Extra tip

Define an attractive display text.

Even though it is not technically part of the email subject, the preview text must be defined in advance and appear right next to the subject line, as it will be displayed next to the subject line for recipients using iPhone Mail, Gmail, and Outlook.

If this text is not defined, the email-sending platform will automatically display the beginning of the email body text next to the subject line, which may not be ideal and may even be confusing for the customer.

What NOT to do

Don’t use CAPITAL LETTERS or lots of exclamation marks!!!! As well as being distracting, your email will also look like spam.

Don’t write a question and an exclamation mark in the same subject line, as your email may automatically go to the spam folder.

Examples of email subject lines for abandoned shopping carts

Your purchase is reserved! [OPEN] to view…

Complete your purchase! Your cart is about to expire…

(Customer name), we’ve noticed that you haven’t completed your purchase

Don’t miss out! Empty your cart and get 10% off

15% off your shopping cart!

(Customer name), your (product name) is waiting for you! 

Hurry up! The items in your cart are running out fast!

We’re waiting for you! You forgot to complete your purchase

Reminder: Purchase your products before the shopping cart expires 

Congratulations! You’ve made some great choices, now all that’s left is to complete your purchase 😉

(Customer name), we’ll save your cart

We’ve saved your cart! Only one step left to complete your purchase

(Customer name), continue your purchase with us!

Price reduction notice! Complete your purchase with a discount within 24 hours

More than (#) customers have already bought and approved this (product name) this week alone

Last few hours to complete your purchase!

(Customer name), we have an exclusive offer for you in your shopping cart

Call to Action (CTA)

For each email, use only one call to action, with clear language and contrasting design elements. Guide the customer to take the action, i.e. complete the purchase, and set expectations about what will happen when they do.

A/B tests

Run A/B tests on your email subject lines and adjust the text according to the results.

Sending e-mails via the main e-commerce platforms

E-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce automatically track users’ actions on the website by registering potential customers who add products to the cart and leave the website without completing the purchase.

Shopify

Shopify provides basic abandoned cart email templates, which can be edited in the Settings > Notifications section. You can also edit the design using the CSS style sheet and add a personalized message.

Source: O Guia de Ação para E-mails de Carrinho de Compras Abandonado – Kinsta Blog

To control the template and content of your emails, you need to install an application such as Abandoned Cart Recovery.

Source: O Guia de Ação para E-mails de Carrinho de Compras Abandonado – Kinsta Blog

Other cart abandonment email tools for Shopify:

WooCommerce

WooCommerce doesn’t have the functionality for cart abandonment emails, but you could use the official WooCommerce Follow-Ups extension (paid), or the free Abandoned Cart Lite plugin for WooCommerce, which adds a new section to your WeCommerce control panel called Abandoned Carts, where you can edit your email content, change the email sending settings, check on recovered carts, among other actions.

Source: O Guia de Ação para E-mails de Carrinho de Compras Abandonado – Kinsta Blog

 

Option: use the standard WordPress WYSIWYG editor to create your emails in the Abandoned Carts > Email Templates section (by clicking on the Add New Template link).

Other cart abandonment email tools for WooCommerce:

BigCommerce

BigCommerce gives you total control over your cart abandonment emails, from the design, product images, and texts, to the number of emails to be sent and when they should be sent.

Source: O Guia de Ação para E-mails de Carrinho de Compras Abandonado – Kinsta Blog

 

You can edit all the settings in the Abandoned Cart Notifications section of the dashboard.

Source: O Guia de Ação para E-mails de Carrinho de Compras Abandonado – Kinsta Blog

 

Other cart abandonment email tools for BigCommerce:

Third-party email marketing software

To create, optimize and personalize your email campaigns even more, without having technical experience or even graphic design skills, there are several options for specialized e-commerce tools that not only send cart abandonment emails, but also reminders and recommendations based on your browsing and purchase history, for example:

7 Hacks to optimize your online store

  1. Mobile friendly and responsive website.
  2. The quickest and simplest possible purchasing process.
  3. Payment security.
  4. Various payment method options.
  5. Checkout options for customers who don’t have a registered account or the
  6. option to complete registration automatically, via a social login, for example.
  7. Transparency on all additional costs.
  8. Complete and solid refund and return policy.

Anticipate! Taking into account the various reasons that lead customers to abandon their shopping cart, optimize your online store for a better shopping experience for your customers and prevent abandonment from occurring. 

Write effective subject lines, send emails at the right time, and create a sequence of emails that convert.