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Last month I wrote about abandoned shopping carts and their impact on an online business. An abandoned shopping cart happens when a customer adds items to it and leaves the website before completing the transaction. I discussed the various reasons people abandon their carts and what you can do to combat this phenomenon.

One of the best ways to convert an abandoned cart into a sale is to send a reminder email to customer. If you are using the TOTECS eMarketing feature to send out your marketing newsletters you can send an email to all the logged in customers who have for some reason abandoned their carts.

Even though the focus here will be Abandoned Cart emails, most of these tips can be applied to improve all email communication.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

1. Personalise
Always address your customer by their first name - “John, you still have items in your cart!". It’s a noisy world out there and our inboxes are overflowing with emails competing with each other for our attention. There is nothing worse than getting an email addressed to “Valued customer.” How valued can I be if your eMarketing can’t even get my first name right? Using names also creates relatedness and therefore increases the chances that the email will be opened.

2. Add an offer
To help complete the sale, you can include a discounted offer within your email - whether it’s a % off the cart total, a free item or free shipping. On one hand, it’s likely you will get the sale. On the other, you might condition your customers to not complete sales in hopes of getting a discount on items they would have purchased anyways.

3. Include dynamic content
Including the abandoned items in the cart within the email will remind the recipients what they were shopping for and why. Each product should link back to the item on the website and another link should take you straight back to the cart as a call to action.

4. Timing!
Each business is different but typically in the realm of abandoned cart emails the first should be sent within 24 hours. This is something you can test with your customers and see what works best. The sooner you get in the better as it hinders the chances of the customer taking their business elsewhere.

5. Sense of urgency
There are several ways you can create a sense of urgency to help customers take action. Whether it’s a potential low or out of stock notification, urgency due to timing based on seasons (“Hurry before the silly Christmas season gets here) or specific events (Mother’s Day), or an offer deadline such as “Your free shipping expires tomorrow."

As always, feel free to shoot us an email or gives us a buzz on 1300 123 500 if you have any questions about this weeks column.

Til next week,
Kasia