Let's think about your Shopify store as a journey with the final destination is  when the customer checkouts and pays. You have done a really good job when bringing a customer to the checkout page. But sadly it is not everything, you could still be experiencing a huge number of lost sales for shopping cart abandonment.

According to a survey carried out by Smart insight, there is plenty of variance between the sectors studied, and it's interesting to see why. For example, while fashion site experience lower than average abandonment rates, at 68.3%, abandonment in the finance sector is much higher, at 83.6%. Travel sites also experience high abandonment rates, at 81.7%.

There are also plentiful reasons for cart abandonment, to name a few:

Source: Baymard Institute

By understanding the reason behind cart abandonment, it will be much easier for you to reduce the abandoned cart rate and also some ideas to recover the sale that the customers are going to leave behind. In this article, we will list 6 elements that make your Shopify abandoned cart email powerful enough to pull your customers back

1. A reminder of what is abandoned
2. Be personal
3. Offer an incentive
4. Add related products
5. Right timing
6. Finally

1. A reminder of what is abandoned

There are a lot of things come up to people mind per day. 95% less important things will be swift out of mind. It may take a few hours after abandonment to be reminded of what they saw. So it is important to remind what is abandoned, what this email is about, what they have left behind.

Take a look at this example from Fifty Three. It’s a very simple message telling me what I’ve given up. Better yet, it gives me the link to easily get back to my cart, skipping the registration page so that I don’t have to provide my info all over again.

2. Be personal

With 94% of businesses saying how critical email personalization is to their success, it unsurprising I’ve included personalization in this post. You can make a successful Shopify abandoned cart email campaign buy personalizing your emails: addresses the recipient by name. This is one of the easiest personalization strategies you can implement, and it makes a huge difference. In the following example by Ugmonk, you’ll see personalization at a whole new level

3. Offer an incentive

Customers may abandon their carts because the final price is more than what they expected. When people think about how much they’re going to pay, they’re usually adding up the prices of each item they add to the cart. They don’t always think about taxes or shipping, this adding cost is really a turnoff for them.

It’s time you offer them some incentive in your abandoned cart email to get them back to complete the purchasing. Try offering an incentive in your Shopify abandoned cart emails that are exclusive to the email and not something that everyone can get. Let’s see how Kate Spade wins their customers back:

Another incentive is to offer free shipping. Shoppers tend to abandon carts if the shipping costs are too high compared to the price of the products I’m buying. Offering free shipping eliminates that reason, and people only have to pay the price of the product. Here’s how Huckberry offers free shipping

4. Add related products

One reason they leave the cart is that they simply don’t like it at the last minute. However, they might be interested in other similar items they didn’t notice themselves. Sometimes, offering a bit of inspiration or alternatives to abandoned cart items can help bring back the lost revenue. You can apply the same idea to make a powerful product page. Here is how Ralph Lauren do:

The placement of the “you may also like” items are better in this email because it doesn’t take the focus from the abandoned cart item. Think about it like a funnel. If people bypass the item that you are sending the email about, there is also chance that they may like other similar product.

5. Customer reviews & testimonial

For almost the case, even landing page or email, the testimonial is one of the essential elements that increase sales because they rely on people’s honest opinions of a product or service. Customer review and testimonial are one of the most important elements to convert your visitors into customers because human is the social creature, they relay (in most cases) on society’s honest opinions of a product or service. If visitors are in doubt when completing their purchase, a little nudge with a testimonial might do the trick.

Casper applies that simple principle in their abandoned cart email and makes it works. Even though this email is simple, the testimonial makes me curious and eager to know if the products indeed are good enough to make you call out of work.

6. Include customer support link

By asking customer service focused questions like: Was there a problem? or How can we help? you are inviting customers to start a dialogue with you about their shopping experience. The insight generated by having these discussions will be priceless for your conversion rate optimization efforts. As said, it is human that can connect the best with human, this is the reason why having a chat with the customer at the end of the purchasing state is the best way to make a sale

7. Right timing

The timing of your Shopify abandoned cart email is crucial if you want prospects to complete their purchases. Ideally, you need to send your first email within 30 minutes to 1 hour of them exiting your checkout so the prospect’s near purchase is still fresh in their mind.

A recent study by Barilliance of 200 eCommerce websites has discovered some rather interesting trends in the world of cart abandonment best practices. It shows that sending cart abandonment emails very soon after the cart is abandoned is actually more effective than sending it a day later. As a result, the first email: after 30 minutes or 1 hour may result in 20.3% converted. The second email which sent after 1 days may get the conversion rate of 17.7%. Finally, the third email should be sent after 3 days, in which you can offer an incentive, result in 18.3% conversion.

Sending too many emails can make your brand end up in a disturbance in customer's’ mind, so it is important that you segment the customer list into specific phase and send email for each. For example, the customer who buys at the first email will not receive the second and third one. Timing also matters the result that may help you increase your Shopify abandoned cart email conversion rate so it is recommended that you test your timing again and again to find out the best timing for your product.

Finally

Setup Shopify abandoned cart email is pretty easy, but it can be a brilliant solution for your “a lot of add to cart but no sale” problem. However, it requires testing again and again to find the best cart abandonment email strategy for your product. You can learn a lot from the best practices above and recover your sale right away.

In the upcoming BFCM 2017, level up Abandoned Cart email campaign is a must-have idea for you to win BFCM - the biggest sales event of the year.