Do Abandoned Cart Emails Work? Our Results & Explanation.

It’s a given the marketing goal of every e-commerce business is to secure sales - no matter what.

But with the human attention span currently sitting at 8 seconds, your e-commerce site is bound to experience someone almost ready to check out... but then doesn't!

So, can we potentially get that person who was so close to checking out, finish their transaction?

With abandoned cart email automations.

These automations work so well, we were able to win back $18K in revenue within the last year that would’ve otherwise been money left on the table!

Our flow consisted of two emails that were triggered 4 hours and 20 hours after the customer placed items within their cart. Catching the viewer early in their journey is advised as it keeps your business top of mind. 

While the tone of each email was similar, the approach was slightly different. By utilizing both gentle reminders and an incentivized nudge, here’s how our emails performed: 

Email #1:

• Subject line: It Looks Like You Left Something Behind…
• Open Rate: 60%
• Click-through rate: 23%

Email #2: 

• Subject line: Enjoy 5% Before Your Cart Expires  
• Open Rate: 54%
• Click-through rate: 22%  

One of the biggest benefits of using abandoned cart emails is that they help you recover lost revenue.

As you can see, over half the recipients we reached out to decided to read our reminder and nearly a quarter of them decided to pick up where they left off.

As a Klaviyo user, we are able to track KPIs such as a Place Product Rate. With this abandoned cart flow, we generated a 17.9% Placed Order Rate.

If this isn’t encouragement enough to create abandoned cart email flows for your business, check out our Shopping Cart Abandonment Metrics & KPIs to Track [2023] blog, when we spare no detail of its importance, what to track, and how to improve underperforming metrics. 

Now, here’s a quick look at the approach we took to creating our flow. 

Gentle Reminder

We’ve all heard the saying, ‘less is more.’ This holds true for your abandoned cart email. Oftentimes, a gentle reminder is all you need to have the potential buyer return to complete their transaction. This method was applied to the first email in our abandoned cart flow. 
Keep it concise, but utilize copy that emphasizes the value of your products. Here’s an example of an abandoned cart email that we created for our client, Speed Beez:

Incentivized Nudge 

Who doesn’t want to save money? Extending a discount is a great way to encourage potential buyers to return to their carts and complete their transactions.

Try not to use this method too often, as people might become weary of paying full price for items if they know they can wait it out for a discount whenever they abandon their carts. 

Conclusion 

Don’t fret. All hope isn’t lost on an abandoned cart. Having an abandoned cart email flow is a necessity for any e-commerce business, as it is needed to recover lost revenue.

Reaching out to those cart abandees is definitely worth the time and effort. 

Remember to keep it simple, relevant, and most importantly, act quickly. The sooner you get your customer to the finish line, the more effective your strategy will be.