While the adoption of shopping cart abandonment emails is growing slowly, the trend toward cart abandonment email series is growing quickly. Among those retailers using cart abandonment emails in December 2014, 50% sent a series of emails, up from just 19% the previous year, according to Salesforce Marketing Cloud research.
Sending a series of cart abandonment emails gives brands more opportunities to convert carts into orders. However, many brands are largely sending the same hard-sell message over and over. Consider including a little soft-sell messaging in the middle of your 3-email cart abandonment series to create what I call a cart abandonment email “sandwich.”
To make one of these sandwiches, you lead with a straightforward “You left this in your cart” email notification, followed by a more service-oriented browse abandonment message, and then finish with another fairly direct cart abandonment message.
Here’s a great example from Blue Nile, which uses this cart-browse-cart abandonment email series approach to respond to abandoned carts. The first email in the series is very direct: “You left this item in your cart, plus we have financing available.” The second email takes a browse abandonment approach by recommending other products in the diamond earring category. And the third and final email gets back to a more pointed “you left this in your cart,” but then follows with more alternative recommendations.
Chad S. White is the Head of Research at Oracle Digital Experience Agency.