The Subtle Art of Cart Recovery

In 2022, 80% of all online shopping 🛒carts failed to reach the checkout stage.”

How are you handling abandoned carts? Let’s take a look at the art of cart recovery. This blog doesn’t say what’s right or wrong but rather provokes deeper thought. 

Let’s dive in.

The Common Scenario

Here’s a hypothetical example of what goes behind when a customer abandons his shopping cart.

An ethnic wear e-commerce brand for women gets a visitor named Sana. She scrolls the entire website, browses different collections and adds a little black dress to her cart.

She checks the price 💸 and it totals Rs.15,000.

She then realizes she’s no millionaire (yet) and can get better, cheaper options at some other e-commerce store.

She leaves the cart and takes an exit from the website. 

After this scenario happens, the brand responds in the following way.

The immediate response includes sending a cart recovery email like this. 

Email #1: “We saved your cart for you! Buy the dress.”

A few days later, Email #2: “Are you sure you don’t want it? How about 25% off?”

After some more days, Email #3: “Your discount is expiring! Shop now” 

There are two possibilities.

1. Sanah ends up buying the dress at a discount 
2. Sanah feels like your brand is annoying, spammy, and needy.

History of Abandoned Cart Messages ✉️ 101

Online purchasing in the late 1990s and early 2000s was considerably different from todays. Cart abandonment was a big concern even at this early stage of the eCommerce sector. According to a 2002 poll, abandonment rates might reach 67 per cent, which aligns with current expectations. When eCommerce merchants realised how big of an impact this had on their earnings, they tried to discover a means to recoup these lost clients. These early attempts took the shape of a cart abandonment survey, triggered in the browser whenever a buyer attempted to move away from their cart before completing the transaction.

To cut a long story short, it was 2002, and e-commerce businesses sought to apply their knowledge of abandoned basket logic to a far more automated email strategy. Some tech-savvy marketers hacked together some code to create an automatic "cart abandonment email."

At the time, the emails being sent varied from basic reminders to discount offers designed to induce customers to check out their baskets.

The most usual practice, according to Experian, was to send a single email within the first 24 hours of a cart being abandoned, but waiting two to three days might also be successful.

This got increasingly automated over time, and the rest is history. 

Advancing the Cart Recovery Landscape

So, what’s wrong with all of this?

If your customers make a purchase with a discount you offer, doesn’t that sound like a win-win?

Here are some questions that come to mind.

• Is high price the reason for customers abandoning most of the products?
• Is the solution to a price concern discounting the product?
• Are you providing a discount to customers who just need more time to decide?

The answers to these questions depend from brand to brand. But the one thing that should be kept in mind is when you resolve a cart abandonment problem, you need to understand what customer problems you are resolving to get these abandoners to purchase.

If the most-prominent reason comes out to be high prices, you could tackle it by focusing on instilling value as to why your products are actually good for them.

You ask why?

Because not every cart is recoverable and attempting to answer the high price objection with a fat discount is the most expensive and shortest-lasting solution.

What can be done in a scenario like this is directly asking the customers the reason behind all these cart abandonment issues. Understand where customers are in their journey and address that concern head-on. 

Understanding the Core Principles of the Art of Cart Recovery

You need to move from the usual in order to recover abandoned carts better. 

Here are some examples:

• Instead of saying, “We are the best, buy our products”, show them social proof via customer reviews.
• Instead of saying, “Your cart is expiring, buy our stuff rn”, create FOMO by highlighting why people buy your product.
• Instead of saying, “Here’s a discount”, highlight how you add value to your customer. 

To recover their abandoned carts, most brands highlight the free shipping, talk about the core values of the brand, and the brand origins in the first email.

In the second email, they highlight customers' most commonly asked questions about the brand, offer an alternative, highlight the easy return policy, and again highlight free shipping!

The third email again gives a large focus on our brand mission as well as highlighting some social proof from customers.

Remember, the key is to understand your customers' objections and tailor your cart recovery strategies accordingly. By addressing their concerns and providing value, you can increase the chances of converting abandoned carts into successful purchases.