Ecommerce Blog

Introduction

Numerous research reports show that you can expect around 15% of abandoned carts to be recovered using email marketing automation in combination with an optional discount or coupon code to further entice shoppers to complete their purchase.

If you’ve ever purchased something online I’m sure you’ve received at least one email trying to entice you to complete an abandoned purchase.

Research tells us that most people abandon their carts for a few primary reaons:

1. They’re in research mode and shopping across multiple sites to price check
2. They add a product to their cart to find out what shipping will cost (when the shipping cost isn’t clear on the product page)
3. They simply run out of time or get distracted and never return to complete their purchase

Our abandoned cart saver, in combination with our automatic product review reminder emails (that went out in April) are two of the many features we’re currently working on to help BigCommerce clients sell more without having to do more.

We’re strong believers in marketing automation, especially for our smaller clients without a marketing team, and will continue to roll out other marketing automation features over the coming weeks and months with one primary goal – to get your conversion rate well above the average for the industry in which you sell.

So, let’s take a look at how the abandoned cart saver actually works.

How Does It Work?

Here’s a very high level overview of how the feature works:

1. A shopper adds one or more products to their shopping cart in your BigCommerce store
2. They start the checkout process, but for whatever reason don’t complete it
3. They leave your website
4. After one hour, they receive an email inviting them to complete their purchase
5. If after one day they haven’t completed their purchase, they receive another email
6. Finally, after two days if they haven’t completed their purchase, they receive a final email
7. You see a report on all abandoned and recovered orders including the exact dollar amount saved

As is explained below, this feature can be disabled and both the content and timing of the emails can be completely customized.

Customizable Email Messages

From the Marketing -> Abandoned Cart Notifications menu you’ll see a series of 3 emails that are setup by default. These emails are scheduled to be sent to any shopper in your store who abandons their shopping cart, which means they added products to their cart and started the checkout process but for whatever reason didn’t actually complete their order.

By default, there are 3 emails setup and they are scheduled to be sent 1 hour, 1 day and 2 days after a shopping cart has been abandoned. They contain a simple message which you can customize to include a coupon code if you’d like. The design of these emails can also be completely customized to include your brand elements and style.

Here’s how the default email looks (in this example, we’ve included a coupon code):

Creating or modifying an email in the series is quick and easy, as you can see below. You can create up to 3 emails to be sent to shoppers who have abandoned their carts. If you select a coupon code to include it will automatically be applied to the shopper’s order when they click the link in the email.

The contents of each email can also be personalized using dynamic placeholders for first name, last name, full name, cart contents, checkout link, store name, etc. See this knowledge base article for more details.

Abandoned Cart Settings

Of course you also have complete control over important settings for this feature and it can be disabled if required. Depending on how many visitors you get to your BigCommerce store, you can choose to be notified when a shopping cart is abandoned in your store. You can be notified every time a cart is abandoned, or you can receive a summarized email when a certain number of shopping carts are abandoned, such as 10, 50 or 500. You can also turn off these email notifications.

Abandoned Cart Saver Reporting

We’ve built a beautiful yet simple report that shows exactly how many carts have been abandoned and how many have been saved. We then tie these numbers together to show you exactly how much you’ve made in sales that you otherwise would have lost. We do all of this in one report:

The report also shows the exact details of every abandoned order that was saved so you have a completely granular level of reporting if that’s what you need.

Opting Out Of Marketing Emails

Along with the automatic product review reminder emails, your shoppers can opt out of receiving abandoned cart notification emails. Any shopper that ops out of receiving these emails will have a new attribute called Receive Marketing Emails set to No as part of their customer profile. You can also set this attribute to No if a client calls and asks to stop receiving these emails: