E-commerce is becoming more and more important in our daily lives. It is today one of the most used means of exchange on the international market. This state of affairs is greatly favored by the practicality of online exchanges. Indeed, when making purchases or sales at a distance, there are very few problems related to logistics. In addition, we save time with online exchanges. Unfortunately, over time, many online shoppers end up leaving their cart before going through the buying process. In addition, it is difficult for e-merchants to succeed in convincing their customers to go to the end of the purchase. It is therefore important to set up basket recovery techniques or strategies. We tell you how to encourage your customers to complete their purchase.
Why do a cart reminder on Shopify?
Cart abandonment is a recurring problem in e-commerce. Whether on Shopify or another platform, many online stores face this problem. Indeed, more than 68% of visitors to online sales sites do not complete their purchase. They abandon the cart before placing their first order. This represents a real shortfall for online shops. It is therefore important to find a solution to remedy this situation especially since most online shoppers do not deliberately choose to abandon their cart. In fact, there are several reasons for these cart abandonments. This may be due to the crash of the site or a session expiration or several other reasons.
These reasons forced many people not to go through with their purchase even though they had made their choice, filled their basket and were about to complete the transaction. He just missed the checkout. In a physical store, this is like filling your cart and then abandoning it without going through the checkout. In this case, you must re-store all the selected items. For an online store on Shopify, this could become problematic. Already, the turnover of the online store would be greatly impacted. Then, it could also impact the inventory.
However, this type of problem remains minor. The real concern remains the closing of sales. You need to be able to handle cart abandonments. The best solution remains the abandoned cart recovery. To be able to do this, you have the choice between several possibilities. Nevertheless, you will first need to contact your customers.
Get in touch with the customer
This is the first step towards reducing abandoned carts on an online store. Getting in touch with customers allows you to know the different problems they encounter during the purchase process. This will allow e-merchants to understand the reasons why some customers abandon their cart. With Shopify, you have tools that can use the contact form that is built into the settings. Thus, we can automatically send an abandoned cart reminder email.
This option is very convenient, because it allows you to see each time all your orders in progress to check if there are no possible cart abandonments. In order to set up the automatic sending of reminder emails on Shopify, you will only have to go to the settings page. You will then go to the “Order Management” section. This will allow you to have access to several options. These include:
- Never: By choosing this option, you tell the program never to send a reminder email to your customers who choose not to finalize their order;
- 6 Hours: By choosing this option, you instruct the program to automatically send a reminder email to your customers six hours after they have abandoned their cart;
- 24 Hours: By choosing this option, you instruct the program to automatically send a reminder email to your customers twenty-four hours after they have abandoned their cart.
The purpose of the basket reminder by email is to push the customer to renew his purchase. It therefore has some advantages for the online store.
What are the advantages of the reminder cart by email?
The purpose of these emails is to remind customers that they have purchases in progress. In addition, they allow him to find their basket and finally to go to the end of their purchase. However, it should be noted that these types of emails do not always push the customer to finalize his purchase. But when they are successful, they help generate revenue for the online store. You will no longer have to delete abandoned carts. This makes inventory management even easier.
In addition, using the cart reminder by email offers the advantage of being automated. Indeed, you just need to define and coordinate the parameters (the time and frequency of shipments) to activate it. After that, the system will automatically send the previously created cart reminder email based on the time and frequency of sending set. From that moment on, everything will be fully automated. All your customers who had not gone through the checkout will receive a basket reminder email depending on the periodicity.
Also, it must be admitted that emails are much less intrusive and disturbing than calls and other messages. Indeed, they disturb the customer less and will generally not surprise him in full occupancy. The real problem with this technique is that it often gets very few results. According to the data analyzed, the purchases that could be concluded after an email reminder basket amounts to a rate between 5 and 30%. It’s a low rate. In addition, if the emails you send do not meet certain criteria, this cart reminder strategy has no chance of success. It is therefore necessary to ensure that the basket reminder emails meet certain criteria.
What are the criteria that a cart reminder email must meet?
As we said earlier, basket reminder emails must meet certain criteria in order to hope to achieve the goal. For your email to give a little more efficiency to the cart reminder, you must first choose its subject. It sounds simple, but the choice of the subject of the email is very important. Indeed, this is the first sentence that your customer will read. It is therefore a decisive sentence. It will condition the reading or not of the rest of the email. For all these reasons, the subject of the email must be carefully chosen.
In addition, you must necessarily personalize the emails you send to your customers. This is important, because such attention can flatter the customer’s ego and push him to follow up on your request. Thus, you must indicate his name in the email. He will then understand that it is important for your business and will cut more importance to your request. Then, it will be necessary to find a captivating formula, catchy to attract a little more attention. For this purpose, you have several options. For example, you can use a formula that puts pressure or a formula that depicts the fear of losing something. You will encourage him to act quickly so as not to lose the offer you make to him.
Finally, your email must also mention certain items in the customer’s basket. This will make it possible to challenge the buyer, since it is he himself who selected the items. There are many formulas to be able to mention the items present in the basket.
Thanks to these different criteria, you will be able to optimize the cart reminder emails that you will send to your customers. Your emails will then be more attractive and will push customers to finalize their purchase. It is therefore important to write them well.
Other criteria to write the email well
We have mentioned above the main criteria for optimizing a cart reminder email. To this end, we had shown the important nature of the choice of the subject of the email. Second, it was shown that mentioning the customer’s name creates some form of proximity between you and your customer. Apart from these two elements, it must be understood that a personalized email does not give the impression of being a generic and automatic formula. Finally, it is necessary to mention the items present in the abandoned cart on Shopify. In addition to these important criteria, you must also have a visible call-to-action. This will make it easier for your customers to access (with a single click) their abandoned carts. It is also necessary to show the buyer that he has every interest in completing the transaction as quickly as possible. So insist on the urgency of the purchase.
It is also important to be reassuring to the customer. He must be able to have the assurance of being able to return the products if he is not satisfied. So use formulas like: “free returns” or “satisfied or refunded”. All this will put him a little more confident. In summary, your email must remain concise, accurate and should not be loaded. Avoid adding information that has nothing to do with the abandoned cart. This is how your abandoned cart reminder email can be more successful.
Cart reminder emails are effective, but they are not the only strategies for contacting customers.
The reminder basket by phone
It is also possible to revive customers by phone. In addition it is very simple. Simply dial the number of customers who have not validated their purchases on your platform. It is a technique that can allow you to obtain convincing results. Indeed, this technique allows you to speak directly on the phone to your customers. Since they’ve already created an account on your site and chosen the items in their shopping cart, they know who you are. You will then have a more favorable reception. You will therefore take the opportunity to eliminate all the fears they may have and reassure them at the same time. Also, they will take the opportunity to ask you questions. It will be necessary to answer them correctly and to clarify all the grey areas.
In addition, a phone call allows you to know the reasons why the customer has chosen to abandon his cart. If the failure is at your level, then you can find solutions so that it does not happen again in the future; in this way, you improve your services.
The reminder basket by SMS
Unlike emails, the SMS is delivered directly to the customer’s mobile number. He receives the latter faster. SMS is much faster. There are even apps to manage cart reminder SMS. This is the case, for example, with SMSBump. This tool represents a real gem for e-commerce. Indeed, it makes it possible to make online commerce a little more autonomous. The particularity of this application is that it allows you to set up marketing campaigns easily. It is therefore perfect for performing cart reminder actions. The most interesting thing is that the SMSBump can also be used well with other cart recovery strategies. Its objective is therefore not to forget the reminder basket by emails.
However, there are turnkey solutions that allow you to manage the cart reminder.
Some turnkey solutions
Turnkey solutions are designed to simplify your task. They are just as effective as the strategies you put in place. This is the case, for example, with Prestashop’s free cart reminder module. It allows to perform abandoned cart relaunch on Prestashop. It is an efficient, fully automated and fast solution. We also have the Follow Up Email tool. It is an extension to perform the cart reminder on Magento. All these solutions will allow you to remind your customers that they have baskets waiting.
