Intro to cart abandonment
Did you know, over 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned? Without an effective cart abandonment strategy, you’re missing out on significant revenue. Interestingly, cart abandonment rates vary depending on the device that’s being used. According to a study by Barilliance, the average rates per device are:
- Desktop: 73.07%
- Tablet: 80.74%
- Mobile: 85.65%
Customers who clicked on a social media ad to shop have an even higher cart abandonment rate of 91%.
Why do people abandon their carts?
Understanding why people abandon their carts will help you to craft a strategy for your eCommerce store that works to eliminate barriers to purchase. Common reasons for cart abandonment include:
- Price: if it’s a high ticket item, the decision-making process can be lengthy
- Competition: the customer may have seen the same / similar product elsewhere
- Shipping: if shipping costs are too high or if there is no free shipping threshold
- Returns policy: if it’s too hard to return an item, if it’s at the customer’s expense, or if store credit is offered instead of a refund
- Reviews: if there’s a lack of product or company reviews (or poor review quality)
The list goes on (and on and on). But now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s move on to the mechanics of these email automations.
Explained: Added to Cart series
Widely known as the Abandoned Cart series, this series is triggered when a customer has added products to their cart but has not progressed to the checkout stage. At REP., we refer to this type of automation as an Added to Cart series, as this is what the event to trigger the series in Klaviyo is called. To build an Added to Cart series in Klaviyo, you’ll need to create the Added to Cart event, and then install the snippet to your Shopify theme. Then, this customer behaviour can be passed back to Klaviyo through an ‘Added to Cart’ flow. You can find information on how to do that here — or reach out to REP. for assistance.
This series is a great first point to remind customers that they’ve left an item in their cart. Content for this series can include motivating messaging, a dynamic cart block, and helpful information (such as size guides). If you have live chat available, this is the place to point that out. Platforms like Gorgias are great for this — plus Gorgias integrates well with Klaviyo. With live chat, customers are able to get a quick reply to questions that may be preventing them from making a purchase.
Explained: Abandoned Checkout series
This series is designed for customers who have added items to their cart and proceeded to the checkout, but haven’t completed their order. These customers need a final push to complete their purchase, as something has prevented them from doing so — see the cart abandonment reasons above. The aim of the Abandoned Checkout series is to break down purchase barriers by providing key information and help resources. This could include content such as key USPs, as well as reminders of shipping and returns policies. Providing customer service contact details is also good to include in this series.
—>Tip: later in the Abandoned Checkout journey, you can split customers based on cart value or by number of purchases over all time and offer incentives accordingly.
Klaviyo benchmarks for Abandoned Checkout flows:
- Open Rate: 50.50%
- Click Rate: 6.25%
- Placed Order Rate: 3.33%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.60%
These benchmarks are correct as at June 2024.
You can download Klaviyo’s full report here to take a look at benchmarks by Industry across a number of Klaviyo flows. These benchmarks will help you to measure and improve your current flow performance.
Why you need both series
The answer is simple — you need an Added to Cart series as well as an Abandoned Checkout series to cover different stages of the buying process. Just like not having an Abandoned Checkout series leaves money on the table, not having both an Added to Cart and Abandoned Checkout series is a missed opportunity to generate revenue. An effective cart abandonment strategy also helps to encourage repeat purchase from your existing customers (and convert first-time buyers).
5 rookie moves to avoid
- Don’t give customers a discount every time they abandon their cart
- Don’t give out blanket discounts — tailor them based on cart value and customer loyalty
- Avoid basic abandoned cart messaging — take it to the next level with branded messaging
- Make sure your Abandoned Checkout series is longer than one email
- Make sure you put a filter on your Added to Cart series so it doesn’t fire an email every time a customer adds a product to their cart
SMS cart reminders
Always remember that having a customer’s consent to text them is a privilege — so save SMS for the most important messages. For an Added to Cart or Abandoned Checkout series, we wouldn’t recommend sending SMS for initial cart reminders, or basic checkout expiry reminders. However, if you’re offering customers an incentive to complete their purchase, this is where you could send an SMS.
Ready to get started?
You need both an Added to Cart flow plus an Abandoned Checkout flow to give customers a push at both stages of their buying journey. The team at REP. are well versed in creating effective cart and checkout abandonment strategies paired with emotive designs that motivate customers to complete their order. Get in touch with us by emailing hello@wearerep.com to get started with your cart abandonment requirements. Alternatively, if you’re not sure where to start, you can purchase an email marketing audit here and we’ll let you know what areas we recommend focusing on.