How to save e-commerce stores $260 billion a year

E-commerce stores lose $4 trillion a year through abandoned carts.

Now, I would be lying if I told you you could rescue that amount down to the last cent.

Truth is, you can't.

But you can rescue a very significant sum.

An amount which could be the difference between your store succeeding or failing.

And the method is very simple.

Send abandoned cart emails.

What are they and how do they work?

Do your customers login to your site when they visit? Or do they fill in their details before they get to the checkout?

Yes?

Great! You have an email address you can send an abandoned cart email to.

You need to be able to track their on-site behaviour. But there is tracking software which makes this easy.

And you can do one of two things. Either send an abandoned cart email after a period of time. When it's obvious they've abandoned their cart.

Or track their on-site behaviour and send as soon as they leave your store.

You may think "but they've abandoned their cart, they don't want the product anymore."

But that would be incredibly shortsighted.

Have you ever left a supermarket only to realise you've forgotten a key item?

Why? Maybe your phone rang, you got chatting with somebody, your child started throwing a tantrum.

There are countless reasons. And there are countless reasons why someone might abandon an online shopping cart.

Even if they changed their minds at the last minute, they can change them back again.

But they're far more likely to remember or recommit to buying if you prompt them.

Stats consistently show how effective sending abandoned cart emails is.

Cart abandonment emails have an open rate of 39.07%.

And a click-through rate of 23.33%.

Resulting in $260 billion rescued revenue for e-commerce businesses.

Revenue those stores would have lost if they hadn't send those emails.

Of course, some strategies are better than others.

And we'll look at some of them over the next few days.