What the heck do I put in cart abandonment emails?

You know cart abandonment emails create massive sales for sports e-commerce stores.

But what should you put in the darn things?

Urgency. If people believe availability is high, they won't feel a need to rush their purchase. So tell them the product might sell out if they delay. This is even more powerful if you can say "we've only [low number] left in stock". But only use that if it's the truth. Saying that when you've got a stockroom full creates a bad impression. Because when the item doesn't go out of stock, it's obvious you've been telling porkies.

You should also address concerns which lead to cart abandonments.

Offer to help them. Not everybody is familiar with shopping online. Hard to believe? Maybe. But true. If they're confused about something, providing prompt assistance can be the difference between made and lost sales.

Tell them how and why your store is secure. If you offer familiar payment methods like Paypal, point this out. People will trust these more than handing over their credit card details to an e-commerce site itself. If you take credit card details directly, explain how your site is secure in simple terms.

Many customers worry about return policies. Tell them how easy and quick yours is.

An incentive can work a treat. For example, offering 10% off, a free gift, or zero cost delivery if they complete their order within a certain timeframe.

You might worry about people "gaming" your system. In other words, deliberately abandoning their cart so they get the incentive. But if they never complete their purchase, you get 100% of nothing. Isn't 90% of something a better deal for you?

In most cases, "gaming" feels like extra work to the customer anyway. So you'll probably find the numbers doing this low.

The reason why three cart abandonment emails work better than one is because you can push different buttons.

Maybe some don't feel any urgency to buy. So that's email one's job. To create it.

Others might have a concern which caused them to abandon. Email two.

And the remainder could be looking for a little "extra". Email three.

The next blog post will look at how to lay out your cart abandonment emails.