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Abandoned Cart Workflow

Cart abandonment takes place when a shopper adds something to their cart, but leaves your site without converting. Drip’s cart abandonment strategy utilizes an email or series of emails to be sent to the person who added the items to their cart but didn’t follow through on the purchase. Roughly 75% of all shopping carts are abandoned. Meaning, only 1 in every 4 shoppers who add something to their cart will complete a transaction.  At Drip we know abandoned carts represent a significant revenue opportunity, and you need to have an effective strategy in place to capture it.

 

Activate an Abandoned Cart Workflow

To get started with Cart Abandonment install one of our pre-built Workflows, or build your own. Our pre-built Workflows have Triggers already defined to work with your ecommerce platform and include recommended Action and Delay steps.

Here are the three simple steps you need to take to activate an abandoned cart workflow in Drip.

Step One: Disable Abandoned Cart Emails From Your OMS

Disable abandoned cart emails from your ecommerce store and any other plug-ins. With Drip’s visual email builder, you’ll have more control over the quality and quantity of abandoned cart emails.

Step Two: Edit Your Emails

Click on the first Send an email to a person step and select Edit Email to hop into the visual email builder.

The body of your email will already include dynamic product blocks to display the items in your customer's cart. Make this email match your brand:

  • Add your header logo.

  • Edit the font and button colors under settings and default styles.

  • Write a subject line and email copy in your brand voice.

Once your email is built, click Preview to see how the email looks on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Then, navigate back to the workflow editor and edit the other emails.

Step Three: Activate Workflow

Once your email is written, your delays are set, and this journey is looking just how you’d like, toggle your workflow ON to recover abandoned carts.

 

Helpful Tips

Here are some helpful tips about Workflows:

  • Triggers are forward-facing: If you activate this workflow today, people who abandoned a cart yesterday will not enter it.

  • Goals pull people down past any remaining steps and to the exit: If someone makes a purchase while they’re in this ‘flow, they’ll hit the Order Created goal at the bottom of the workflow. This ensures that your customers won’t receive any messaging that’s not relevant to them anymore after making their purchase.

  • People can only be in a workflow at one time —so don’t worry about them entering this workflow once they’re already in it.

  • After someone exits, they’re eligible to re-enter the workflow.

 

Abandoned Cart Best Practice

We know people who have added something to their cart are expressing intent to purchase. They’re interested in your brand, they found a product (or products) they liked, therefore they expressed intent to purchase by adding those items to their cart. Converting these types of interactions is much easier (and more cost-effective) than converting colder interactions, and can have powerful revenue implications for your business. We want you to think about the following content for your Abandonment emails.

There are a lot of reasons someone might have abandoned their cart without checking out. Here are the most common reasons for abandonment, and ways to address them with your email content.

  1. No clear return policy: Buying online can feel riskier for consumers than shopping in-store because they can’t see, feel, touch, or try on the product. Clearly stating your return policy in your cart abandonment emails is a great way to reassure your customers that they can make a return if they’re unhappy with their purchase.

  2. No clear customer support: Similar to your return policy, explicitly providing your customer support information is a great way to let your customers know you’re there to answer any questions they may have.

  3. Price: Price will always be a reason people abandon their carts. While we don’t advocate over-discounting (it can hurt your brand AND your profitability, and we think you’re awesome enough people will shop you without a discount) if a free shipping offer or a 10% off coupon is part of your existing strategy leveraging it in your cart abandonment workflow can be an effective way to recover more carts.

  4. They forgot: The majority of shopping is done on a mobile device. It’s easy to add something to your cart and then forget to complete your checkout. Including images and descriptions of the actual products someone abandoned can improve cart abandonment conversions rates.