I Created a Cart Abandonment Email Sequence for a Skincare Company
When I began this project, I asked myself: how can I create the most value for a company? When I researched statistics on cart abandonment emails, I discovered just what a useful tool it is. That is a problem that I can fix!
The Problem
More and more consumers are shopping online. However, online shoppers don’t always complete their purchases. On average, 69% of consumers abandon their online shopping cart. That can lead to a ton of lost revenue for companies. Automatic cart abandonment emails increase the likelihood of customers completing their purchases. Cart abandonment emails have a 45% open rate, a 21% clickthrough rate, and a 10.7% purchase rate. Simply sending out a few reminder emails can help companies increase their sales by almost 11% which isn’t too shabby. I can potentially help 11 out of 100 customers finish their online purchase just by creating an email sequence.
The Company
I love skincare! I have a particular appreciation for Korean beauty products and skincare routines. My go-to place to find the best and most affordable K-beauty products is Soko Glam. Not only do they have amazing products, they also have tons of information about what works best for your skin type. This includes a quiz and free consultation to help you find the perfect products for your skin. Since I myself am a satisfied Soko Glam customer, I decided to help them out by creating a cart abandonment email sequence to help boost their completed online sales.
The Correct Timing
Timing is a very important aspect of cart abandonment emails. Send only one email, and it might escape the customer’s notice, but sending one email every hour might annoy them. I decided to strike a balance by creating five emails to be sent at strategic intervals.
The first will send one hour after the cart is abandoned, the second will send six hours later. The third will send 1 day later, the fourth after 3 days, and the fifth and final email 5 days after abandoning the cart. This will hopefully remind the customer to complete their purchase in less than a week from when they began shopping.
If a customer clicks on one of the cart abandonment emails and completes their purchase on the website, then they don’t need any further emails in the sequence sent to them. Once their cart is empty, the email sequence will stop.
The Email Templates
I designed the email templates on Mailchimp and tried to match the style, and voice of the Soko Glam website. Soko Glam uses bright colors and friendly language about taking good care of your skin. Their tagline is “Only good (skin) days ahead”. Once I designed and wrote the email templates, I came up with a catchy subject line and preview text to entice the customer to click on the email.
Next, I created a “cart abandonment” tag in Mailchimp so the emails can be sent to all contacts with that tag who have abandoned their cart. Using Mailchimp makes it easy to keep all my steps on one platform, but it is possible to use other platforms depending on preference.
I tried to keep all the emails cohesive with similar images and color schemes but unique copy for each email. I made sure to include an image of the item in the abandoned cart to remind the consumer exactly what they were shopping for. I also made a simple call to action button that links back to the customer’s cart for easy completion of their purchase.
Formatting for mobile devices is also important so I checked to make sure the emails looked nice on both desktop and mobile devices and I included a sample mobile image at the end.
Here are all 5 emails in my Soko Glam cart abandonment sequence:
Example 1:
Subject: Did you forget something?
Preview Text: Looks like you left some items behind
Send after 1 hour
Example 2:
Subject: Don't leave without this!
Preview Text: You still have stuff in your cart
Send after 6 hours
Example 3:
Subject: You dropped this!
Preview Text: Does this belong to you?
Send after 1 day
Example 4:
Subject: It's been a minute...
Preview Text: We miss you, and your skin is missing these items!
Send after 3 days
Example 5:
Subject: Don' forget about us!
Preview Text: You picked some great items. Why not give them a try?
Send after 5 days
Sample mobile format (email 2):
Conclusion
Overall, I learned a lot during this project. Before this I had never heard of a cart abandonment email. After researching it, I became fascinated by what big an impact such a simple email sequence can make. I enjoyed the design process of creating the email templates. Since I already use similar skincare brands, writing the copy for this type of product came easy to me. Finally, using Mailchimp to streamline everything made the steps simple and cohesive. I believe this project helped me create value and build useful skills I can use in future projects.
