Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll probably know how much money a well-constructed cart abandonment sequence can generate for your store.

Most cart abandonment sequences don’t live up to their potential, however.

They salvage some revenue, sure, but they could generate so much more.

Here are 5 tips to skyrocket the revenue yours makes.

1: Send the first email 1 hour after abandonment

The sooner you remind people to complete their purchase the more likely you are to complete the sale.

Don’t wait a day until they fail to place their order – nudge them back to the checkout as soon as possible.

I’ve seen some incredibly aggressive strategies on this, ranging from 30 minutes to 1 hour after abandonment.

My personal opinion is that 1 hour is the sweet spot to maximise sales and minimise unsubscribes.

People can browse a website for up to 30 minutes at a time with products in their cart, so 30 minutes is too soon to shoot the first email out.

On the flip side, anything over 2 hours is likely to lead the customer to explore other competitors/shop around. You don’t want that, so strike while the iron is hot after an hour.

2: Don’t discount on the first email

Too many stores are hasty to throw discounts about. Be patient before destroying your margin; sometimes a subtle reminder is all that’s needed to convert the sale.

Life gets in the way sometimes – it’s not all about price.

If you start pushing 5, 10 or 20% discounts about within the first hour, you’ll also devalue your product and condition your customers to wait in future for discounts.

This can harm your conversion rate in the long-term and crucially, your profitability.

Try to reserve discounts to first-time buyers to get them over the line and not returning customers.

3: Create urgency

The majority of revenue will be generated between emails 1-3 in your sequence. Give people time-sensitive offers (after the first email) with effective calls to action.

Following on from point #2, now is the time to potentially look at discounts to incentivise customers to take action.

A word of caution here: start small, and save your best till last.

Also make the coupon you generate dynamic so that it will expire after a certain amount of time.

This is very easy to do with a Shopify/Klaviyo integration if as well as several other platforms.

Another option (if relevant to your store) that doesn’t necessary devalue your proposition is to include free shipping to incentivise the first sale. This has the benefit of protecting your price point while still saving the customer money, but not conditioning them to expect product discounts from your store.

4: Increase the length of your cart abandonment sequence

Most people give up after 2-3 emails. I don’t. I often create abandoned cart sequences up to 8 emails long (and beyond that) for first-time users.

Getting the first sale is crucial. You’ll be surprised how much additional revenue you can drive from extending your cart abandonment sequence.

Sometimes, customers just aren’t ready to purchase. It may be that they simply underestimated how much money they had in the bank the day they went to checkout at your store.

How many times have you done the same? I know I have.

A good way to bring these individuals back into the sales cycle is to add value to their lives with educational content.

If you’re a supplement store, send information about nutritional strategies to cover vitamin deficiencies to bring people back to your site.

If you’re a personalised gift store, send seasonal content on the best gift ideas.

You can always repurpose your best performing campaigns that you know customers already find engaging to drive more traffic to your website.

5: Interject from “the owner”

If the generic sales incentives aren’t working, I like to write a personalised message from the owner/CEO asking why they haven’t completed the sale and offering an ‘exclusive discount’ only for their personal use.

This adds a human element to the email and often leaves a personal imprint on the recipient.

An invitation for feedback at this point can often be effective in adding authenticity to your brand.

Conclusion

There are many more cart abandonment techniques, but I’m saving them solely for Magnet Monster clients 😜