Menu
Not sure about what, why or how to write your abandoned cart email sequence? Check out this video that clarifies the “Why” behind all these shenanigans
Did you know that up to 75% of your customers could be abandoning their cart before purchase? In today’s online marketplace it is common for people to browse a site, place items they are interested in, into their cart, and then before putting in their card info and hitting the buy button they leave.
Now you may be thinking…. Well if they didn’t purchase my product they aren’t going to anyways. This is your pride talking. He’s like that little devil on your shoulder who is going to get you into more trouble than help. STOP LISTENING! The truth is just because someone doesn’t purchase the first time they visit your site or the first time they put something in their cart doesn’t disqualify them as a buyer.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I am one of those people to the extreme. I typically have dozens of things in my Amazon cart that I haven’t purchased yet. That’s not to say that I don’t go back later and end up purchasing some of those items. It’s actually quite annoying sometimes. When I need to re-order that one item and I have to save everything in my cart for later. The issue is I completely forget about most of them.
The trend for today’s modern buyers is that they are becoming “late buyers” more often than not. This means that people probably aren’t going to purchase from your site the first time they visit. Don’t fret though, I’m going to tell you how to combat some of that mindset.
No, you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just the nature of the beast. So what do we do to fix this?
It’s not broke! We don’t need to fix it! We just have to adapt our mindset to understand our customers and help them remember what made them add that item(s) to their cart in the first place.
Here is the trick… send each and every person who abandons their cart a series of personalized emails reminding them what they left in their cart, asking if they have any questions about those items, showing them complimentary items to increase the perceived value, and thanking them for their interest.
I know what your thinking.
“Will, I don’t have time for all that!”
Hang tight! After all, this is an automation blog!
I’m going to tell you how to write this email sequence one time. (Here) After writing this email sequence one time, we are going to set up an automation so that anyone who abandons their cart gets added to this automation.
Now, we don’t want them to keep getting those emails if they actually purchase the items so, we’re going to set up a goal so that they exit the automation the moment they hit the buy button. We also don’t want them in the automation multiple times at once, so we are going to set a filter, so that the same person can only enter the automation once every thirty days.
Sounds complicated right? It’s actually not that bad I promise. I’m going to walk you through it step-by-step, click-by-click so that you understand how everything works in ActiveCampaign. (It’s the same principle in any marketing automation software we just prefer ActiveCampaign.)
Then I’m going to take it a step further! I’m going to share the template with you to use inside your ActiveCampaign account which will save you even more time. If you are NOT an ActiveCampaign user (you should be), no worries, I am going to give you a wireframe that will save you time as well.
The goal here is to give gentle reminders that nudge that potential buyer into the paying customer category, without making them feel pressured. The ultimate experience here is when your customer feels like you helped them buy something, not that they were “SOLD” something.
Ok, lets dive into it! Or if you are a visual learner and would rather watch the video you can do that here.
Or, If you are just starting out and don’t even know where to start we have an article on that too. Just click here.
Step 1: Enable site tracking.
Go to your settings in ActiveCampaign and turn on “site tracking” under the tracking sub-menu. Then, before you leave you’ll see a block of code text. Highlight all the text and save it to your clipboard.
Head on over to your website builder, wherever that may be, and paste the tracking code you just grabbed into the header or footer of your cart/checkout and confirmation or thank you pages. (If you don’t know how to, try Googling: how to add tracking code to “your site/cart builder”) At this point, make sure to write down or copy and paste the URL’s of both of these pages. We’ll need them in a minute.
Done. See that wasn’t so hard.
Step 2: Add your tags and custom fields that will be used in the automation.
For this step we are going to head over to the lists tab on the left-hand menu and then select manage fields. From this screen on the top right we’re going to select add field. In the pop-up, enter “Abandoned Cart Count”. This is going to track how many times a contact has been through the abandoned cart automation for a cool bonus tip at the end.
For field type we are going to select “text input” since the other options don’t make sense.
Now repeat the process and add an “Abandoned Cart Date” field but this time in the field type use the dropdown to select “date”.
Now to add the tags we are going to go to the Contacts tab on the left-hand menu. Then, Manage Tags and in the input box near the middle left of your screen you need to insert the following tag names:
“Action_AbandonedCart”
“Action_Purchased”
“Action_YourCartPlatform_Purchased”
Be sure to separate by commas or one per line.
These tags can be customized to specific products if you’d like. The first tag is a manual tag that we would be adding to a contact on the active campaign side whereas the latter is a tag that would be passed from your cart platform such as Thrive Cart. If you’re having a hard time wrapping your head around lists, tags, custom fields or all of the above check out my video on the subject here to clear it up.
Great we’ve done all the legwork now it is time to dive into the automation itself.
Step 3: Build your automation.
Go to the Automations tab and select build new automation in the top right-hand corner. Then select,”start from scratch” and continue. (There are a couple abandoned cart recipes if you want to mess around with them, but I’m not a fan)
Then we’ll have to choose the automation trigger (what happens to make the automation start.) In this case we want someone to enter this automation whenever they have visited your checkout page but not made it to an order confirmation or thank you page.
So, we are going to choose the trigger “Web Page Visited”. On the next pop up we’re going to paste in the URL from your cart page and select multiple times. (In this case we want contacts to be able to enter this automation more than one time if they return and abandon the cart again months later)
Next we’re going to hit the little plus button just under “1 time” and another condition line will appear. Make sure this line is set to “AND” has not visited URL (your Thank-you page URL from earlier). That’s it.
Click the Done box in the bottom right corner.
(I also go over a second set of triggers if you’re using a cart software that will add the tags for you in the video)
Our trigger is set. On the pop-up we need to select an action. In this case we want to give the contact time to either purchase or abandon the cart page, so we are going to conditions and workflow, wait, and then a specific period of time. I find that 1 hour works well, but you can play around with this.
Stop!!!
In the top right-hand corner you need to name your automation (something like Abandoned Cart) just click on the automation name, and you can rename it whatever you like. (Hint: Try to be specific as you may end up with hundreds of automations on down the road, and you’ll want to be able to search for it easily.)
To add the next step in the automation hit the plus button below the wait step and the action box will pop up again. Next, add a tag to the contact showing that they are in the abandoned cart automation. For this we’re going to click on Contact on the left of the pop-up then “Add a Tag”. The tag we are adding here is one of the Tags we added in Step 2. Simply type in “Action_AbandonedCart”.
Then click the lowest plus button again, choose “Workflow”, and “Perform Math” towards the bottom. This is how we are going to track how many times someone has abandoned their cart for the bonus later. Use the first drop down to select the custom field “Abandoned Cart Count”. Select “Add” in the second box and place a “1” in the third box. This step now adds 1 to this field every time a contact makes it this far in the automation.
Hit that little plus button again. (We’re going to do this for every step) Here we are going to update the “Abandoned Cart Date” field that we added. Again, select “Contact” and “Update Contact”. In the first drop down select “Abandoned Cart Date”, and “Current Time” in the second drop down. This allows us to look at a contacts card and see the last time they were in the cart.
Next we need to set up our first email to send after someone abandons their cart. For this, click that little plus button, then “Sending Options”, and yep you guessed it, “Send an Email”.
Now I don’t typically write the emails as I’m building out an automation. I simply create an email placeholder that I can go back to later and put the email in (as that is another process in itself which I’ll cover in a follow-up video). Now click on “Create an Email” in blue and name your email. My personal preference when it comes to naming your emails is to use timeframes based off an action such as “One Hour After Abandoned Cart”. Others like to use the email subject line or a combination of the two. Click Continue and you’ll enter the email builder. To skip this step your going to click “Save and Exit” in the top right corner which will create your email placeholder and bring you back to the automation screen. From here you’ll need to click “Save”one more time.
For the sake of time I’m going to skip forward a little here. You’re going to repeat the previous actions adding another wait period followed by a second email, one last wait period and either an email or text message (I cover text’s in the video). If your not sure how long your waits should be, a good starting point is 1 day and then 1 week later. This can timeframe can vary widely depending on your customer base and knowing if they are more “impulse buyers” or “late buyers”. You can always adjust these wait steps and number of touchpoints to suite your business.
Now, for one of the last steps in the automation we need to build in some “Exit Logic”. This is going to allow contacts to jump out of the automation if they purchase at any point. It will also allow us to track how many conversions this abandoned cart automation led to. For this we need to add another step under the workflow section selecting “Goal”.
In the pop-up you need to name this goal and for this example we are going to type the name “Purchased”. Below the name, click on “Click to Add Goal” in blue to add conditions. For the first trigger of this Goal we’re going to choose Tag in the first dropdown, exists in the second drop down, and “Action_Purchased”(or whatever you named your purchase tag in the beginning) if your cart software tags the customer, or you set up an additional tagging automation, then we are going to add a second condition by hitting the plus button on the right of the pop-up, choose “Or” contact, has visited, “Your-Cart-Thank-you-Page” URL, in order to use the site tracking we set up earlier in case the contact uses a different email to purchase.
The last thing to do on the goal pop-up is to choose the goal, in this example, choose “Below the Contacts Position” and if goals not met “Continue Anyways”.
Finally, before this automation ends we want to add a step to remove the tag “Action_AbandonedCart” to indicate that they are no longer in this automation and then End the automation.
To do this, add a step, by hitting the plus button again, under “Contact”, select “Remove a Tag” and choose the tag from the drop-down. Then choose the final step under “Conditions and Workflow”followed by “End this Automation”.
That’s It!
Still not sure about what, why or how to write your abandoned cart email sequence? Check out this video that clarifies the “Why” behind all these shenanigans)
You’re done, if you made it this far, thank you for following along. I truly hope this was helpful.
If you missed the links to the automation earlier here they are again.
For the Bonus I was talking about, watch to the end of the video or click here to go to that short article. (2 minute read)
If you would like to receive more insightful tips about Marketing, Automation, and Process Automation follow us on social media by clicking below.
You can also sign up for our awesome weekly newsletter HERE.
If you’re still pulling your hair out and need to schedule a call with Trebl Digital, click here.