We’ve all experienced it. Those frantic festive shopping sessions featuring dozens of tabs, each with a basket full of items just in case.
To make life easier for frazzled festive shoppers, eCommerce marketers can bring their abandoned email A game to remind customers of those items they forgot about and help them find the perfect gifts. Research shows that open rates for cart abandonment emails are higher in December compared to the yearly average, meaning marketers have more of an opportunity to recapture lost revenue during the holidays.
With that in mind, here are our 7 top tips for prepping your cart and browse abandonment emails for the festive season. Sit back, grab yourself a mince pie and enjoy the read.
1) Inject some festive cheer into your subject lines
Your customers will be receiving plenty of festive cheer-inducing marketing emails, so don’t let your abandonment emails stand out in their inboxes like the Grinch at a Christmas party. Spice up your regular subject lines with some attention-grabbing festive words. Create urgency before they’ve even opened your email by mentioning your Christmas delivery deadline, or go for a whimsical approach with references to Santa’s workshop, for example. Maximize the impact by including the carted or browsed brand in the subject line. One retailer found that dynamic subject lines containing the browsed brand outperformed subject lines with name personalization during the Christmas period by an impressive 209%.
2) Use a dynamic hero banner
What’s the first thing you notice when you open an email? The hero banner. We process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, meaning an engaging hero banner is not a nice-to-have, it’s essential.
Transforming your banner into a piece of dynamic content will enable you to show each recipient the image that’s most likely to spark their interest. For example, try showing customers images based on the brand or product category of the carted or browsed product. And remember to add some festive touches to your hero banner to keep the Christmas spirit alive in your customers’ inboxes.
3) Make your festive fulfilment options clear
During the holiday season, shoppers are more likely to be swayed by attractive fulfilment options. After all, no one wants to be that family member whose gifts didn’t arrive on time. In fact, when asked about their festive shopping top priorities, 41% of consumers said free shipping was the most important factor for them, while 35% said fast delivery and 24% said clear and simple returns policies.
If you offer free delivery or returns, make sure that information is displayed clearly in your abandonment emails to get customers back on your site. You can also highlight your Christmas delivery cut off date to create urgency, which brings us onto our next tip…
4) Create a sense of urgency
Christmas shopping comes with a deadline, so there is an underlying sense of urgency baked in. Marketers can enhance this urgency by including social proof tactics such as popularity messaging in their abandonment emails. Try adding real-time information of how many other shoppers have bought or browsed those same products recently. By showing shoppers how popular the product is, you’ll drive urgency and give them the confidence they need to return to your site and complete their purchase.
Countdown timers are another classic urgency boosting tactic. Try using a timer to count down the deadline to the end of your festive sale or the Christmas delivery cut off date.
5) Make shopping easier with product recommendations
With a glut of products and festive offers, choosing Christmas gifts can be overwhelming. You might be set on buying your Uncle Bob another pair of socks, but now you’ve got to navigate dozens of stores and styles before finding the perfect pair. The choice paralysis is enough to make any shopper abandon their cart before making a purchase.
Marketers can help make festive shopping easier by recommending a range of alternative products similar to the one they’ve browsed or carted, allowing them to find the one that best suits their needs.
You can also take the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell by inspiring shoppers with items that complement the one they’re interested in. That extra spark of inspiration might be what it takes for them to complete their purchase, helping you to increase their cart value in the process.
6) Recreate the shopping cart
Since shoppers might have a few abandoned carts on the go during the festive shopping period, jog their memories by recreating their cart in your abandonment email. Include details and imagery of the products they carted with links back to the cart on your site.
7) Timing is everything
Being quick off the mark is key when it comes to abandonment emails, particularly during busy shopping periods like Christmas. Shoppers are often considering lots of other products alongside your offerings, so if you’re not quick your competitors might beat you to it.
Make sure you trigger your abandonment emails within 30 minutes of a shopper abandoning their cart or browse, and try sending a second email 24 hours later if the shopper hasn’t taken action. Multi-step abandonment emails are proven revenue boosters. In fact, one eCommerce retailer saw a 347% YOY increase for cart abandonment revenue and a 126% YOY increase for browse abandonment revenue with their multi-step abandonment emails.
Final thoughts
Make this Christmas the season of recapturing revenue by implementing our 7 tips in your abandonment emails. By keeping your abandonment emails timely, relevant and packed full of useful information, you’ll bring more customers back to your site and help them find the perfect gifts.
Download the Ultimate eCommerce Marketing Calendar for more ideas to help you stay relevant throughout the festive season and beyond.
