WooCommerce Abandoned Carts – a Guide to Convert Lost Sales Into Revenue

The most frustrating challenge that many eCommerce stores face is the WooCommerce Abandoned carts.

Predicting a WooCommerce Abandoned cart is difficult but there are many improved ways to recover it.

Recovering your WooCommerce Abandoned carts can improve your sales because a returning customer tends to purchase more and you can also improve your customer retention rate.

So, if you’re wondering how to recover your WooCommerce Abandoned carts then look no further, this illustrative guide is all you need right now.

What are WooCommerce Abandoned carts?

Customers visit your store with an urge to purchase, they add products to their cart, and right at the checkout process, they abandon their cart due to some reasons. These carts are WooCommerce Abandoned carts.

Like we said before, predicting a WooCommerce Abandoned cart is tough but based on customer activity you can use Exit-Intent popups to prevent Cart abandonment.

But today we’re talking about Abandoned carts. Aren’t we? So the best way to gain sales is by using a Cart recovery plugin and recover it.

Why do customers abandon their carts?

Cart Abandonment is frustrating, but what impacts more than abandoned carts is figuring out how customers abandoned their carts.

Sometimes, customers might be in a hurry, they visited your store for a quick purchase but the deal you offered for a product wasn’t impressive, so they abandoned their cart.

You see, reasons like this are practical, it means you just have to review your pricing strategy.

But there are many more reasons for Cart abandonments which require a complete scrutinization of your WooCommerce store.

These are some of the usual reasons for cart abandonment.

• Tiring and long checkout process.
• Mandatory account creation, no options for guest checkout/
• Customers may be conducting product research.
• Your WooCommerce store’s return policy is not enticing.
• Payment options are very less.
• Customers were expecting an exclusive discount.
• Customers might feel paranoid about payment gateway.
• Express shipping or Free shipping options are not available.
• Additional Costs like Shipping, delivery costs, etc.
• Your website might have some internal issues.

Here is a chart showing the most common reasons of all,

These are the reasons that contribute to WooCommerce Abandoned carts. But the promising thing is, most of these carts can be recovered by sending cart recovery emails laced with discounts.

What mistakes do most of the Recovery campaigns make?

One of the most common mistakes that almost every WooCommerce store makes is not researching their customers.

Yes, you need to know your audience or customer before sending Cart recovery emails.

Why should I know that?

Because if you don’t research, you’ll treat all the customers as the same. You’ll find it hard to differentiate between regular customers and guest users.

You might end up offering discounts to everyone and not just your potential customers. This will impact your sales and your retention rate.

Segmenting your customers before sending cart recovery emails is the best practice. Now you’ll know whom to send discounts and how much you should send them.

If you don’t research and don’t segment them, customers will start expecting a discount every time they see your mail.

This will impact your profitability.

Most Cart recovery plugins don’t show these details, only a few Cart recovery plugins like Retainful display in which customers abandoned how many carts and so on.

Here are some common mistakes of Cart recovery campaigns,

• Taking too much time to send a Cart recovery email.
• Not sending the recommended volume of emails.
• Not researching and segmenting the customers before sending cart recovery emails.
• Avoiding the severity of email frequencies.
• Not performing enough tests on your emails.

Try avoiding these mistakes and you can achieve maximum conversions in your Cart recovery campaigns.

Cheers to our Smart Cart Recovery system

Like we said before, our Smart Abandoned cart Recovery system is the right thing you need to solve this issue. Retainful’s Cart recovery campaign can help you avoid the mistakes we discussed.

How?

Segmentation – You can segment customers based on a number of abandoned carts, user type, etc.

Sequence – You can sequence your emails as per the recommended time intervals.

Personalization – You can personalize your emails as per the customer and tailor the discounts for them. So you can avoid sending the same discount to every customer alike.

Features – It also has built-in features like Countdown timer or exit-intent popup to help you prevent cart abandonment.

This Smart Recovery system is the one-stop destination for your Abandoned cart foes.

You can also integrate your ESPs with Retainful and start connecting to your customers thus offering a multi-channel engagement with customers.

How to create an automated cart recovery campaign in your store?

Creating an automated cart recovery campaign is pretty simple and straightforward using Retainful.

You can set the time sequence of the emails, personalize it using shortcodes, and send discounts to entice the customers to return to the store.

This is how Retainful’s cart recovery process progresses,

1. Customers abandon his cart, which instantly triggers the Cart Recovery sequence.
2. The first email is sent minutes after the Cart abandonment and it is a reminder email.
3. The second email is sent an hour after abandonment which usually has a discount to motivate the customer.
4. Now the customer will return to his cart to make use of that discount which converts your lost cart into sales.
5. That’s how Retainful works, the recommended time sequence will be discussed in the following sections.

An intuitive feature that can help you in your Cart Recovery campaign is the Add-to-cart popup. It can capture customers’ email addresses so that you can communicate with them once the cart is abandoned.

How to check WooCommerce Abandoned Carts?

If you want to initiate your Cart recovery campaign first you should know how to check WooCommerce abandoned carts.

You should have the data like the number of abandoned carts, the number of recoverable carts, and revenue.

Only with these metrics, you can have a successful campaign.

Don’t worry, Retainful has got the answers for you. Its insightful dashboard furnishes all the necessary information in real-time.

You can find the following details.

The total (number of)

• Abandoned Carts
• Abandoned Revenue
• Recovered Carts
• Recovered Revenue
• Recoverable Carts

If you want to get the specific details of your WooCommerce abandoned carts. Then,

• Click on the “Carts” from the Retainful.
• Toggle to “Abandoned Carts” in the “Filter By” section.

You can find the list of WooCommerce abandoned cart details along with the date of abandonment, the customer’s name, and the abandoned cart’s value.

These details are essential to tailor your cart recovery emails. The plugin also allows you to view each cart separately and delete it if unnecessary.

Now, once you have all these data you can initiate your Cart recovery campaign.

The Cart Recovery Campaign

Creating the emails

You can create Cart Recovery emails using Retainful in just a few steps. You can log in to or Sign up with Retainful in here.

Once you are logged in,

Here is how you can create Cart Recovery emails,

1. Navigate to Retainful dashboard → Emails → Manage emails

2. The email templates page will be opened with 3 email templates by default.

3. Time sequence can be altered and subject lines can be edited by clicking ‘edit’.

4. Select the recommended time sequence, do this for all three templates.
5. Then click ‘Customize’ to edit the email templates.

6. After customizing, click ‘Save and Set live’, the first email template would be triggered 30 minutes after cart abandonment as per the recommended sequence.
7. Similarly, do it for the other two templates. Once you are done with the sequence, your email series will look like this,

We have now created your abandoned cart emails using the predefined templates.

Once you’ve created these emails, Retainful will automatically send it to customers until they recover their carts.

Timing Sequence

You’ve created your emails and now you can recover your abandoned carts.

Here is the recommended sequence for sending Cart Recovery emails,

1. Send 1 hour after cart abandonment
2. Send 6 hours after cart abandonment
3. Send 1 day after cart abandonment
4. Send 3 days after cart abandonment
5. Send 7 days after cart abandonment

Emails templates and its aspects

Each email should concentrate on different aspects as shown below,

• 1st email (1 hour after cart abandonment) – Just tell them what they left in their cart.

• 2nd Email (6 days after cart abandonment) – Entice them with an offer or a discount and motivate them to come back.

• 3rd email (1 day after cart abandonment) – Encourage them to return to your store by showing the testimonials.

• 4th Email ( 3 days after cart abandonment) – Create a feeling of scarcity. Ask them to act soon or they’ll lose the product.

• 5th email (7 days after cart abandonment) – Use psychological triggers, give them a Fear of Missing Out on an exclusive product.

Once you start sending these emails to your customers, they’ll definitely come back to your store to recover it and make use of the discounts you offer.

Trust us! We’ve done it before and it works seamlessly.

Sending Discount Coupons

Retainful allows you to add discounts or coupons in your Cart Recovery emails so you can motivate your customers to return to your store.

Attaching discounts to emails takes just a few steps,

1. Navigate to WordPress dashboard → WooCommerce → Coupons
2. Create our coupon. Based on the customer’s purchase you can decide the percentage of discount you want to offer (5% or 10%)
3. Now back to your email templates and click ‘Customize’
4. Click on the shortcode {{retainful_coupon}} on your email template ( if you don’t have it, please drag and drop the coupon block from the right-side panel)
5. Enter the coupon code on the right side of the panel.

That’s how simple it is to add coupons to your Cart recovery emails. Your customers will be enticed to visit your store to make use of that discount thus converting your lost cart into sales.

WooCommerce Cart Recovery Email Examples

There are a lot of WooCommerce stores that run their own Cart recovery campaign and here are some of the best WooCommerce Abandonment cart Email Examples for each aspect.

Reminder Email

The first email you send to your customer after they’ve abandoned their cart is the simple reminder email.

The objective is to take it slow, don’t rush your customers, just send an email to remind them about the products they left in their cart.

Just tell customers what they’ve left in the cart, this will personalize the email and show what they’re missing out.

You can also use shortcodes to add the customer’s name to make it even more tailored to a specific customer. By doing this you might be increasing the chance of conversions.

Discount Email

Everyone loves discounts! Why don’t you use it to motivate the customers to return to your store?

Yes, when you send your second cart recovery email make sure you add an exclusive discount in it.

Sometimes, a customer would’ve abandoned their cart because of a higher product price. Now by offering discounts they will be happy to return to your store to purchase the product.

But always remember, you are only doing it to entice the customer to return to your store.

So, avoid offering too much discount and too often, then customers will make a habit of it.

Testimonial and customer review emails

Customers always trust what their peers say, so including customer testimonials in your cart recovery emails can increase your conversion rate.

Customers might’ve abandoned their carts because they weren’t sure about your brand.

So, showcasing your reviews will boost their confidence and make them return to your store to recover the cart.

You can also a bit of humor in your emails like they did, the testimonial is very encouraging, it convinces the customer to purchase the product.

Scarcity Emails

A usual trick that most WooCommerce stores do in their product pages, showing there are only a few products left.

This rushes the customer and convinces them to purchase before the product goes out of stock.

You can use this tactic in your Cart recovery emails to make the customers feel that they are going to miss a great deal.

The placement here is perfect, right above the CTA button, it persuades the customer to act quickly before the product flies away.

FreeShipping email

One of the most common reasons for cart abandonment is the lack of free shipping options.

This can be your last shot in convincing the customer to return back to your store if the previous emails fail.

So go for the kill, inform that you’ll be offering Free shipping of the customer want to recover their cart.

This will persuade the customer to recover their cart and get free shipping. But don’t offer this discount for all the customers, only to the potential ones.

Conclusion

WooCommerce Abandoned carts are a menace to the eCommerce stores. But thanks to cart recovery plugins like Retainful, now we know how to check WooCommerce Abandoned carts and we can recover these carts in no time and convert them into sales.

These plugins are automated so you can concentrate on your work while this plugin takes care of your cart recovery campaign.