Best Practice on Basket Abandonment Emails

By: Matthew Kelleher | November 3rd, 2010

Everyone is doing basket abandonment emails today… or so I thought. But I have just been proved wrong.

At RedEye we are soon to launch a Benchmarking Report on Behavioural Email Marketing, but one of the standout statistics strikes me as important. According to RedEye’s own research, less than 10% of the top 100 UK e-commerce sites (as defined by Hitwise) currently do basket abandonment email (the research is reassuring, however, because half of those that do are RedEye clients!).

So I thought I would post the top 10 best practice learnings that we have had from the last 10 years…

Address the likely reasons why someone has abandoned the basket. The top 3 reasons why this happens are (a) an over complicated check out procedure/usability, (2) the price or (3) the person was comparison shopping. Which is the most likely to have occurred on your site?
Stick to the subject – do not clutter the email with any other messages or confuse the consumer. Short, ‘postcard’ style creative addressing the potential problem is best. Keep the text clear, detailing the reason for the email and use white space to enforce the singularity of the message.
The Call To Action (CTA) is as important, if not more so, on a basket abandonment email as on a ‘newsletter’ format. Keep it above the fold and relevant to the issue, such as “return to your basket here” or “Have you not found what you are looking for?”.
If an individual abandons 5 times in 10 minutes, don’t send 5 abandon baskets!! Set a rule that the individual can only receive one abandon email per month.
Offer help. One of the best ways to offer help is to publish a telephone number, but don’t forget to make it a bespoke line so the value of the email can be attributed back to the basket abandonment email.
Reinforce the reason why the individual chose your company in the first place… clearly and succinctly state your brand values and USPs.
Dynamically generate the content and the product/s sitting in the basket… remind the consumer of what they are missing out on.
Test the timeliness – 6 hours, 24 hours, 72 hours… very often this will depend on both the type of product. Large ticket items encourage comparison browsing, so give the individual a few more hours to do their comparisons and to discuss the purchase with their partner or family.
Test a follow up abandon basket to those who don’t open or those who open but still don’t buy.
Finally, DON’T teach your best customer to abandon baskets by offering a blanket discount in the basket abandonment email. If you want to offer free P&P or a discount, either do it irregularly (eg every 3^rd time) or only if are convinced that pricing is key and they are/are not a loyal customer.

Basket abandonment email can be your most effective email, with the highest open and click rates and generating the greatest revenue. Not doing it seems foolhardy!!