A common eCommerce problem is prospects exiting the page before completing their order. As consumers, we’ve all done it before. So the team at Envelopes.com wanted to see if they could “rekindle the flame” and land some sales from hot leads using target followups. These are visitors who created an account and put an item in their shopping cart, so we can see some real intent to purchase at some stage down the track.
The Envelopes.com team were confident that sending targeted follow-up emails generally resulted in sales but weren’t sure of the best timeframe to send them. So they tested out email sends at two alternate time lapses post cart abandonment; the first group sent the following morning at 11 a.m. and the second group 48 hours post cart abandonment.
The emails sent at 11 a.m. the following day delivered:
an open rate of 38.63%
a click-through rate of 19.54% and
a conversion rate to a sale of 27.66%
The emails sent after 48 hours delivered:
an open rate of 38.01%
a click-through rate of 24.71% and
a conversion rate of 40.00%
Although sending these emails on the following day post cart abandonment had a slightly higher open rate, the most important figure, conversion to sale was significantly lower.
Take home message
Send a follow-up email to people who abandon their carts, if you’re not already doing it. Though Envelopes.com found that 48hrs later was the best performing time, a different cadence and time lag may work better with your customer base, so test out multiple alternatives. If you’re looking for some assistance on the creative messaging front, we have included the exact email creative used by Envelopes.com here: