BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver Tool
Last updated: March 21 2024
This comprehensive guide will delve into the BigCommerce abandoned cart saver tool, equipping you with the knowledge and insights needed to optimize customer engagement and boost your online store’s success.
BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver Overview
The Abandoned Cart Saver, a built-in feature of BigCommerce, is designed to help recover sales that might otherwise be lost.
It sends emails to customers who have items in their shopping cart but exit the website before finalizing their purchase. These emails can be personalized and may include discounts to encourage shoppers to return and complete their transactions.
When the Abandoned Cart Saver is activated in your store, it will automatically trigger in situations such as:
- A logged-in customer adds items to their cart but leaves without buying.
- A shopper faces an error during checkout, which results in an incomplete order.
- A guest shopper adds items to their cart and enters an email address but does not complete the purchase.
Once a customer consents to receive emails, the system sends them at set times (1 hour, 1 day, and 2 days after the cart is abandoned) with the option to customize up to three active email templates per storefront.
To use the Abandoned Cart Saver, merchants must:
- Have a BigCommerce store subscription on the Plus or Enterprise plan.
- Hold specific user permissions to manage settings and notifications for abandoned carts.
- Enable abandoned cart emails in your merchant notifications.
- Maintain active and compliant templates for sending out emails.
How To Enable And Configure The Abandoned Cart Saver
There are 2 main parts to activating the Abandoned Cart Saver feature on your BigCommerce store and fine-tuning its settings. Follow these streamlined instructions:
Step 1: Enabling abandoned cart notifications:
- Navigate to the control panel.
- Select ‘Settings’ from the main menu.
- Choose ‘General’ and then ‘Miscellaneous’.
- In this section, you can enable abandoned cart emails and customize your notification preferences regarding frequency.
Step 2: Configuring email settings
- Go back to the main dashboard of your control panel.
- Click on ‘Marketing’ and find the ‘Abandoned Cart Emails’ option.
- Here you have a maximum of 3 email templates that can be customized and set up the timing for when the emails should be sent.
- You can also enable or disable a template by clicking the ⋯ settings button next to a template and selecting Enable or Disable.
Step 3: Monitor and adjust
- Once your emails are configured, keep an eye on the Carts report in the Analytics section to monitor abandoned carts and see how well your emails are converting.
- Based on this data, you can tweak your email content, timing, and promotions to improve performance.
Setting Up BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver Emails
Email communication is the heart of the Abandoned Cart Saver; BigCommerce offers merchants robust tools to set up, customize, and manage email campaigns.
When you can access the email settings dashboard, here are the things you can adjust:
- Manage storefront specifics:
- Use the dropdown at the top of the page to toggle between managing global templates and those for individual storefronts.
- For multiple storefronts, decide whether to use global templates or customize them for each storefront.
- Enable and disable templates:
- Templates are shown with an “Enabled” or “Disabled” status.
- Disable an active template or enable a disabled one using the ⋯ settings button.
- No more than three templates can be active at once.
- Edit email templates:
- Click ‘+ Add template’ to create a new one or choose ‘Edit Template’ to modify an existing one.
- Back up your template by saving it in a text editor before making changes.
- Customize email settings:
- Set the timing for sending emails in the ‘Send in’ dropdown, ranging from 1 hour to 10 days post-abandonment.
- Add coupon codes if desired to incentivize shoppers to complete their orders.
- Edit phrases and content:
- Under ‘Phrases’, edit the text identifiers (phrase names) and outputs (phrase values) used in the email template.
- Delete phrases or add new ones to tailor your message.
- Modify the code:
- Go to the ‘Code’ tab to customize the Subject line (max 255 characters) and Email Body with HTML and Handlebars code.
- Insert variables like , , etc., to personalize the content.
- Test and preview:
- Send a test email to your address at the right top of the site or use the ‘Preview’ tab to check the template’s appearance.
- Make adjustments as needed and save your changes.
- Restore defaults (if needed):
- Use ‘Reset to defaults’ to revert a global template to its original settings.
- To align a storefront-specific template with global values, check ‘Use Global.’
Remember to follow best practices when setting up your email sequences:
- Timing: Space out emails strategically (e.g., after 1 hour, 1 day, and 2 days).
- Frequency: Avoid overwhelming customers; stick to the recommended number of emails.
- Content: Ensure your message is clear, engaging, and provides a compelling call to action, possibly enhanced with incentives like coupons.
Here are some tips for crafting compelling abandoned cart emails:
- Subject line impact: Start with a catchy, personalized subject line that grabs attention and evokes curiosity or urgency.
- Personalization: Use the customer’s name and reference the specific items they left behind to create a connection.
- Clear messaging: Keep the email focused on the abandoned cart items and the call to action, making it easy for the customer to understand what to do next.
- Visual appeal: Include high-quality images of the abandoned products to visually remind the customer of what they’re missing.
- Convenience: Provide a clear, prominent button or link that takes them directly back to their cart with the items they intend to buy.
- Reassurance: Build trust by including customer testimonials, ratings, or security badges, reassuring them of the quality and safety of the purchase.
Strategies for Maximizing BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery
To maximize the effectiveness of abandoned cart recovery efforts, it’s crucial to implement strategies that resonate with customers and compel them to complete their purchases.
- Personalization Strategies: Create a sense of individual attention and relevance.
- Use customer data to tailor the email content.
- Address the customer by name and reference items they’ve shown interest in.
- Consider the customer’s purchase history or browsing behavior to recommend similar products or accessories.
Personalized emails can increase the likelihood of customers returning to their carts because they feel the message was crafted specifically for them, enhancing the overall customer experience and connection with the brand.
- Incentive Offers: Provide a tangible reason for customers to act.
- Incentivize the completion of the purchase by offering discounts, free shipping, or a bonus product. These offers should be time-sensitive to add a sense of urgency.
Discounts and free shipping are often the push a hesitant customer needs to finalize a purchase. The key is to strike a balance between enticing the customer and maintaining profitability.
- Social Proof and Urgency: Leverage community influence and time constraints to drive action.
- Include customer testimonials, reviews, and ratings for the abandoned items.
- Showcase the popularity of items to indicate high demand
- Create urgency by mentioning limited stock, looming price increases, or the expiration of a special offer.
Social proof validates the customer’s choice and mitigates hesitation. Urgency encourages quick action to avoid missing out, effectively reducing the time a customer may dwell on the decision to purchase.
Additional Tools and Integrations to Enhance BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery
The BigCommerce App Store offers a range of tools and integrations to strongly enhance abandoned cart recovery efforts, each bringing unique features to help boost your store’s sales.
Here are several robust options:
- Omnisend’s Email & SMS Marketing: This automation app offers cross-device cart recovery, enabling you to win back up to 20% of orders by reaching shoppers who have abandoned their carts.
Ratings: 4/5
- Recapture Abandoned Cart and SMS/Email Marketing: A leader in abandoned cart recovery, known for its simplicity and effectiveness, Recapture has helped stores recover over $220,000,000.
Ratings: 5/5
- Abandoned Cart Recovery by Chated.io: A straightforward tool that allows you to customize and schedule up to three emails to reconnect with customers who haven’t completed their purchase, aiming to increase your store’s revenue through warm, persuasive reminders
Ratings: 2/5
- TargetBay Email Marketing and Newsletters: With over 250 ready-made email templates, TargetBay focuses on stopping cart abandonment through triggered emails. It’s a comprehensive solution for engaging customers post-abandonment.
Ratings: 5/5
Best BigCommerce Abandonment Carts Apps
Chated.io
Chated.io helps you tailor and plan up to three emails to deliver to consumers who abandoned their cart. This will serve to inform them and increase the popularity of your shop.
Remarkety
This software is one of the leading eCommerce sites for discussing shopper behavior and buying background.
Some Remarkety features enable you to segment your customers with product recommendations based on their personalities in your shop. Besides, it allows sending customized discounts, re-engage your customers that are no longer involved, collecting your guests’ emails to help construct your email list, develop a loyalty scheme, and many more.
Springbot
Springbot enables small to medium-sized retailers to recognize and leverage marketing results. It eliminates the need for different resources by delivering analytics and marketing automation in a single dynamic platform to simplify monitoring and operating a multi-channel marketing strategy.
SmartrMail
SmartrMail has an excellent update that allows you to deliver up to three follow-up emails when a consumer abandons their shopping cart. You may even provide coupon coupons and even mix and match deals with your follow-up emails.
This software focuses solely on eCommerce and integrates the webshop with the best integrations to send out more tailored and appropriate emails. This suggests that whether you use Shopify or Bigcommerce, you can use this app instead of the others.
Revamp CRM
Revamp CRM is an eCommerce and Sales CRM that includes segmentation and efficient automatic email marketing. Additionally, it has an award-winning CRM, which received the expert preference award in 2016 and the best free trial and customer interface awards.
This app has several functions, including automated sync with all BigCommerce clients, brands, and group orders, a display of all orders under relevant consumers, the ability to segment customers depending on their buying behavior, and the ability to see the overall order count, AOV, and value. This has over 40 filters that you can use to separate your clients in a few minutes based on their actions, order background, notes, and files, assigning assignments to team members, or leaving them unassigned.
Final Thought
The BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Saver Tool is a pivotal solution for maximizing revenue potential for your online store. Now you know how to use this tool, enable it to turn abandoned carts into opportunities for conversion and growth.
FAQs
A BigCommerce abandoned cart occurs when a potential customer starts the checkout process for an online order but leaves the site before completing the purchase. This feature in BigCommerce tracks these instances, allowing merchants to identify lost sales opportunities and implement strategies to recover them, often through automated emails encouraging customers to return and complete their purchases.
Abandoned carts can occur for various reasons, often related to the online shopping experience, the customer decision-making process, or technical issues. Common causes include:
- High additional costs: Unexpected costs like shipping, taxes, and fees added at checkout can deter customers.
- Limited special offers: Insufficient discounts or unappealing coupons may make customers leave for better deals elsewhere.
- Complex checkout process: A long or complicated checkout process can frustrate shoppers into leaving.
- Limited payment options: Lack of preferred payment methods can turn potential buyers away.
- Technical issues or website errors: Glitches, slow loading times, or errors during checkout can cause abandonment.
- Lack of trust signals: The absence of reviews, ratings, or security badges might make shoppers hesitant.
According to research from the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate for online shopping carts is 69.82%, meaning that nearly 7 out of every 10 customers leave without completing their purchase. This statistic is generally applicable across e-commerce platforms, including BigCommerce.
Yes, in BigCommerce, you can set up a series of emails to be sent out at different intervals but at strategic points after the customer's carts have been abandoned. This strategy allows you to remind customers about their abandoned carts multiple times.
An effective abandoned cart email should include several key elements to encourage customers to complete their purchase:
- Personalization: Use the recipient's name and reference specific items they left in their cart.
- Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Make it easy for customers to return to their cart with a prominent and clear CTA button.
- Visuals of the abandoned products: Include images of the products left in the cart to remind customers what they’re missing.
- Urgency or scarcity: Mention if the items are in high demand or if there’s a limited-time offer to encourage quick action.
- Special offers or incentives: Offer a discount, free shipping, or a gift to motivate them to complete the purchase.
- Support contact information: Provide a way for customers to get in touch if they have questions or concerns about their order.
To track the success of your abandoned cart emails in BigCommerce, you'll want to leverage a combination of BigCommerce's built-in analytics and any integrated third-party analytics or email marketing tools you're using
- Use BigCommerce Analytics: Check the analytics section in BigCommerce for reports on cart abandonment and email recovery rates.
- Leverage integrated email marketing tools: If using third-party email tools (like Omnisend, Mailchimp, or Klaviyo), utilize their detailed analytics for open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates specific to your abandoned cart emails.