Abandoned Cart Recovery: Boost Your Sales

What is Abandoned Cart Recovery?

Abandoned cart recovery is a feature of Big Cartel that enables an important way to boost your sales. It is a series of automated messages sent to your customers who have added items to their cart and partially completed checkout, but haven't completed their purchase. These emails serve as friendly reminders, encouraging customers to return and complete payment helping to recover abandoned carts and checkouts.

Abandoned Cart Emails are an exclusive feature available to our Diamond plan. Need to upgrade? Explore our plans.
Already on our Diamond plan? Enable this feature in your account preferences in your Big Cartel admin.

Why Use Abandoned Cart Emails?

1. Recover Lost Sales: Remind potential customers about items they were interested in, increasing the chances of completed purchases. 2. Improve Customer Experience: Provide a helpful reminder service to your shoppers who might have gotten distracted or encountered issues during checkout. 3. Boost Revenue: Turn abandoned carts into completed sales, directly impacting your bottom line.

Did you know.....

On average, over 65% of online shopping carts are abandoned (Baymard Institute, 2023).
Abandoned cart emails have an average open rate of 45% (Moosend, 2023).
Nearly 50% of all abandoned cart emails are opened and over a third of clicked abandoned cart emails lead to purchases on the site (Omnisend, 2023).
Abandoned cart emails can help recover 3-14% of lost sales (Bolt, 2023).

How It Works

When enabled, Big Cartel uses a smart retry system to automatically sends up to two email reminders to customers who have started the checkout process but haven't completed their purchase.

This email is disabled by default for your shop, so we’ll never send your customers unwanted emails without your permission.

The first email is sent approximately 2 hours after the checkout was initiated but abandoned. If the purchase is still not completed, a second email is sent approximately 24 hours after the checkout was initiated. Times may vary with optimizations we do for conversion.
These emails include:
1. A reminder about the items left in the cart
2. Customized with your shop's main theme color and header image (if configured)
3. A clear call-to-action to complete the purchase

Who Can Use This Feature?

Abandoned Cart Emails are an exclusive feature available to Diamond plan shop owners.

How to Enable Abandoned Cart Emails

Log in to your Big Cartel web admin
Navigate to your Shop Preferences in your Account settings
Check the box to enable the feature for "Abandoned Cart Emails"
Save your changes

It's that simple! Once enabled, the system will automatically send emails for eligible abandoned carts.

Important Notes

Emails are only sent if the customer has entered their email address in the first step of the checkout process.
Your customers can choose to unsubscribe from these emails with a single click in the footer of any of the cart reminder emails. Their opt out will prevent them from receiving future abandoned cart emails, and does not do any suppression or unsubscribes from your marketing emails that you may be using.
Before sending a notification, we check that at least one item in the cart is still in stock and active. If no items are available, we skip the notification.
The email content is customized automatically to match your other store emails and will feature your shop theme logo (if set) and background color of your shop. The rest of the email content itself is not customizable.

Best Practices

Keep Your Inventory Updated: Ensure your product inventory is accurate to avoid sending notifications for out-of-stock items.
Optimize Your Checkout Process: While abandoned cart emails can help recover sales, it's best to have a smooth, user-friendly checkout process to minimize abandonments in the first place.
Monitor Performance: Keep an eye on your sales to see the impact of abandoned cart emails over time.

Upgrade to Access This Feature

If you're not on the Diamond plan yet, consider upgrading to take advantage of this powerful sales recovery tool. Abandoned Cart Emails, along with other exclusive features, can help take your Big Cartel shop to the next level.

Ready to boost your sales with Abandoned Cart Emails? Enable the feature in your shop preferences today!