During my illustrious (well, at least I think it was illustrious) time in the eCommerce email marketing world, I had the opportunity to work with lots of merchants who were diving into email marketing for the first time. And the initial recommendation my team and I would make was: Get your cart abandonment recovery emails going ASAP. The numbers clearly and unequivocally proved cart recovery emails were the most lucrative emails a company could send (our internal data once clocked them at an average of $4.80 in revenue per email sent). Plus, recovery emails were so easy to set up; craft an email series one time, click the button to go live, and let the machines work in the background to make you money indefinitely.
And while it’s true that cart abandonment recovery emails are easy to set up and can be an automated, set-it-and-forget-it revenue source for a business, “easy to set up” doesn’t mean “simple.” There’s a lot of strategy that goes into an effective, revenue-driving cart abandonment email series. Much of it is beyond the scope of what we specialize in here at SimplyCodes, however, we have deep knowledge about one of the most pivotal aspects of any recovery series: The discount code.
Should you offer a discount or other promo code in your recovery emails? If so, what kind of offer should you make? When in the automation series should you introduce the discount? How will it affect your conversion rates and average order values? And what steps can you take to max out the effectiveness of your recovery campaigns?
In this article, we’ll dig into the pros and cons of offering coupon codes in cart recovery emails as well as the six best strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of cart abandonment email discounts.
Should I offer a coupon in my cart abandonment recovery emails?
While there are major pros and cons to offering discounts in recovery campaigns, the answer to whether you should offer them is yes. Yes you should. However, to show you how we arrived at that conclusion, let’s dive into the pros and cons of discounts in recovery emails to weigh them out.
Why you should offer a coupon code in your recovery emails
Here are four extremely compelling reasons why you should use discounts to bring customers back to your store after they abandon their carts.
The number one reason for cart abandonment — by far — is an unexpected cost at checkout. Half of carts are abandoned over costs like shipping, taxes, and fees. What’s the best way to remedy a cost-driven abandonment? Give someone a discount to offset that cost.
Discounts are proven to help recover carts. 54% of shoppers will buy products they abandoned if they have the chance to buy those products at a lower price. (That goes up to 72% among millennials.)
Coupons close the deal. 57% of new customers say they wouldn’t have made their first purchase at a store without a discount.
The hunt for a coupon might’ve been the reason why a customer abandoned a cart. One study found more than a quarter of carts are abandoned by someone hunting for a coupon. So by offering them a coupon (perhaps an exclusive, single-use coupon) they couldn’t find in the wild, you give them the incentive they need to come back.
I am contractually obligated (well, not really, but I’m going with that claim anyway) to pause here to mention SimplyCodes. If those customers had the SimplyCodes browser extension installed, knowing it covers more stores than anyone else and has more valid codes than anyone else, they would never have to leave to go hunting for coupons. Maybe one day SimplyCodes will eradicate “coupon hunting” from the list of reasons for cart abandonment. Until that day arrives, however, we’ll have to keep wild goose chases for coupons on the list.
Why you should not offer discounts in your recovery emails
As good as those reasons for discounting may be, there are dissenting opinions. Here are the commonly-proposed reasons you shouldn’t offer recovery discounts.
Too much discounting can affect customer sentiment toward your brand. It’s important to be wary of the downward spiral of discounting — that is, entering a zone where customers grow to expect discounts from you (and increasingly large discounts) and only buy from you when they receive one.
When a customer can squeeze a discount out of you by simply abandoning a cart, some might perceive that as a hint of desperation.
First-time customers who use a discount are less likely to make another purchase from a store.
With those strikes against discounting, how did we arrive at the definitive conclusion you should discount? It really comes down to the old cliche: “50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.” While you could hold the line and refuse to offer coupons, that sets you down the path of losing sales and getting “100% of nothing.” After all, the stats show just how effective discounts are at capturing business from first-time and repeat buyers. And while some of those first timers may not purchase again, some most likely will.
Cart abandonment emails are essentially the last, best chance to close a sale that’s on the verge of being completely lost; they’re akin to the car salesperson running out of the dealership to offer their best deal to a customer who decided to walk away. It would be strange for that salesperson to run the a customer and not make their best possible final offer. The same applies to cart abandonment emails — they exist to close a sale after the customer walked out the door.
And finally, as we found in our roundup of the 101 best statistics about coupons and discounting, 94% of customers wind up spending more when they have a coupon. Offering a coupon won’t just close a sale — it just might help you close a sale and increase your average order value at the same time.
Fundamentals of an effective cart abandonment recovery series
Before we jump into the strategies for using coupon codes to maximize cart abandonment emails, we wanted to quickly go over the fundamentals of setting up a recovery series.
It’s generally recommended to start with a three-email automated cart abandonment recovery series (however, you can tweak based on your testing or your particular audience). And as you’re setting up your series, keep in mind that many of your customers will be happy to receive these emails. One study found 81% of online merchants believe abandoned carts are a lost cause, but that’s far from true — 75% of customers who abandon a cart actually plan to return to it. They just need the right reminder at the right moment in order to do so.
Email 1. The first email should go out within about an hour or two of a customer abandoning a cart. You want the email to go out while the potential purchase is still fresh in the customer’s mind. This email generally reminds the customer what was in their cart (with pictures of the items), offers support options in case they have a question or concern holding up the purchase, and presents a call-to-action to return to their cart to finish checking out.
Email 2. If the first email doesn’t work, the second email should go out about 24 hours later. This will again remind the customer what’s in their cart and encourage them to return. And as we’ll discuss later in this article in the section on strategies, this is a good time to present a coupon code.
Email 3. The final email in a recovery series should go out about 24 hours after the first email. This is truly the last attempt to recover the cart, so you should try to create a sense of urgency or scarcity: buy now or someone else might buy the product and you’ll miss out. This email should also attempt to solve some potential issues customers might be having; offer support options, clarify your return policy, promote your satisfaction guarantee (if you have one), and push to close the sale.
In all of these emails, it’s important not to have multiple calls-to-action — you should have one CTA, and it should be focused on getting the customer back to the store to complete their purchase.
The 6 best strategies for offering discounts to recover abandoned carts
Here are the six strategies you can employ to maximize the effectiveness of your recovery series.
Wait until the second recovery email to offer a coupon code
One of the reasons we mentioned earlier not to include discounts in recovery emails was “you don’t want to look too desperate.” And while we don’t think there’s a straight line connecting discounting and desperation, it never hurts to play a little hard-to-get with a recovery discount.
Even though high prices and surprise costs are the top reasons for cart abandonment, they aren’t the only reasons. Customers also abandon carts over things like a long checkout process, website or internet issues, credit card issues, forced account creation, and more. And in many cases, customers just put items in their cart as a de facto “wish list” — things they want but aren’t sure they’re ready to buy.
In many of those abandonment cases, they might not need a discount to close the deal; they just need a reminder their cart exists. Save the discount for the second email, where you’re using it to sweeten the deal, surprise your potential customer, and drive them to the bottom of the sales funnel where they’re ready to finally make the purchase.
This recovery email from outdoor brand Orvis introduced a free shipping offer in the second email as a way to surprise the customer to close the deal. (Here’s a look at their two nearly-identical abandonment emails, one without the offer, one with.)
Use unique discount codes in your recovery emails
Studies have shown customers often respond better to coupon codes like “X34HNS-34J” than coupon codes like “SAVE10.” Why? The first coupon codes feel more exclusive (generally because they are more exclusive, single-use codes) — and customers like that. The top five emotions customers feel when they get a personalized discount are: rewarded, excited, special, honored, and recognized. Those emotions help spark sales.
It’s usually pretty simple to offer unique discount codes in emails. Shopify has several third-party apps to generate unique promo codes, as does WooCommerce. (You could even create a solution in WooCommerce using php. Call it unique coding for unique codes.) Many of the popular eCommerce email marketing providers, like Klaviyo and Metorik, also offer a built-in option to create dynamic coupon codes for recovery emails.
Here’s an example of a unique recovery code from the clothing brand Yours.
Of course, there’s also always the workaround of creating a code that looks like a single-use code but is really the same one you’re sending to everyone. Only you will know that X34HNS-34J is the code that everyone’s getting in their second recovery email.
Offer an “addition rather than subtraction” promo code
If you’d rather not offer a discount code for cart abandonment recovery but you’d still like to utilize the power of recovery emails to their fullest, you might want to consider an “addition rather than subtraction” promo code. That’s a code where rather than taking a percentage off the price of a product or products, you offer something additive for free.
Free shipping is always a good additive offer. A study by Deloitte found 69% of customers say they love brands that offer free shipping, and 61% of purchases with free shipping might not have happened otherwise. If you don’t offer a free shipping perk at your store, you could make it a surprise bonus in your recovery emails.
Another good option for an additive promo code is a free gift with purchase. That encourages the customer to still purchase the items in their cart at full price — but now, they’ll get a free extra bonus as well.
And finally, if you have a loyalty or rewards program, you could offer bonus loyalty points for completing an abandoned cart purchase.
Utilize urgency and scarcity around the discount code
Urgency and scarcity are two of the most powerful psychological motivators, and they both work quite well with promo codes in abandoned cart emails.
When you offer a coupon code in your abandonment emails, you need to make it clear the coupon code isn’t going to last forever — in fact, quite the opposite. One study found 99% of people say a time-bound incentive will generally move them from being on the fence about purchasing the items in their abandoned cart to actually making that purchase.
Set an expiration date for the coupon code — usually 48 or 72 hours — and make that ticking clock clear in the recovery emails. (You don’t literally need to include a ticking clock countdown timer in the email — but you might find it’s effective.) You can also let customers know you’ll stop holding the items in their cart within the same time frame; this will further create a sense of urgency and scarcity if the customer is interested in limited-edition and/or low-stock products.
Here’s an example of a recovery email from clothing brand J. Jill which offers a free shipping code with a hard expiration date. (In fact, the subject line for this email reads: “Your special offer ends today. Don’t forget about these styles.”)
You don’t have to give your biggest discount of the year in recovery emails — far from it
Email provider Klaviyo analyzed the effectiveness of 1,000 abandoned cart recovery email flows (sent to more than 6.8 million customers) and found, surprisingly enough, bigger discounts didn’t lead to bigger results.
In fact, the most effective discount was 5% off. Recovery emails with that relatively small discount had the highest open rates and led to around three times more revenue per recipient than emails with significantly larger discounts. The second-most effective discount was 10% off.
These results reiterate that cart abandonment emails are often more about giving an already-interested customer a little nudge and not offering the farm to someone in a desperate attempt to secure a one-time sale. You don’t have to go overboard with your recovery discount — often, the mere presentation of any special coupon code will be enough to close the deal.
Segment your recovery emails by cart size or product to determine the most effective discounts
While the basic cart recovery series is proven to work well, you can get more complex with your recovery emails to maximize their effectiveness.
One advanced technique you may want to try is segmenting your recovery emails by cart size; that is, you send a different series of recovery emails to someone based on the value of the items in their cart. A $5 discount probably wouldn’t move the needle for someone with $500 worth of products in their cart, while it would for someone with $25 worth of products. That person with the larger cart might also need more pre-sales customer support and have more questions than someone making a smaller purchase. By segmenting different recovery emails to people with different cart sizes, you can offer the most effective coupon codes and speak the right language to close the sale.
Another advanced technique is segmenting by product. Perhaps you have some very high margin products (giving you more wiggle room for discounting) and some lower margin products (giving you less). You could offer a larger discount in recovery emails to customers who are buying your high-margin products.
Conclusion
We recommend including a coupon code in the cart abandonment recovery emails for your eCommerce store; while there are some cons to doing so, the pros far outweigh them and make the discount worthwhile.
And as you set up recovery emails with a discount, keep these six strategies in mind.
Wait until the second recovery email to offer the code.
Use unique, single-use discount codes to add an air of exclusivity.
If you don’t want to discount abandoned carts but still want to get the benefits of sending customers a promo code, offer codes that are additive, like free shipping or a free gift.
Create a sense of urgency and scarcity around the code and the products in the customer’s cart.
Don’t feel pressured to give a giant discount; often a small discount is just the nudge it takes.
Segment your recovery emails by cart size or product to determine the most effective discount codes.
