How to Send Abandoned Cart Text Messages (With Examples)

According to e-commerce experts, the top 7 reasons why shoppers abandon their shopping carts include:

• High shipping costs or unexpected checkout charges
• No guest registration/checkout option
• Long and/or confusing checkout process
• Website errors and crashes
• Payment security concerns
• Not being ready to make a purchase
• Want to save products for later consideration

But as a retailer, the frustration of having a customer so close to the checkout (only to back out at the last minute) is real. The financial cost is also significant. Online stores lost sales come to a whopping $18 billion because of cart abandonment.  While the above reasons provide clarity, they don’t tell you how to cut to the root of the issue.

There’s only so much you can do about shipping costs and website bugs. But when it comes to helping usher customers towards taking the purchasing plunge, we have some excellent texting tips.

Recover Abandoned Carts With Text Messages

Are you tired of tweaking your abandoned cart emails subject line in the hope you send a small improvement in performance? Don’t get us wrong––email marketing is great. But sometimes you need a new arrow in the quiver.

Abandoned cart text messages are a great way to encourage customers to complete their orders. Not only are they unobtrusive, but they’re far less likely to get lost or ignored among an overcrowded inbox like abandoned cart emails.

Text reminders are standard practice across industries, but they’ve found their perfect match in e-commerce. There are a few ways you can use texts to help your abandoned cart recovery strategy.

1. Send Friendly Reminders

There’s a chance that carts are abandoned because your customers simply forgot about it. In this case, all they need is a gentle reminder to revisit your site. You can use SMS messages as a tool to send these reminders. If you include a link to your checkout page, you can be sure to track it to follow through and tier your responses accordingly to who did or did not take action!

2. Provide Customers With Coupons or Discount Codes

While you may not know why a customer abandoned their cart, approaching the situation with a benefit is a safe way to serve the situation. Offering coupons or free shipping can cut costs, alleviate tension, and create a sense of urgency for a buyer who might be on the fence! It will also do wonders for your conversion rates.

3. Ask Them if They Have Any Questions?

A customer may love a product, but their lingering questions can cause them to pause on purchasing. Questions tend to result in inaction. Help give your customers the nudge they need by proactively asking them in you can answer any questions about the products in their cart.

In addition to these strategies, here are some other abandoned cart best practices to keep in mind when you’re writing your texts:

• Have a clear call to action (CTA)– The heart of your message should always give customers an explicit action to take (click this, call this, reply this….)
• Promote scarcity– Customers abandoning carts implies that they’re okay with the risk of an item disappearing on them. You want to ensure that customers feel a little bit of that pressure by letting them know the item won’t last forever. Come at your customer with an act now approach. Words like “items going fast” and “your cart is expiring” are non-confrontational ways to inspire scarcity.
• Keep it simple– Your abandoned cart text message isn’t the time to push your other sales agendas. You want to keep your customers focused on their one purpose: the abandoned cart.

How to Send Abandoned Cart Text Messages With SimpleTexting & Shopify

Thanks to our integration with Zapier, you can integrate your text marketing with all the tools and apps you use to keep your business running. Shopify, one of the most popular e-commerce platforms, works seamlessly with SimpleTexting to automatically generate abandoned cart text messages. (You can also collect your customer’s phone numbers.)

If you aren’t a Shopify customer, the same process applies to whatever online store platform you use. Here are the three easy steps you need to take. It’s worth noting that you’ll need a SimpleTexting, Zapier, and Shopify account. 

1. Set the “When This Happens” Field

You’ll first need to select the “When this happens” field in Zapier. You can start the process here.

You’ll then need to log into your Shopify account and authorize Zapier. Now you’ll be able to set how many hours after an abandoned cart occurs that you want your text to send. This study from Rejoiner found that 1 hour appears to be the sweet spot.

2. Set the “Then Do This” Field

In the “Then do this” field, you’ll have to log into your SimpleTexting account. You’ll then write your template abandoned cart text message in Zapier. You can select a number of fields to include in your text to personalize it. Here’s an example of an SMS:

You can then send a test text message to see how it looks.

3. Set Your Abandoned Cart Text Messages Live

The last step is to set your abandoned cart automation live. You can do this by turning the “Zap” on at the bottom of your screen:

As you can see the entire process takes less than 15 minutes to set up. If you have any doubts or need help getting set up, reach out to our support team by clicking the blue chat bubble in the corner of your screen. We’re always here to help answer questions about SMS marketing.