E-commerce abandoned cart text message examples that will save your sales

Abandoned cart text messages are something no e-commerce business owner wants to send. Unfortunately, they’re a necessity anytime a customer leaves their items in limbo.d

You might ask “Why bother?” Are abandoned cart text messages really worth sending? In a word, yes. E-commerce abandoned cart texts see a 36% click-through rate (versus just 3.2% for email), which represents revenue you can’t miss out on.

With that in mind, as a veteran of the SMS marketing industry with years of seeing the best and worst of e-commerce texting, I’ll give you some ready-to-use examples along with some invaluable tips and tricks to get you started.

E-commerce abandoned cart text messages are texts designed to remind your customers that they have items still in their cart that they haven’t finished purchasing and encourage them to come back and check out.

They typically contain a greeting, a mention of the items still left in the cart, and a call to action (CTA).

If you’re reading this, you’re likely looking for some inspiration as you get started writing your abandoned cart texts. Without further ado, here are eight abandoned cart text message examples you can take and use in your own business today.

With a discount

Personalized

With an invitation to reply

With a link to the cart

A/B testing CTA’s

Option 1

Option 2

Offering a surprise discount

Casual/playful

During a flash sale

Now that you know what to send, it’s time to talk about how. Fortunately, SimpleTexting offers a few different options for sending e-commerce abandoned cart texts.

Integrations

Third-party integrations make triggering automatic messages seriously convenient for e-commerce business owners. The most common integrations these brands use are Zapier and Shopify.

For Zapier users, the process varies depending on which software you connect Zapier to, but the basic idea is that you set up a trigger (that’s the customer action that will launch your pre-written text) and your action (in this case, that would be the text itself sending).

So, for abandoned cart texts, you’d set up a trigger based on customers leaving items in their cart without completing their purchase and an action that sends out your reminder text in response.

Shopify integrations work similarly. You can simply set up a trigger based on carts that your customers have left incomplete and automate a text to send whenever that happens. 

Inbox

If you serve a relatively small customer base or want the option to send out individual abandoned cart texts, I recommend the SimpleTexting inbox.

1. After logging into your SimpleTexting account, select Inbox from the left-hand menu.
2. Start a new conversation or choose an existing one. 
3. In the message box at the bottom of the screen, type out your abandoned cart text and either hit Send to send it immediately or click the clock icon to schedule it for a future date and time.

Pro tip: To save some time and effort, you can also save your standard abandoned cart message as a template. This will allow you to send it in just a few clicks each time.

Customer segments

Customer segments are essentially groups of customers with something in common. In this case, that’s customers who abandoned their carts. 

Using segments to send your abandoned cart texts works best if you’re sending a second follow-up after you’ve sent a link. What do I mean by that? Well…

If you sent an initial abandoned cart text with a link to complete their purchase, you could then create a segment made up of subscribers who never clicked the link. Here’s how:

1. In your SimpleTexting account, choose Contacts from the left-hand menu, then Segments. 
2. Hit New segment, then Add criteria.

3. From the criteria drop-down menu, choose Link.
4. Choose not clicked and on campaign, then move to the next line and specify the campaign you’re referring to and the link they didn’t click on. 

5. Save your segment. 

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.

You’re almost ready to start sending. Before you do, take a look at our top three best practices for abandoned cart texts.

• Don’t send too many. Reminders of any kind can go from helpful to annoying if brands send too many of them. Limit yourself to one abandoned cart text and potentially one follow-up message and leave it at that if there’s no response.
• Get contact consent before you text. Express written consent is a must in text marketing. As long as you use a compliant opt-in method and you’ve identified both your brand and a way to help contacts opt out of your messages, you’re set up for success.
• Be aware of your timing. It won’t help your results if contacts are getting your texts at four in the morning. Make sure you send your texts between normal business hours and take time zones into account (even and especially when you’re setting up automated texts).

Elements of this piece were originally published April 20, 2020. Drew Wilkinson and Meghan Tocci contributed to this piece.