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If you’re the owner of an e-commerce business, you’ll know this story well. A customer visits your site, looks around aaand doesn’t buy anything. Don’t panic – this is common! In fact, 92% of consumers who visit your site won’t buy the first time according to this study. How do you get them back? Read that title again – you set up a browse abandonment flow. Or more specifically, a Klaviyo browse abandonment flow.
As Klaviyo experts, we’ll show you how to create an effective automated Klaviyo browse abandonment flow so you won’t have mountains of unsold products in your inventory waiting for a new home.
What is Browse Abandonment?
Exactly as the description says, it’s an email sent to contacts who have been scrolling through your website for a while, but haven’t added anything to their carts.
These emails act as simple reminders for browsers and longtime lurkers to return and purchase.
Luckily for you, with Klaviyo, this feature for email workflows is completely automated. So, once your content’s ready to go, these mails will send themselves, literally. Oh, and if you want to learn more about other kinds of effective workflows, have a look at this post.
Why browse abandonment matters for e-commerce
Can browse abandonment emails really benefit your bottom line? We hope you won’t ask this… ever again.
In Q1 of 2019 alone, Klaviyo's browse abandonment email workflows generated over $17 million in revenue for their customers. That could be you, dear reader! You see? Browse abandonment emails are DEFINITELY something you need.
Best Practices for Browse Abandonment Emails
So now that you realize how much you need a browse abandonment flow in your life, you should start creating emails that will have your customers hopping back onto your site and clicking 'add to cart' in no time. How? Here are some simple guidelines to get you started.
Timing and Frequency of Emails
When you send is just as important as what you send. According to the email experts at Klaviyo, the top-performing brands in terms of browse abandonment were sending 2 emails or less in their workflows. Most importantly though, these emails were all sent within a few hours of a customer leaving the site.
Wait too long and your potential customer is likely to have moved on. Send too soon and your brand could be seen as pushy. You’ll need to get this timing juuuust right.
Personalization Techniques
Your Klaviyo browse abandonment emails should always include a description or image of the product(s) the recipient was browsing previously. In addition, you should add images or descriptions of other, similar products that the contact might be interested in as well. This way, you can highlight things that these recipients might have missed the first time around and ensure that this flow is personalized to each recipient.
Create a Sense of Urgency
If a customer feels like they can return to your site ‘whenever’, they’re less likely to purchase ASAP. It’s always a good idea to use language like ‘while stocks last’ or ‘available today only’.
And, while it’s not often done, there’s nothing stopping you from adding a small discount or incentive to your browse abandonment flow.
Effective Subject Lines
For browse abandonment especially, you don’t want to come across as too sales-focused and scare someone off before they’ve even purchased anything. Keep your SL friendly and low-key. Questions are generally good. Think in terms of phrases like ‘checking us out?’ and ‘Hey, did you forget something?' - anything that piques recipients’ curiosity and gets them to return to your site.
Offer Help
Sometimes, browsers won’t purchase because they’re having registration issues on your site or they don’t understand a product description. Or, they might just have questions that they can’t find an answer to on your site.
As a result, be sure to include a HELP/CONTACT section in your browse abandonment emails to address any concerns that could be holding someone back from purchasing. It’s always better to over-communicate than under-communicate with your potential customers.
A/B Testing Subject Lines, Content, and Timing
Think browse abandonment doesn’t need A/B testing? Think again. Simple subject lines and send time tests on these flows can end up having a big impact on your bottom line. But that’s not all – you can test content and design here, too. Or even sending delays, like triggering the flow immediately after a customer leaves a site vs 30 minutes after. Check this out for some more ideas.
Examples
Some companies use big, attention-grabbing images. Others keep it super simple with just a sentence or two. If you want to know what your browse abandonment emails could look like, check these out:
Although anything is better than nothing when it comes to browse abandonment messaging, and Klaviyo’s default templates allow you to do exactly that, we definitely recommend designing (and writing) your browse abandonment emails to be as on-brand as possible.
In some instances, this will be one of your first email touchpoints with a contact – you need to be sure that you’re introducing your brand the right way.
Setting Up a Browse Abandonment Flow in Klaviyo
We’ve written before about just how fantastic Klaviyo’s segmentation and filtering options are. Well, browse abandonment is no exception. With Klaviyo, you can tailor your browse abandonment workflows to target a wide range of customers. This includes people who have viewed a product more than once, people who might be interested in special offers, and people who have ordered before, to name a few.
You can also split your flows into categories like Purchasers vs Non-Purchasers, Product Type or Product Category and Domestic VS International. Why is this so great, you ask? It’s simple, the more specific your emails, the better the response you’ll get. Plus, splitting your browse abandonment workflows like this will also help you determine your content.
For example; you can add a free shipping message to your Domestic Customers list. Then, for International Customers, you could change your message and offer a small discount instead.
And remember that whole upselling thing we mentioned earlier? Splitting your flows using product categories will make it so much simpler to achieve!
Case Studies
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We gave nail art brand Maniology’s browse abandonment flow a full makeover and the results were dazzling. In just six months, we increased revenue by 196%. And that was just the beginning. Click here for the full, fabulous story.
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When DSLRPros decided to change their flight path and head straight for CodeCrew, their browse abandonment flow was one of the first things we revamped. Before you could say, “Drone and dusted,” their campaigns saw a 445% increase in unique clicks and a 227% increase in average revenue per recipients. Click here for all the details.
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Lastly, after making history on Shark Tank, Knife Aid looked to us to level up their email marketing. Naturally, we whipped up a super sharp browse abandonment flow (along with a few others) and soon saw a 25x increase in profits in the first quarter alone. Click here to see what else we achieved.
Key Metrics to Track
They say you can’t improve what you don’t measure, and that’s especially true when it comes to your browse abandonment flow. Here you’ll want to pay special attention to your open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, as well the revenue generated from this flow.
Once you’ve set up your new browse abandonment flow, you’ll (hopefully) see an increase in these metrics. If one of the metrics is underperforming, you’ll want to make adjustments as soon as possible. Usually, A/B testing will help determine what works and what needs to be jettisoned.
Why not leave it to the email marketing experts?
With these tips and tricks, you should be well on your way to creating fantastic browse abandonment emails. But there is another way your flows (and your ROI) could be even better.
With the help of some email marketing pros like CodeCrew, you could be extracting the maximum possible revenue from your browse abandonment flow, along with your entire email marketing program. Using data-driven strategies, attention-grabbing content, and insanely beautiful design, all created from years of experience, we’ll build exactly the kind of email marketing campaigns you need to get the kind results you’ve always wanted.
