In this post, I’ll show you how to use a free WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategy to recover lost sales on your WooCommerce shop. 

I’ll walk you through the process step by step; from establishing email reminders to providing exclusive deals, so you can start regaining lost sales right away. 

But first, let’s understand what exactly cart abandonment is.

Cart abandonment is when a customer adds a product(s) to their cart and continues to the checkout page but, for some reason, chooses not to complete/place their order or check out.

Research shows that between 60% – 80% of carts are abandoned. 

But with the strategy I’m going to share with you today; the Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategy, you will be able to recover up to 3% – 14% of abandoned carts on your online store.

Let’s get to it.

Ps: Below is a step-by-step video tutorial you can follow along with.

Video: Recover Lost Sales with a Free Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategy

Keep in mind that cart recovery will only work if you gathered your customer’s email address during or on the checkout page, that way you can use their email to follow up and recover the abandoned cart.

Consider a scenario in which a customer faced a purchase-related issue that prevented them from finalizing their order, using their email address, you can notify them of the issue and include an option or link that will direct them back to the checkout page where they can finish placing their order.

If your customer encountered a different problem that prevented them from completing their purchase, you can also send them an email letting them know you can assist them and include a link that will lead them back to the already filled-out checkout page.

Additionally, you can as well send an email to your client offering them a discount on the product(s) in their cart. 

The email may include the link to the checkout page, as well as the coupon or discount code which they can copy and paste into the coupon section back on the checkout page.

You can also make the email time sensitive so that the client can take action, by including the expiry date of the coupon.

Tip:

The link provided in the email should redirect them to their previous prefilled checkout page so that they don’t have to fill in their details all over again, they can just continue and make their purchase. You can do this using session regeneration.

Apply Cart Abandonment Recovery to your Website

On the dashboard of your WordPress website, go to Plugins > Add New. When you search for “cart abandonment recovery”, go to the WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery, install ad activate it.

When your plugin is activated, you’ll find a new option under WooCommerce > Cart Abandonment.

Under Cart Abandonment, you’ll find a dashboard displaying the number of carts that were abandoned and the number of recoveries made as well as the orders that were lost, the recovery rate and revenue.

Set up Abandoned Cart Email Settings

#1. Recovery Email Settings

Under Settings, activate the tracking technology by enabling the Start capturing abandoned carts option.

Under the Cart abandoned cut-off time;

You can specify the period from which a cart should be considered abandoned. For example, you can say the cart should be considered abandoned if the checkout is not completed within 20 minutes.

On the Disable Tracking For option;

You can specify which people’s carts shouldn’t be tracked, for example, your Administrator or Editor could be logged in and they’re making changes, and you can remove tracking for those.

Under Exclude email sending for option; 

You can define which order statuses should be excluded from the abandonment recovery. For example, you can say if someone’s order status is “completed” or “processing”, the system shouldn’t send a recovery email to them.

If you like, you may also enable the Notify recovery to admin option so that the administrator receives an email whenever a recovery is made, that is when an email is sent to the client and they complete their purchase.

Under Coupon Settings;

You can set it up so that your coupons are automatically generated, and you can enable the Delete coupons automatically option to ensure that the coupon is deleted after it expires and that your client does not reuse this coupon. Or you can have your coupons manually deleted.

Under the Emails Settings;

You can set up how you want your recovery email to look. You can set up your From address and name, and your Reply-to address.

Under Recovery report emails;

You can specify where the recovery report emails should be sent. You can add multiple emails for this, each on a separate line.

Under Webhook Settings;

If you want to integrate the cart abandonment with other platforms, you can enable the webhook option and add a webhook URL which will be automatically triggered when a cart is abandoned.

You may additionally enable the Delete plugin data option so that the data is removed when the plugin is uninstalled.

When you’re finished, don’t forget to Save Changes.

#2. Follow-Up Emails

The WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery plugin has three already-made email templates you can use for your cart recovery process.

The first template (Sample Email Template 1) should be triggered after 30 minutes of cart abandonment.

Template 2 is best sent out after 1 day of cart abandonment, and the 3rd one is sent 3 days after cart abandonment.

You can go ahead and edit these settings to your preference.

For example, if you click on the Edit option of Sample Email Template 1, under Send hos email you can change it for it to be sent in 1 hour.

You can also rename your email template. Note that the template name will not appear n the email, only the subject and the body.

Tip: 

You can send yourself a test email to check out how it will appear before sending it to your clients.

You can as well modify your Email subject and body to your preference.

The Email body incorporates dynamic fields that are picked up from the checkout page. For example the client’s name, the admin’s or sender’s name and the company name. 

Additionally, it features a link that directs customers to their already-filled checkout page.

To edit these dynamic fields; 

You can go to CartFlows where you’ll find documentation of different shortcodes that you can use in your recovery email.

You’ll also be able to add the Unsubscribe shortcode which will enable your client to unsubscribe from the recovery emails if they are not interested in completing their purchase.

If a client unsubscribes from the first recovery email they will not receive the rest of the follow-up emails.

On the Use WooCommerce email style option;

You can activate it to specify that the WooCommerce email format is used for all recovery emails sent.

This will guarantee that your cart abandonment recovery emails use the transactional emails’ pre-designed email template that you set up in your WooCommerce.

To set up your WooCommerce email template;

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails

Down on the Email sender options,

You can add your logo under the Header image and you can add your company details on the Footer.

You can also customize the colours for your background, text, and other elements.

Back to Cart Abandonment, be sure to activate your email template and save your changes.

You can proceed and personalize the second and third follow-up emails according to your preferences using the same processes as above. Remember to Update changes when you are done.

To add a coupon to for example your last follow-up email, you can enable the Create coupon option then specify your discount type and the amount you want to offer as a discount, then you can specify the coupon’s expiry date.

There are also other additional settings you can add to the coupon like offering free shipping, automatically adding coupons at checkout, etc.

If you want to create your own follow-up email instead of using the provided one;

Go to the Follow-up emails option then click the Create new template button then fill in the details of your email.

WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery (WCAR) FAQs

Closing

For any comments, questions or suggestions, please use the comment box below. And please remember to subscribe to my Youtube channel and newsletter for more tips and tutorials.