How to Use the Abandoned Carts Flow to Quickly Increase Order Conversion Rates

Putting aside all other forms of marketing, there is no doubt that Flow is the most powerful feature among all. It takes automated marketing through SMS and Emails to a whole new level, moving beyond the realm of scheduled and timed sending to automatically engage in user marketing based on their behavior.

Flow, also known as automated workflows, is best known for its abandoned cart recovery flow. When a user browses a store, sees a product they like, and adds it to their cart, but then gets distracted by pop-ups or messages, they might forget about the product they haven't paid for yet. As a result, the merchant loses a potential order. This is a common phenomenon in the e-commerce field – abandoned carts.

Abandoned carts are a headache for merchants. According to the latest research data, the average cart abandonment rate on Shopify sites ranges from 59% to 70%. In other words, if 100 people add products to their carts, at least 59 of them won't complete the checkout process. Consequently, merchants are losing a significant number of orders every year, increasing the store's traffic cost invisibly.

However, what if we could send reminders to users after they leave the page for a certain period of time, encouraging them to complete the payment? In doing so, merchants can not only recover these abandoned carts but also convert users into loyal customers, diligently maintaining and guiding them to make repeat purchases.

Thus, building an abandoned cart flow is an effective strategy to improve conversion rates and reclaim potential customers. This article will guide you on how to construct an efficient automated abandoned cart marketing flow, aiming to boost order conversions and enhance customer loyalty.

What is Flow?

Flow is a visual workflow builder that enables the automation of marketing tasks by setting up relevant triggers, conditions, timing, and actions. When a customer's behavior meets the specified conditions, Flow automatically sends designated SMS or email content or applies tags to the user, thus assisting sellers in achieving automated operations.

It consists of several key elements: triggers, conditions, timing, and actions:

● Triggers: These are customer actions that initiate the flow, such as abandoned carts (adding items to the cart but not completing the purchase).
● Conditions: These are the criteria you set before executing the marketing task, for example, the total value of abandoned carts exceeding a certain amount or a specific product being abandoned.
● Delay Time: This determines how long after the user triggers the flow before taking action. For example, sending a reminder SMS or email to the user 2 hours after they abandon the payment process.
● Actions: If the trigger conditions are met, the automated flow will take specific actions, such as sending reminder emails or SMS, or categorizing the user.

In Plexins, you have the flexibility to fully customize the content of your SMS or email marketing or choose from the template library prepared by Plexins. Additionally, you can continuously add trigger conditions based on your marketing goals to design a comprehensive automated marketing flow.

Tip: For more detailed information about Flow, you can click here to view the complete introduction.

Abandoned Cart Flow

Now that you're eager to design an abandoned cart flow for your store to boost conversion rates, we're on the same page! Let's explore how to create an abandoned cart flow in Plexins to enhance your store's automated marketing capabilities.

With this flow, we'll show you how to target both active and inactive users in one go.

Starting the Flow

Step 1: Choose Triggers and Segmentation Conditions

As this flow is designed for customers who abandon their payments, our trigger should be "Checkout."

To measure user activity, we can use the "Order quantity" as the segmentation condition. This will define the actions you set in the subsequent flow steps.

Note: Different stores may have varying definitions of active customers. You can customize the criteria according to your own standards. Users who meet your conditions will be classified as active, while those who do not will be categorized as inactive.

Next, we'll set the actions to be taken based on the trigger conditions. Here, we recommend adopting different actions for the two user groups already segmented in the previous step.

SMS Marketing and Active Users

For active users, as they have a higher willingness and likelihood to make a purchase, they are more likely to convert. We can use SMS marketing to target this user group.

SMS marketing is an effective tool to remind users about the items they left in their shopping carts. It is the fastest and most direct way to reach users, coupled with its time sensitivity, it can create a sense of urgency, leading to sales recovery.

You can also add some incentives, such as offering a 5% discount on orders or providing free shipping services. This can make active users feel valued and result in better conversion rates. Trust me, a discount combined with persuasive call-to-action language can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your abandoned cart recovery campaign.

Timing is also crucial, especially for cart abandonment reminders. You need to attract users to place an order while they still have the intention to shop, rather than sending reminders long after they've lost interest. Therefore, we recommend sending your first reminder about an hour after the user abandons their cart.

Email Marketing and Inactive Users

If customers who abandoned their carts do not meet the purchase frequency requirements you set, then you can classify them as inactive users. For this user group, we can adopt email marketing.

Since their purchase intent is not as strong, plain text marketing may not be very attractive to them. Instead, a visually appealing email format would be more suitable. When they see vivid product images combined with enticing product descriptions, their desire to make a purchase will be further deepened. At this point, including product coupons will likely be irresistible to most users.

Step 2: Follow up on User's Next Actions

Completing the first step of abandoned cart reminders is not enough; we also need to follow up on the results after users receive the reminder SMS or Email.

For each branch, we need to add the following elements below:

● Delay Time: Number of days after sending the SMS/email message.
● Trigger Action: Did an order get generated?
● Action: Next follow-up strategy to be taken.

Typically, for customers who placed an order after receiving the reminder SMS or email, we would send them a thank-you message or order confirmation, informing them of their successful purchase.

For customers who didn't generate an order, we recommend sending another reminder SMS. You can use the same text as before but increase the discount and add a time limit, for example, requiring payment within 1 hour, to create a sense of urgency.

Flow Execution

The two-step abandoned cart recovery flow is already sufficient to meet the needs of most merchants, as it can help recover a satisfactory number of orders. However, some stores may extend the flow based on their specific requirements. For example, sending a product recommendation message to users three days after the order has passed.

Once you have designed your automated flow, click "Release," and it will start running, serving your store.

This concludes the automated abandoned cart recovery flow. Now, you can create an effective and highly targeted abandoned cart reminder for users in your store.

If you need a step-by-step tutorial for creating a flow, you can click the link for more details. More tutorials are available in our Help Center, and they are always here to assist you.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us at any time.