The Ultimate Abandoned Cart Flow

Howdy - Matt here.

In today’s edition, we’ll cover:

• Creating an abandoned cart flow for:

  • Customers vs. Non-Customers

• 2 abandoned cart methods that drive repeat sales & increase C-LTV

• The different ways to use abandoned cart emails for e-commerce, info products, and high-ticket courses

Before we jump in, it’s helpful for you to know what high-performing welcome flow and new customer flows look like.

If you’d like some examples, you can refer to the intro section of my YouTube Email Marketing Course here.

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Abandoned Cart Flow for E-commerce and Digital Products

The first thing you wanna do here is split your abandoned cart flow into 2 groups:

1. Customers

2. Non-Customers

For Non-Customers:

Remind them of the "welcome bonus" in your abandoned cart flow...

If you’ve already built out a welcome series, this is easy; you just remind your Non-Customers about the bonus the same way you do in your welcome series.

You can even repurpose the same copy/sections from your welcome emails, too.

For customers:

Instead of reminding them about the welcome bonus, you remind them about loyalty points.

This is kind of the same thing you do in your new customer flow.

Typically, new customer flows help with product consumption (ensuring the customer uses the product and gets value from it), obtain testimonials, and upsell/cross-sell.

So basically, whatever you do in your new customer flow…

You kinda mimic that in your abandoned cart flow for customers.

(Each person’s business model is different, so do what makes sense for your business)

Here’s a brief breakdown of the flow:

Email 1:

For Non-Customers

• Remind them about their abandoned cart

• Remind them of the welcome discount

• Testimonials/unique quality standards

  • ^^Again, you can repurpose these same sections from your welcome flow. These sections are typical parts that address objections

  • The main key here is that you are focusing on the offer itself—the welcome bonus

Here’s an example of reminding non-customers about the welcome bonus:

For Customers

• Remind them bout their abandoned cart

• Build familiarity, as they’ve went through this process with you already once before

• Remind them of the loyalty points

Here’s a quick template/example of how to do this with customers:

• “Hi [FirstName], I saw you just threw some items in your cart and ran off…

• Since you’ve ordered from us, and completed the checkout process in the past…

• I wanted to make sure there were no issues this time around.

• Your previous orders have also earned you [X amount] of loyalty points too, which you can redeem when you come back to complete your order.

• If you have any questions, you can contact us at [Support details]

• Otherwise, you can complete your order + redeem special awards when you’re ready:

• P.S. I really hope everything is okay, and we don’t have to send a search party out to look for you.

This email would get truncated if I showed you the remaining emails, so here’s a graphic below that illustrates this strategy, and what to do in the remaining emails:

As a quick recap:

• Non-Customers - remind them of the welcome bonus

• Customers - remind them of the loyalty points

You'll convert better with both groups using this segmented strategy.

Now that’s low-ticket. Basically, e-commerce and digital products.

Next, we have higher ticket courses….

Abandoned Cart Flow For High Ticket Courses

First, let me walk you through abandoned cart flows for current students/customers…

For high-ticket courses, it’s all about ascension.

Again, the easiest way to do this is to repurpose stuff from your new customer flow.

For courses, we call this our “ascension flow,” and we build it based on your customer’s typical journey.

It’s a nuanced process, known as customer journey mapping…

Here’s how to implement it:

First, as someone selling high-ticket courses, you probably have your typical onboarding flow for new students, right?

If you have a solid ascension model built out…

In other words, when one student enrolls in a course with you, you know what you want them to buy from you again (whether that’s converting to a subscription or buying another offer from you on the backend, etc.)…

The best thing to include here, is the most logical next step forward for your students.

How do you include something that will enhance a student’s results in abandoned cart flows?

This would be like a typical upsell #1 for a funnel.

Great upsells are usually more of the same thing, or better/faster results.

Since we don’t want them to buy more of the same course (lol), we want to include something that gets them easier, better, faster results with the original item they bought on the front end.

It’s kinda like the idea of, “If you thought that was good… wait until you see this!” Sorta thing.

Eg… It will make them:

Hotter.
Sexier.
More masculine.
More feminine.
They’ll lose weight.
Build muscle.
Go on more dates.
Have more sex.
Make more money.
Build more wealth.
Or whatever else it is they want…

The important thing is you use something that ENHANCES the original offer.

Now, how do you figure this out?

Surveys.

Surveys are more of a strategy that helps you BUILD a better sequence for customers.

However, you use the answers from your surveys to better understand what to include in your abandoned cart flow for customers.

This’ll make sense—I promise.

Real quick, here are two easy ways to run surveys that I like.

1. Sending The “Why Email?” to customers after they bought a second time.

This is basically an email you send to customers after they buy something, where they’ll reply with feedback on what made them buy.

2. Run a real survey.

ESPs have poll software or built-in survey tools.

You can also use survey software like SurveyMonkey or whatever.

These all give powerful insights into why people buy again and again.

In fact in my new customer flows I love having some kind of survey element.

This gives us deep insight into the arguably best metric of our entire business:

Driving repeat purchases.

If we understand why people buy again, we can reverse engineer those same conditions or that same buyer's journey.

Then, we can walk our new customers through that same path.

It’s like having a map to a buried treasure trove of repeat customers (shut up.)

So, when we talk about customer journey mapping, timelines of things, objections, and how to address them, we can synthesize these things repeatedly…

Then, we address those last-second repeat buyer objections in the tone of a trusted friend.

Like we’re their homie, and have their back.

This is how we get them to buy again & again.

As far as implementing this goes, I'd like to start with up to 3 abandoned cart emails.

And you basically model the same approach with e-commerce/digital products.

Only difference is for customers, you’d replace loyalty points with whatever the upsell product is, and why it helps them get easier, better, faster results. And also… why it’s a perfect “upgrade” to what they’ve already bought.

Now, when it comes to abandoned cart flows for non-customers (or non-students)…

I like to use things like:

• Paradigm-shifting emails,

• testimonials,

• FAQs.

Basically, the same way it’s done in the welcome sequence. I just reformat things, so it doesn’t look like the subscriber is getting the exact same email.

This lets me address the same objections in their consumer journey without appearing redundant.

Then, I like to incentivize fast completion/urgency.

The same way you would with a product launch-style email.

You can also add extra bonuses, etc. instead of a discount.

The idea here is just to do something that let’s you incentivize the subscriber for completing their order.

This helps “trip the wire.”

And convert them from subscriber to high-ticket course buyer.

Lastly…

The biggest thing for courses is to deeply understand your customer.

This helps you figure out what things make them buy the first time, the second time, and so on…

By having this data, you can optimize the entire customer journey with your abandoned cart emails.

This is the hallmark of creating high-converting abandoned cart emails for both customers and non-customers.

That being said, if you don’t have the right data, I suggest you start collecting it immediately.

Literally…as you’re reading this, write down in your notebook, or in the notes app of your iPhone to start using surveys to collect data.

Then, use this data to address objections in your new customer flows and your abandoned cart flows for repeat buyers.

In a future edition, I’ll show you a lucrative “Abandoned Call Method” that basically lets you leverage everything I showed you today, but for service-based businesses…

This method books you more calls on auto-pilot and helps you close more deals with ease.

You’ll love reading that newsletter.

See ya next week.

~Matt Hommel