You’re browsing a website and start adding some items to your cart. You eventually get distracted and leave the site without making a purchase. Then, you magically receive an email or text an hour later reminding you to revisit your cart and check out. Rather than being annoyed at the message, you’re pleasantly surprised—after all, you were just on the cusp of buying something you needed. 

Abandoned carts aren’t a new thing, and you're very likely to run into this exact scenario once or twice (or in my case, several hundred times). While the concept of abandoned carts is quite simple, you might not realize just how crucial these messages are to boosting ROI. 

We wanted to learn more about abandoned cart best practices and emerging trends. So, we spoke with our partners at Attentive and Klaviyo—both industry leaders in SMS and email marketing software—to hear about abandoned carts directly from the experts. 

Why are abandoned carts so important?

When we asked Jon Palmer, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Klaviyo, his thoughts on the importance of abandoned cart campaigns, he pointed to customer behaviour: “It’s the highest intent action you can take to make a purchase without actually making a purchase.” He added, “Klaviyo allows you to follow up with personalized email and SMS to convert these high-intent actions into lifetime customers.”

Nerisah Baksh, Senior Marketing Manager of Partnerships at Attentive, added that: