8 Must-have Abandoned Cart Email Templates for Fashion ecommerce

28.Apr.2020 Archana Gunasekaran - Abandoned cart email, abandoned cart email templates

It’s no secret that the fashion industry is one of the biggest players in the Ecommerce space. With a net worth of over $600 billion, the stakes are high in the online fashion world and the competition is not something to be taken lightly.

Now, let’s take a step back and move on to our favorite Ecommerce nemesis – cart abandonment. The fashion industry enjoys the lowest cart abandonment rate when compared to other industries such as travel and finance, standing at approximately 74.13% ( Source), which still is quite a big number. And what better way to reduce this number, than by sending out an abandoned cart email? 

Here’s a detailed look at the abandoned cart email templates of the top players in the fashion industry that will help you up your own cart recovery game.

Fashion Nova

Fashion Nova is a young and fashionable online clothing store that has gained a lot of popularity in recent times, especially on Instagram. Though they are extremely popular because of their extreme influencer marketing efforts, their cart recovery email strategy definitely holds its own. Take a look:

With a simple subject line of “ Order Status: Incomplete”, The email landed in my inbox mere minutes after abandoning the cart. Fashion Nova’s abandoned cart email keeps it straight to the point and offers a discount code to seal the deal.

What we love: 

1. The Clean email layout
2. Showcasing their inventory to land more conversions
3. Provision of discount code
4. Links to support team
5. A satisfactory returns and shipping policy
6. Promotion of their mobile app

This email is great, but the addition of one extra component would’ve made it even better. 

It can be pretty easy to forget abandoned products, especially if the customer has visited multiple online stores around the same time. So a simple image of the abandoned product will definitely help with the recall factor and helps in landing the sale. Also, sending out the discount code in the very first email of the cart recovery strategy may hamper the profits. It’s a great call to send the discount in the second or third abandoned cart email.

Rebecca Minkoff

Rebecca Minkoff is a global fashion brand, headquartered in the US. This fashion-forward clothing store is built on the Shopify platform and is considered to be one of the best online fashion stores on the same. What makes them so special? Sure, they carry a really interesting range of clothing, they have a really clean and interesting website, and… they have done a good job on their Shopify abandoned cart emails as well. See for yourself:

What we love:

1. The minimalist layout of the email ( even cleaner than Fashion Nova’s)
2. The friendly and easy-going content tone, including the subject line ( Heyyy, You forgot Something!)
3. A reminder of the abandoned product
4. An offer of support

Rebecca Minkoff has its cart recovery email strategy in the bag, and we absolutely love their work. They’ve perfectly orchestrated their emails to reach their recipients every other day, with the discount code showing up on the last and 4th email. They’ve also put in the effort to showcase their best selling products in the later emails. Whatever an email marketing guru could think of, they’ve implemented and leveraged it.

We are little giants

“We are little giants” is a kid’s clothing store that has made it’s home on the Woocommerce platform. Having an inventory of quirky and fun clothing for tiny tots, “We are little giants” has a fun, clean Woocommerce abandoned cart email.

What we love:

1. The subject line and body content of the abandoned cart email is fun and lighthearted
2. They’ve included the images of the abandoned product
3. A nice clear CTA leading back to the cart is present
4. The total cost of the product is mentioned on the body content

This email is clean and does the trick. But we would’ve definitely appreciated links to the support team and/or related products to pique the customer’s interest. 

Sigma Beauty

Sigma Beauty is well known throughout the world for its cosmetics and makeup brushes. This beauty store is present on the Magento platform, and their cart recovery strategy is as glittery as their products. 

What we love:

1. The color aesthetic of the email that matches with their brand persona
2. The minimalist content, letting the images do the talking
3. The options to explore different products straight from the email

Similar to the abandoned cart email from “ We are little giants”, the one from Sigma Beauty lacks a link to support. And though we love their proactive approach to up and cross-selling, the abandoned product can be easily overlooked.

The Natori Company

The Natori Company is a women’s fashion designer and manufacturer, based out of New York City. A Bigcommerce online store, the central theme that Natori revolves around – for both its products and it’s marketing – is minimalism. We received the Bigcommerce abandoned cart email after a decent interval of an hour after the cart abandonment. The white, minimalist theme is a whiff of fresh air:

What we love:

1. The contrast between image, text and whitespace
2. A nice discount code
3. A reminder image of the abandoned product
4. Option to explore their collection straight from the email
5. Text that creates a sense of urgency ( Your 10% off expires soon), reducing the sale turnover time
6. They also had the most unique subject line of the lot – “We like your taste – take 10% off”

Natori made it a point to upkeep its brand’s image from its wares, website, and emails. It’s aesthetically pleasing, creates a sense of urgency without being too pushy, and overall perfect. If absolutely necessary, user-generated content can definitely be leveraged. By adding user reviews to this mix, the chances of landing the sale becomes significantly higher.

Clarks

The next brand in line is one of the top names in the footwear industry – Clarks. Another store making it’s home on the Bigcommerce platform, Clarks perhaps has the shortest, no-nonsense cart recovery email of them all. See for yourself:

What we love

1. The image of the abandoned product
2. The no-frills text that creates a sense of urgency ( Hurry back before they’re gone”)
3. A clear cut CTA

 Though this email will definitely do the trick in reminding the customer about the abandoned product, it’s not very memorable. The image of the product is small. Little to no color and overall lackluster. The fashion industry is fun, bright, and colorful, it would be great to see some cross-selling possibilities or quirky text to give the email some personality.

Now that we’ve looked at some real-time abandoned cart email templates from some of the well-known names in the fashion industry, here are some samples to inspire your own:

We absolutely love this email. Starting with the subject line “ Hi xxx, Everyone’s eyeing your fave Sports Shoes” employs personalization and creates that human bond with the customer. Also, the mention that everyone is eyeing your cart, makes the product seem more desirable and again instills a sense of urgency to buy the product.

Now, coming to the body content. Simple text with a lot of focus on the abandoned and similar products is a great way to keep the customer’s eyes on the product and not be distracted.

This abandoned cart email template is straightforward and is highly focused on making the sale. Big bold focus light on the discount, a small reminder of the abandoned products. When all hope is lost and your business needs that conversion, bring the big guns out and send out an attractive, hard-to-miss discount code on your cart recovery emails!

The biggest worry for a customer when they shop online is whether they will like the product in person and/or if they receive it on time. Disperse their fears by having a great returns and shipping policy 

Key Takeaways 

Summing up what we’ve learned from the aforementioned email templates:

1. Always, always include an image of the abandoned product. It’s great to trigger the customer’s memory and remind them the need for the product
2. Content is king. Focus on creating good content that is in line with your brand image. Keep the text simple and clear – avoid large blocks of text
3. Do not miss out on CTAs. Have a clear CTA to help the customer get back to their cart, Have a CTA to reach support. Ensure that every link in the email is functioning ( even the unsubscribe link!)
4. Have a great returns and shipping policy. Display that on your abandoned cart emails. This acts as a reassurance to all those unsure shoppers
5. Incentivize wisely. If all is lost, do not shy away from offering discounts to land a sale. But use this technique wisely. Draw a line as to whom to incentivize and when.
6. Subject lines matter. Sure, run off the mill subject lines work. But put in the extra effort and make your email really stand out and shine.
7. Make your email template responsive. It should display correctly on any device. In this digital world, not optimizing your templates is a major faux-pas.
8. Leverage the power of social proof, add genuine user reviews to land sales

Wrapping Up

Running an online store, especially in the fashion industry can be really challenging. It’s imperative to have an easy-to-use intuitive website and high-quality products to create a really good shopping experience for the customers. This really helps in reducing the number of abandoned carts. Leverage the power of pop-ups to gather user data for marketing purposes. Using retargeting-ads in addition to abandoned cart emails is definitely a great way to improve the cart recovery rates. But in the end, the crux of cart recovery will always be a good cart recovery email. 

Have you implemented any out-of-the-box ideas in your business to bring the rate of cart abandonments down? Let us know through the comments section.