How to Recover Abandoned Carts with Push Notifications

Cart Abandonment is the black death for eCommerce businesses, resulting in billions of dollars in losses. 

According to studies, the average cart abandonment rate is over 70%! That's a lot of revenue left on the table.

Don’t despair though, there are ways to minimize abandoned carts. We’re going to explain one of the best ones - abandoned cart push notifications. 

Simple automated push notifications sent to app users have the potential to recover a massive amount of revenue for your brand. Just look at these results from three MobiLoud users, and how much revenue they recovered from abandoned carts over just 30 days:

If you're running an eCommerce store, you likely have tens of thousands (at least) recoverable from customers who made it 90% of the way to making a purchase, but left without checking out.

Keep reading and we'll explain why push notifications are the best way to recover abandoned carts, and how you can start clawing back lost revenue on autopilot.

Real MobiLoud users have made tens or hundreds of thousands in extra revenue with our abandoned cart push notifications. To learn how you can do the same, get in touch with our app experts for a free consultation now.

Why Push Notifications for Abandoned Carts?

You can use many channels to remind customers about their carts, including email, SMS, WhatsApp, and others.

All these channels can be extremely effective for abandoned cart notifications.

You should certainly make use of them - email, in particular, is the low-hanging fruit for reducing abandoned carts, as the channel has a very wide reach and most email marketing tools make it super easy to set up automated abandoned cart workflows.

But Push Notifications are in a league of their own, and are simply the best channel for abandoned cart notifications.

Push notifications have the highest open rates and click through rates. They allow you to reach your customer in the most direct way possible, often showing up as the first thing a customer sees when they open their phone.

They’re direct, highly visible, and very effective. Everything you need to give your customers a gentle nudge to finish their purchase.

Web vs Native App Push Notifications

There are two kinds of push notifications - web and native.

You can either send push notifications to people who visited your website, or to customers who’ve downloaded your iOS or Android apps.

Depending on the platform, there will be some differences in how you set up and utilize push notifications.

Let’s look at web push notifications first.

Setting up Abandoned Cart Notifications From Your Web Store

Whichever CMS you use - Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, etc - there are plenty of tools you can use to set up push notifications. 

Some good push notification services include:

• PushEngage
• OneSignal
• VWO Engage (PushCrew)
• iZooto
• Webpushr
• PushAssist
• WonderPush

These all have slightly different setups, features, and price points, but each will allow you to set up abandoned cart notifications to trigger when appropriate.

The setup generally involves adding some code snippets to your site, a little fiddling, and setting up a cart recovery workflow using your chosen tool.

Web push notifications are sent using the browser, and have some limitations, especially if you want to use them to reach mobile shoppers.

Sending Abandoned Cart Notifications From a Mobile App 

Once you’ve got web notifications set up it’s time to think about apps.

Native eCommerce apps are like steroids for your eCommerce business, and are unmatched when it comes to targeting your most loyal customers.

Let's dive into how to set up push notifications in your mobile apps.

If you already have a mobile app

If you brand already has a mobile app, you likely either built them from scratch or used an app builder. 

In the first case, speak to your developers and they’ll set up push notifications with some native code and the SDK of whatever push platform you use. 

If you used an app builder, either they have a pre-built feature for abandoned cart notifications or you’re out of luck. Ask them what’s possible, and if you don’t like the answer you should probably ditch them and switch to MobiLoud (which we’ll talk about next). 

If you do not have a mobile app (yet)

If you don't already have an app, it's a great idea to do so, if for no other reason than to unlock the power of push notifications for abandoned cart recovery.

MobiLoud is the best way to build native eCommerce apps.

MobiLoud seamlessly converts your existing website into iOS and Android apps, letting you launch apps using the same code, same platform, same apps and integrations you use for your website.

It's the only way to launch a mobile app without:

• Spending hundreds of thousands on custom development
• Introducing a huge amount of maintenance and overhead to your operational workflow
• Sacrificing key features from your website to fit the limitations of a no-code app builder

MobiLoud integrates with OneSignal, which you can set up to send push notifications however you like.

However, we also have a native abandoned cart feature, which is even more powerful.

Your apps will be able to send abandoned cart notifications autonomously, through local notifications, without using any third-party tool or service.

How it works

Everything happens on the users’ device. 

Our systems monitor their in-app carts continuously. When we detect pending items in the user's cart, and that the app is closed (in the background) - this triggers a timed notification sequence.

The sequence uses CRO best practices and powerful copywriting to bring them back to the cart page within the app and prompt them to take the final step.

It's simple but powerful. And best of all, it's already set up for you.

The cart recovery feature is managed and controlled remotely by our team, but you can customize it too, adding your own branding and copy as you wish. 

It’s the best way to send abandoned cart notifications from a mobile app. As we shared earlier, real brands have had incredible results with our abandoned cart recovery feature, covering the cost of their apps several times over.

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Read more about how MobiLoud works and how we can supercharge your mobile eCommerce marketing game.

Tips and Tricks for Abandoned Cart Notifications

Let's share a few useful tactics and best practices to help your abandoned cart workflow recover lost sales.

Leverage FOMO

All smart brands take advantage of FOMO, aka Fear of Missing Out.

Scarcity and urgency are two of the most powerful principles of marketing psychology. If you can remind the user that stocks are running low, or prices are rising soon - this can really motivate them to get back and pull their credit card out. 

Make sure though that:

• You are being honest 
• You don’t overuse it 
• You make it clear, concise, and relevant 

If you keep things subtle and transparent though FOMO abandoned cart notifications can work really well. 

FOMO is like the stick, but the carrot is equally effective.

Incentivize

Give the customer an incentive to return.

Can you offer them something to sweeten the deal? Humans respond to incentives and your customers are no different!

Offer discounts, free shipping, or other benefits in the abandoned cart notification and you’ll see your conversion rate increase.

You can also make the offer time-bound and combine this with the first tactic for maximum impact.

Personalize

Finally, make it personal!

Whether you send push notifications from the web or mobile apps, a personal touch can work wonders.

Use any data you have on the customer - from their name to the specific items in their abandoned cart - working that into your messages will make them more powerful. 

These are the foundations, beyond this it's a good idea to test different sequences and message formats to see what works optimally. 

Recover Lost Sales with Abandoned Cart Notifications Today

Summing up what we've discussed in this article:

• Abandoned carts cost eCommerce companies billions in lost revenue
• Nudging customers to complete their checkout can massively boost revenue, with very little effort required
• You can (and should) do this through both web and app push notifications
• Plenty of tools exist to set them up for the web, while MobiLoud does everything for you to set up abandoned cart notifications in your app
• Use techniques such as urgency, incentives, and personalization to boost performance

It’s also important to follow general best practices for push notifications, and continuously measure everything and tweak things until you hit maximum performance. 

At MobiLoud you can see the performance of all your notifications through simple dashboards, and our notification flows are designed with all the most crucial best practices. 

We handle the abandoned cart notifications, but you'll also have full freedom to send all kinds of push notifications, which can drive significant revenue and engagement for your brand.

We give you everything you need to succeed not just with abandoned cart notifications but on mobile eCommerce in general - and our platform is proven with thousands of brands including top retailers like Bestseller, Rainbow Shops and many more.

To get started, get in touch with us now. We'll show you a free, interactive preview of your site as an app, walk you through the process, and explain how MobiLoud can help you generate thousands of dollars in new revenue on autopilot.