Rethinking Abandoned Carts: Recover and Adapt With RCS

No eCommerce checkout basket is immune to the nightmare of cart abandonment. 

From inception to launch, an immense amount of time, effort, and resources go into building a product and bringing it to market. So, when consumers abandon their carts at the final stage in their journey, the sting reverberates across every level of your business- from financial losses to decreased morale. 

Invariably this pervasive issue has become a critical concern for online retailers worldwide. The question on everyone’s mind is: how do you adapt and recover with growing demand, exceedingly high consumer expectations, and a dismal amount of advertising overload at every buyer's fingertips?

The solutions to cart abandonment are multifaceted, requiring a combination of innovation and strategy. Among these, a new approach to cart recovery has taken the eCommerce world by storm over the past two years: RCS messaging. 

The Global Statistics Behind Abandoned Carts in 2024

Understanding the landscape of cart abandonment and the issues faced by consumers during the check process gives online stores insight into various causes and ways to adapt and recover.  

Key Statistics:

• Global Abandoned Cart Rate: 70%
• North America Cart Abandonment Rate: 79%
• Mobile Cart Abandonment Rate: 80.2%
• Desktop Cart Abandonment Rate: 70%
• Abandoned Carts Rate Due to Unsatisfactory Return Policies: 16%
• Abandoned Carts Due to Long Checkout: 22%
• Abandoned Carts Due to High Delivery Fees: 41% 
• Abandoned Carts Due to Slow Delivery: 24%
• Abandoned Carts Due to Lack of Payment Methods: 13% 
• Abandoned Carts Due to Better Prices: 30%
• Abandoned Carts Due to Account Creation Requirement: 25%

Source: StatsUp

The numbers depict a stark reality for eCommerce retailers. 

So, what can be done in light of these challenges? The starting point is to tackle the issues head on with a robust recovery strategy, designed to adapt with shifts in market trends and consumer demands. 

A Robust Strategy to Boost Cart Recovery

The most effective strategies to recover abandoned carts begin with the consumer and end with the consumer. Creating experiences that help buyers feel valued and understood, while simplifying the journey through the purchase stage is imperative. Our top three recovery recommendations are: 

1. Understanding Customer Behavior 
2. Diversifying Your Abandoned Cart Recovery Platforms
3. Offer Personalized and Relevant Messaging for Purchase Completion 

1. What Customer Behavior Leads to Abandoned Carts?

When it comes to abandoned carts, buyers hold various concerns and challenges unique to different checkout processes. Knowing where your weakness resides is an important key to creating targeted messages that help buyers feel confident to re-engage, take the final step, and make a purchase decision.

Key Factors to Consider:

• Urgency of Purchase: Is your customer urgently looking to buy or are they simply exploring options?
• Product Availability: Are products out of stock and are there comparable or better options available elsewhere?
• Delivery Time: Is the estimated delivery time frame too long?
• Additional Charges: Are shipping costs, taxes, or other fees unexpectedly high?
• Limited Payment Options: Are there enough flexible payment methods available?
• Shopping Preferences: Does your customer prefer another retailer to purchase the channel?
• Purchase Intent: Is your customer browsing or actively planning to buy?
• Too Many Steps: Do you have more than five steps to take before the checkout is complete?
• Aversion to Account Creation: Is your customer expected to create an account prior to purchase?

Each of these factors offers insights into how your businesses can adapt its approach to cart recovery. Audit your check out processes and external factors, like delivery costs, to identify where you need to adapt. 

Oftentimes you only need slight tweaks during the purchase stage that offer buyers a confident nudge to click “purchase”. 

2. Why Relying Solely on Email Marketing Falls Short 

One of the most effective ways to recover abandoned carts has been through abandoned cart emails. However, while email has long been a staple of cart recovery strategies, its effectiveness is waning in the face of shifting consumer behaviors and trends. 

• Over Saturation: The sheer volume of  marketing emails from various sources has become overwhelming for consumers to keep up with. 
• Email Fatigue: Consumers have become desensitized to promotional emails, often ignoring or deleting them without a second thought. 
• The Dreaded Spam Folder: 10% of emails land up in the spam folder, harming the effectiveness of your recovery efforts. 
• Constant Changes in Compliance: Jumping through compliance hoops like GDPR and Can Spam at every twist and turn increases your chance of being flagged as spam. 
• Lengthy Set-Up Processes: From domains, to DNS configuration, to hosting providers and back. The processes are lengthy and complex. 

According to StatsUp emails sent to recover abandoned carts achieve an open rate of 39.07% and a click-through rate of 23.33% in 2024. While there is a significantly high recovery rate to open rate, email open rates remain the persistent issue the online stores face, inhibiting their long-term effectiveness as a shopping cart retrieval service. 

With more and more roadblocks to a recipient's inbox, online retailers need to start thinking about diversifying their marketing channels.  

A Compelling Reason to Adopt RCS Messaging

Rich Communication Services (RCS) combines the best of SMS and app-like functionalities with the rich media features of email marketing. 

RCS Effectiveness: 

1. Higher Engagement Rates: 90% of rich media messages are opened within 15 minutes, and customers engage with RCS content for up to 45 seconds.  
2. Increased Readability: People are 35 times more likely to read an RCS message than email.  
3. Better Conversion Rates: Business campaigns using RCS messaging have shown an 80% conversion rate, indicating its effectiveness in driving engagement and sales.

Source: Sinch  

RCS Messaging Best Practices for Boosting Cart Recovery

Maximize the potential of RCS messaging to recover abandoned carts with these four proven strategies. 

1. Personalize the Approach and Perfect the Timing: Use the customer’s name, abandoned item details, and provide a benefit to the purchase aimed at re-engaging their interest. The trick here is timing—sending an abandoned cart message too soon can create unnecessary pressure, while sending it too late may result in a lost sale. Ideally, wait 30 minutes to one hour after cart abandonment.
2. Use a Clear Call-to-Action: Include actionable buttons like “Complete Your Purchase Here” or “View Your Cart Items Here” to streamline the buying process. While this seems like a logical step, many cart retrieval messages lack CTAs that clearly state where the link will take the customer. It’s important to overtly state the intended destination.
3. Provide a Compelling Discount Offer: Encourage immediate action with an offer uniquely tailored to their experience. If they are a new customer, unveil a first-time purchase discount. If they’re a repeat customer, encourage them with a loyalty discount or an opt-in to a loyalty program. Ultimately, making the customer feel valued is the winning formula to pique and reestablish interest.
4. Offer 24/7 Supportive Assistance: Sometimes your website or app may experience technical issues, or the checkout process may be hindered by a payment authentication error. It’s important to be aware of these issues and offer timely live chat support or FAQs within the message to address potential challenges that can negatively impact sales.

Conclusion

Recovering abandoned carts requires a proactive and innovative approach in 2025. As the eCommerce landscape adapts and changes to market demands, RCS messaging provides a modern, effective solution to tackle the challenges of cart abandonment. 

Leveraging personalized content, actionable prompts, and engaging formats, empowers businesses to recover lost sales and strengthen the future of their customer relationships. Adapting to consumer behaviour and embracing technologies like RCS could be the game-changer your business needs to stay ahead. 

Integrate Smobi, an advanced RCS platform, to your Shopify account today!