If you shop online, this scenario has probably happened to you: You place an item in your cart and, for whatever reason, you don’t complete your purchase. Maybe you had second thoughts, maybe shipping fees gave you pause. Maybe you got distracted. Then, the next day, you check your email and see an email from the retailer about that item you left in your cart:
And (score!) in that email, there’s a discount code for a discount if you complete that purchase!
In the retail industry, this is known as a shopping cart abandonment discount.
What’s in it for retailers is a chance to win over a customer who almost fell through the cracks.
“With 76% of shoppers abandoning their carts at the last, critical step before checkout — a problem costing U.S. retailers hundreds of billions in annual lost revenue — capturing more sales by utilizing timed and personalized abandoned carts offers is critical,” says Kartik Ramachandran, VP of Product at Bolt, a platform that provides e-commerce checkout solutions (as well as tools online stores can use to retain shoppers).
For shoppers, the value is clear as well – savings! In fact, shopping cart abandonment offers have become common enough that some shoppers (including our Savings Star panel) swear by deliberately abandoning items in their carts to get these discounts.
So we wondered: How often does this tactic work? How often do retailers actually send these offers out? How good are these offers? And are they good and frequent enough that we’d suggest putting stuff in your online shopping cart and walking away?
Our Survey Results: Expect Cart Abandonment Discounts One-Fourth of the Time
In March and April 2023, our editors placed items in online carts at 107 stores (across a variety of store types, from beauty to fashion to tech to home goods) and tracked the abandoned cart discounts we received. Here’s what we found:
- 24 stores of the 107 stores sent us abandon cart discounts (a 22% success rate). Note: Plenty of others sent us re-engagement emails encouraging us to complete our purchase, but we counted ONLY those that sent us discounts.
- The lowest discount we received was 5% off.
- The highest offer we received was 25% off.
- The average discount was 15% off. The most common discount was 20% off.
- Of the 24 stores that sent us cart abandonment offers, four of them sent us an initial offer and then, the next day, a higher offer (all were 5% higher than the initial offer).
- The amount of time varied between cart abandonment and the offer landing in our inboxes, but, in general, the soonest was within an hour and the latest was 72 hours.
- MOST of the stores that sent us cart abandonment offers sent us an offer within an hour. The second-most common response time was between 24 and 48 hours.
- We got offers from a wide variety of merchants, but most of those that sent us offers were direct-to-consumer brands and those selling higher-priced items.
Behind the scenes of all these offers is strategizing from retailers. Although “customer leaves item in cart” may be the catalyst of a cart abandonment offer, there are various factors that go into what a store offers, how that offer is sent and whether it’s sent at all.
For example, reaching out to shoppers based on the device they used to shop (SMS for mobile shoppers and email for desktop shoppers) helps retailers “eliminate friction,” according to Ramachandran.
“A streamlined process means more revenue and higher conversions for merchants, and a better experience for their shoppers,” he says. And that might be particularly important for mobile shoppers, as “[the] smaller the screen, the higher the abandonment rate,” Ramachandran says.
Also, while a wide variety of businesses make use of cart abandonment offers, “we do see … that enterprise merchants with high traffic and large average order values can benefit most from these conversion optimization tools,” Ramachandran says. “Typically pricier items (luxury, travel, auto, etcetera) are generally abandoned more frequently than lower priced items.”
Important Things Shoppers Should Know About Abandoned-Cart Offers
As with any codes, abandoned cart offers and codes have restrictions:
- Cart abandonment offers are customized to you (often a long string of letters and numbers). The code you’ll get is usually one-time-use only. In some cases, stores send you a custom link that you’ll click through to complete your purchase. In other words, don’t try to use your special discount and then share it with a friend – it won’t work for them.
- You have a deadline. Cart abandonment codes expire, so be sure to check the date in the email you received.
- There’s fine print. Some codes are good only for the item you initially added, but some codes will work for your entire cart (even if you add more items). Some items might be restricted, however. Clearance items, for example, may not be allowed. And don’t even think about trying to use your cart abandonment code on a gift card.
Advice for Getting (and Using) Cart Abandonment Offers to Your Advantage
Now that you know cart abandonment offers exist (and will come your way about one-fourth of the time), you may be tempted to start proactively racking them up. Read these tips, though, before you make this tactic part of your shopping strategy:
- Plan ahead. If you need something right NOW, you won’t have time to wait the one hour to 72 hours for a cart abandonment discount to show up. So if you need the shoes for a party in a couple weeks, start early so you have plenty of time to sit tight for that discount AND still get the shoes shipped on time.
- Divide and conquer the savings. Many stores also send you discount codes when you sign up for their email lists. But most online stores don’t let you stack offers. So if you sign up for emails for the sign-up discount (and receive it) and also leave an item sitting in your cart and receive an abandonment discount, you’ll end up with two codes that expire within days that you can’t use together. That means you’ll forced to make two purchases or sacrifice a code. Instead, go for the low-hanging fruit first (the email signup discount). Use it. And then the next time you shop, go for the cart abandonment discount.
- Wait a couple days after the initial offer. We found that a handful of stores sent us better offers if we ignored the first one. So, if you get an offer off the bat, check the expiration date and, if you have a few days, wait for up to 72 hours to see if a better offer comes along.
- Don’t use cart abandonment discounts as an excuse to get something you don’t need. A 5% to 20% discount isn’t an excuse to buy a pricey item you don’t need. Wield these discounts for things you actually need – or planned splurges within your budget.
- Weigh the chance of the discount with current offers. If something you want is a good price (thanks to a sale), or there’s a 25%-or-more promo code available on the site, remember that cart abandonment discounts, per our survey, generally cap out at 25% (most are 20% off or less). So don’t sacrifice the chance to save MORE than that on the chance of receiving a cart abandonment code. Go for cart abandonment codes when the item you want is not on sale, or when the store isn’t running a promo code.
Above all else, remember there’s no guarantee when it comes to receiving cart abandonment discount codes. We found cart abandonment discounts happen about one-fourth of the time. So don’t set your heart on something and allow yourself to buy it anyway, without the discount. If you don’t get a cart abandonment discount, walk away and wait for a sale to come along, for the item to go on clearance, or for a really good cash back offer to materialize (preferably all three).
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