What Is an Email Cart? How to Recover Abandoned Retail Sales

More and more shoppers are showrooming—that is, discovering products in-store and buying them online afterward. Once the shopper leaves the store, however, the merchant has no way to remarket that shopper and convert the store visit into a sale. 

Abandoned cart emails have long been a go-to tactic for direct-to-consumer merchants looking to increase online conversion rates, and it’s no secret why: cart recovery emails are remarkably effective customer retention tactics. 

So, if abandoned cart emails are so effective, why doesn’t an equivalent tactic exist for physical stores? That’s a problem Shopify POS email carts help solve. 

Email shopping carts let you send indecisive shoppers the equivalent of an abandoned cart email from the point-of-sale (POS) system that includes products they were interested in while shopping in-store. If the shopper completes the purchase online after clicking through from the email, the retail store (and the associate who sends the email cart) gets credited with the sale. 

What is an email cart?

An email cart is the equivalent of an abandoned cart email for in-person shopping. The feature is exclusive to Shopify POS. They make it easy for you to follow up with shoppers who were interested in certain products when they visited your store but didn’t buy anything. 

Email carts help convert shoppers who visit your store into paying customers.

For store associates, email carts are a simple way to get credit for the in-person shoppers they helped convert into buyers—even if the transaction happens online. They can add items to a customer’s cart and send them a follow-up email in a few clicks. If the shopper buys any products via that email, the store associate who served them is credited with the sale. 

How do email carts work?

Email cart for Shopify POS is a feature that allows retailers to create a cart for an in-store shopper and then send the shopper an email helping them to complete their checkout online. The email includes a summary of the customer’s cart plus a link to the store’s online checkout.

After the email is sent to the shopper, their order is saved as a draft. If the customer clicks the link and completes the checkout, the draft is saved as a completed order.

Note: You can send an email for a cart only if you’re accepting payment for the entire order. You can’t accept partial payments in person and then send an Email cart to collect the remaining balance.

Benefits of email carts in retail

Klaviyo’s research shows that businesses using cart recovery emails earn an average revenue per recipient of $3.65. Multiply that by the thousands of abandoned carts every year, and it’s clear that this tactic can earn you more revenue. 

Shopify built the email cart feature to bring the functionality of abandoned cart emails to in-person selling for the first time. Email carts help you better serve shoppers who prefer discovering products in-store and buying online.

This helps you increase store conversions, attribute revenue to the right sales channels, and reward store staff for in-person interactions that eventually lead to a sale. 

Increase store conversions

Shoppers who leave a store without buying typically do one of several things: they either explore their options and purchase from your store later, visit your online store and purchase the items they were interested in, or buy from another merchant altogether. In all these scenarios, you cannot proactively capture the sale once the shopper leaves your store. 

But by using email carts, you can recover lost store sales just like you would online with abandoned cart emails. Rather than leaving the sale up to chance, make the sale by using email carts to gently remind shoppers of the products they are interested in.

Keep selling even when you’re out of stock

If you run out of products in-store but have inventory at your warehouse, you can use email carts to capture the sale and ship the order to the customer. The Sheet Society, for example, has increased in-store conversion rates to 50% using tools like Shopify’s email cart feature. 

When shoppers are considering which duvet covers will complement their linens, The Sheet Society’s store staff preload the shopper’s cart with the options they are considering and send them an email cart. Shoppers can then compare colors to the bedding they have at home before purchasing online. 

Attribute revenue to the right channels

A sale can happen anywhere, at any time, but tracking which online and offline channels contributed to a sale has historically been a challenge for merchants who sell online and in person.

For example, a customer visits your store and leaves without buying anything. A few days later, they visit your website and buy the products they discovered in the store. Your online store is likely given 100% of the credit for making the sale since it was the last touchpoint that converted the traffic into a customer. This is known as last-click attribution. 

To credit retail stores for sales that eventually happen online, you need an accessible way to use first-touch attribution, where the first time the customer interacts with your brand is deemed the most important reason they bought your product. 

That’s where email carts come in handy. They digitally track customers' interactions with store associates and attribute the store as the point of purchase.

Reward store staff for online sales they assist with 

Using a commission wage structure for your store staff may make them less inclined to help showroomers. After all, why help if they’re not financially incentivized? 

That doesn’t feel very customer-focused, and it’s a mindset email carts help fix. If an online transaction is completed via the email cart the store staff sends the customer, they get credit for making the sale, just like they would if the transaction occurred in-store. 

Email carts help reward store staff for customer interactions that eventually lead to a sale.

This also gives you a complete picture of your store staff’s sales performance. Your staff reports count the sales they recover using email carts toward performance metrics, like average order value, items per order, and gross sales. 

Email cart for Shopify POS allows retailers to view sales attribution for Email cart orders. The sale is attributed to the staff logged in through their email to Shopify POS when the Email cart is sent. 

Improve your sales reporting

Each sale made with email carts counts toward the store’s revenue in sales reports. This solves a blind spot that merchants who sell online and in-person have been vocal about for a long time.

With email carts, sales reports show how much revenue your store makes—even for transactions that eventually happen online.

Shopify’s back office unifies your in-person and online sales data, helping you get a complete view of your business’ performance from the same back office. Now, the revenue each of your stores generates will also count the online sales they help convert. 

This means you get clear and accurate insights into what percentage of total revenue comes from online sales, from store sales, and from store-assisted sales. 

Serve showroomers better

More and more customers plan on showrooming. In fact, according to a Forrester Consulting study conducted on behalf of Shopify, 54% of consumers plan to discover products in physical stores before buying them online over the next year. 

Consequently, when asked which areas of their in-person shopping experience they wanted to improve most, retailers said showrooming. Email carts help merchants create a shopping journey to support showrooms and guide shoppers to purchase. Shoppers can discover in-store products, transact when convenient, and ship their orders directly. 

Accelerate your store’s checkout

Long queues at the checkout may discourage shoppers from making a purchase. With email carts, customers can discover in-store products, pay for orders online, and have them shipped. 

This makes for a more convenient checkout experience while helping you retain sales you may have otherwise lost. This motivated Endy, Canada’s leading online mattress brand, to use email carts at its pop-ups and showrooms. “We are excited to add email carts to our omnichannel toolkit and make it easier than ever to sleep better with Endy,” Endy Marketing Director Aashish Nathwani said.

“As our online presence continues to grow, pop-ups and showrooms have become an integral part of our omnichannel strategy,” Aashish explained. “The challenge for us has been implementing the same kind of seamless, data-driven approach to our in-store checkout that customers have come to expect from us online. 

What’s the difference between email carts and abandoned cart emails?

The term “email cart” often gets confused with abandoned cart emails, but there is an important difference. Email carts refer to the Shopify POS feature that lets retailers email an in-store shopper’s personalized cart to buy after they leave the store. They can then complete the purchase right from the personalized cart email. 

An abandoned cart email, on the other hand, is more specific to an ecommerce context. In this case, an online shopper browses an ecommerce site and adds products to their online cart, but doesn’t complete the checkout for whatever reason. An email is then sent to the customer to get them to complete the purchase. It includes the customer’s shopping cart and sometimes an incentive. 

Recover lost store sales with email carts on Shopify

Letting customers choose how they shop is one of the biggest opportunities—and challenges—retailers face today. Whether they shop in-person, online, on Instagram, or anywhere else, Shopify has tools to help you build a seamless customer experience and convert more opportunities into revenue. 

With email carts, you finally have a tool to recover lost in-store sales. Use them to simplify the in-store-to-online customer journey and gently nudge shoppers to complete their purchase.