Folks, Black Friday has arrived.

We’re going to assume you aren’t frantically checking your phone or your calendar to confirm, because if you’re like most shoppers in the United States, you’ve started holiday shopping already. Some of them—an increasing number, we might add—began the journey this summer, with a little something we know as Amazon Prime Day.

Have you ever left an item in an online shopping cart, then been convinced to go through with the purchase based on the seller’s follow-up communication? I know I have—because the email either reminded me of an item that I didn’t complete the checkout process for or, more likely, gave me an incentive like free shipping or a discount. 

This is true for many others; in fact, cart abandonment emails have a greater than 10% purchase rate according to Campaign Monitor. We covered the reasons why it’s crucial to have a strategy in place in part I of our Abandoned Cart Email Strategy series. In this follow-up post, we’ll take a look at some examples to break down what works, what doesn’t, and what other incentives you might encounter during the online browsing process.

If you’ve ever shopped online, you’ve probably received several (but more likely hundreds) of abandoned cart emails. You know, a friendly reminder that you’ve left an item in your online shopping cart and just maybe, if you’re lucky, a little incentive to go through with the purchase.

Would it shock you to know that not every retailer has an abandoned cart email strategy in place? Because it’s true (more on that in part II).