Last Updated on by WP Warfare
Abandoned carts are a nightmare for every online store owner. After all the hard work of marketing your products and getting customers on your site, someone finally decides to take action, places a product in their cart and…nothing, they just leave. There are lots of reasons for customers abandoning their carts, from unexpected shipping costs and website crashes to confusing checkout procedures, security concerns and even simple distractions that lead them away from your site. That’s where abandoned cart emails come into play.
Today, we’re going to take a look at Retainful – a online app that lets you track abandoned carts, as well as create, customize, and send automatized cart recovery emails to remind your customers of the products they were interested in and persuade them to return to your store and finalize their purchase.
Connecting Retainful to Your WordPress Website
Retainful is more than just a WordPress app. It’s a powerful and independent app that can be integrated with either WooCommerce or Shopify. So to start using it, you first need to connect your site to the Retainful platform.
Luckily, the connection process is extremely simple. Once you’ve installed the Retainful plugin from the WordPress repository, you need to create or log in to an existing account on Retainful’s site. Then, you’ll be greeted with the following screen:
Once you’ve chosen your platform (in our case WooCommerce), you’ll be asked to provide the URL of your online store.
When you click the “Create” button, you’ll receive an App ID and a Secret Key. Then you need to navigate back to your WordPress site, find the “Retainful” option in your admin sidebar, and input both keys in the designated fields.
And that’s all there is to it. You’ve successfully connected your WordPress online store with Retainful. Simple, right?
The Retainful Dashboard
There’s one thing I need to mention before diving into the dashboard: when you create your account, you also get a nice welcoming email with links explaining how to connect your store to Retainful, how to start sending abandoned cart emails, as well as several tips on best practices regarding abandoned cart campaigns. It’s a nice touch that very few apps provide, so I thought it would be worth mentioning.
Now, back to business.
The Retainful Dashboard is quite intuitive. Right from the start, you get a simple overview of the number of abandoned and recovered carts you have (as well as the revenue from both). You also see all the recoverable carts (i.e. abandoned carts with an email address linked to them which you can send recovery emails to) and next order coupon statistics.
Using the left sidebar, you can set up your email campaigns, check out separate overviews of your abandoned cart and next order coupon analytics, and manage the app’s integration with email service providers like Mailchimp, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and others.
Creating email campaigns is a painless process with Retainful. You can easily set up entire email sequences that will remind customers multiple times of the products they left in their cart, and you can fully customize each separate email to fully fit the needs of your business.
The email customization tool uses a drag-and-drop interface that lets you design every single aspect of each email to perfection. You can even view the responsiveness of the email and send out test mails right from the app, to make sure everything looks okay before you activate your automatized campaigns.
The “Settings” section of the dashboard lets you configure several practical options, like adding social media links which will be applied to social media icons if you choose to add them to your emails (which you should), and setting the time frame after which you consider a cart abandoned.
Retainful’s Pricing Plans
The pricing plans Retainful offers are highly flexible. There’s even a free plan that lets you track up to 300 contacts and use all the app’s basic functions. But if you decide you’re ready to go premium, Retainful’s prices range from $7 to $123 per month, depending on the number of contacts you plan to track with the app, as well as your needs for live chat support and dedicated onboard specialists. With the cheapest plan ($7 per month) you can track up to 2000 contacts, which should be more than enough if you’re in the early phases of developing your online business.
So, is Retainful worth checking out? Definitely! If you’re running an online WordPress store, you should at the very least try out the free plan and see if it helps you cash in on any abandoned carts. And considering that 60-70% of shoppers abandon their carts at check out, the chances that you’ll profit from at least a segment of those customers are extremely high.
