http://seewhy.com/blog/2010/06/03/reasons-why-website-visitors-abandoned-their-shopping-carts/

Charles

We’ve found that a little care is needed with promotions: how and when you make promotional offers to visitors that abandon their shopping carts can be really important.

Remarketing to shopping cart abandoners is a very effective way of boosting sales, and it’s not complex to do. There are however a few secrets to getting this right. I note that forum entry referred to ‘offering to fix the problem, and this is at the heart of one of the secrets to success. The two keys are ‘Tone’ and ‘Timing’

The tone of the remarketing email can be very important, and we generally advise our customers to stick to a service tone, where you are genuinely trying to help the customer and offer great service. An overly strong sales tone can backfire.

The other key is Timing. When you follow up is critically important. An MIT study shows that a real-time follow up is essential because 90% of ecommerce leads go cold within one hour. Timing is also important when you think about multi stage follow ups, which are essential to maximize your return.

There are many resources on http://www.seewhy.com which look at shopping cart recovery best practices, including several ‘how to’ web cast recordings.
Charles

Thanks!

Richard