Abandoned Cart Emails: What to Send, When to Send It, and What to Fix First

Open your store analytics and look at how many people added something to their cart last month, then how many actually paid. For most stores the gap is uncomfortable. The Baymard Institute's running average across 50 studies puts it at 70.22%, so roughly seven carts out of every ten never become orders.

Some of that is unavoidable. People save items to think about, compare prices, or get pulled away by a phone call. But a slice of those carts belongs to shoppers who wanted to buy and didn't, and a short, well-timed email sequence is one of the cheapest ways to bring them back. Here is what to send, when to send it, and the problems to fix on your site before any email can help.

Fix the reasons people leave before you write a single email

An email can remind someone about their cart. It can't fix a checkout that surprised them with a $15 shipping charge. Baymard's checkout research lists the most common reasons shoppers abandon, leaving aside people who were just browsing:

Source: Baymard Institute. Shoppers could pick more than one reason.

Look at that list and notice how many are website problems, not marketing problems. If your checkout has two or three of these, fixing them will likely recover more sales than any email. This is where a UX review of your checkout pays for itself quickly.

Make sure you can actually reach the shopper

Abandoned cart emails only work if you have an email address. Most anonymous visitors who leave from the cart page can't be emailed at all. The emails go to people who typed their address into checkout, are logged in, or are already on your list.

Three ways to capture more addresses:

• Ask for the email first in checkout. Put the email field at the very top so it's captured even if they leave on the shipping step.
• Grow your list before the cart. A first-order offer or a useful guide in a signup form means more shoppers are already known to you when they add to cart.
• Separate cart from browse. Someone who looked at a product but never added it is a different, cooler lead. Send them a lighter "still thinking about it?" message, not your cart sequence.

The three-message sequence

There is no single correct sequence, but a three-step version is the common starting point. Klaviyo's abandoned cart benchmarks page describes a typical flow starting with a reminder a few hours after abandonment, a follow-up around 24 hours, and a final message around 48 hours. Here is how I'd structure each one.

Message 1: the reminder (2-4 hours after)

Most people who abandon a cart got distracted. The first email simply puts the cart back in front of them while they still remember it.

• Subject line that says what it is: "You left something in your cart" works better than something clever.
• A clear image of the exact product, with size, colour and price.
• One big button that opens the cart with items still in it. Test this link; broken cart restore links are surprisingly common.
• No discount. Plain text from a real person's name often does well for smaller brands.

Message 2: answer the doubt (around 24 hours after)

If they didn't come back after the reminder, something is holding them up. Use this email to answer the questions that stop people buying your product.

• Shipping cost and delivery time, stated plainly.
• Your returns policy in one line ("Free returns within 30 days").
• Two or three short reviews of that product or category.
• A sizing guide, ingredients list or compatibility note, whatever your customer support inbox is asked most.

Message 3: the last nudge (48-72 hours after)

This is where you can test an incentive, but don't make it automatic. Klaviyo's page notes that discounts aren't always needed and can train shoppers to wait for offers, suggesting you keep incentives for higher-value carts. Alternatives that protect your margin:

• Free shipping instead of a percentage off
• A small gift with orders over a threshold
• Suggesting similar products in case the original wasn't quite right
• Asking one question: "Was something wrong with checkout?" and replying personally to answers

Stop the sequence the moment someone buys. Nothing looks more careless than a "complete your purchase" email arriving after the order confirmation.

What results look like

Benchmarks give you a rough sense of whether your sequence is working. Treat them as ballpark figures, since they come from email platforms reporting on their own customers and every store is different.

• In Omnisend's 2025 user data, abandoned cart emails averaged a 35.75% open rate, a 3.84% click rate and a 1.51% conversion rate per delivered email, with about $2.54 of revenue per email sent.
• Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks report an average of $6.77 revenue per recipient for abandoned cart emails and a 6.0% click rate, with the top 10% of brands at $13.70 and 11.3%.
• Omnisend also reports that abandoned cart and welcome emails together drove 76% of automated orders on its platform in 2025.

That last point is why I usually tell store owners to build these two flows before anything else in email. They work in the background on every visitor, every day.

Should you add SMS?

Text messages get noticed faster than email. Klaviyo's benchmarks show abandoned cart texts averaging a 10.3% click rate, higher than email, though revenue per recipient was lower at $4.48. SMS needs explicit opt-in and stricter rules in most countries, and it feels more personal, so overuse annoys people quickly. A sensible setup: email for the first reminder, one text later for subscribers who opted in to SMS, never more.

Setup checklist for Shopify and WooCommerce stores

• Email field is the first thing in checkout
• Guest checkout is available
• Shipping cost or free-shipping threshold is visible before checkout
• Abandoned checkout flow is on (Shopify's built-in email, or a tool such as Klaviyo, Omnisend or Mailchimp; WooCommerce needs a plugin or integration)
• Cart restore link tested on mobile and desktop
• Flow exits as soon as an order is placed
• Separate, lighter browse-abandonment flow for people who never added to cart
• Your sending domain is authenticated (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) so emails land in the inbox, not spam
• Unsubscribe link in every email and consent rules checked for each country you sell to
• Monthly check of revenue per recipient and unsubscribe rate, with one change tested at a time

Common mistakes I see

Sending the first email after 24 hours. By then many shoppers have bought elsewhere or forgotten. Get the first reminder out within a few hours.

Generic emails with no product shown. "Come back and finish shopping" with your logo and nothing else gives people no reason to click.

Leading with 20% off. You'll recover carts, but you'll also discount orders that would have come back on their own.

Never looking at the flow again. Product images break, discount codes expire, and store themes change. Check the flow every quarter by abandoning a cart yourself.

Where to start this week

If you have no recovery flow at all, switch one on today with a single reminder email and add the other two over the next couple of weeks. If you already have one, go through the Baymard reasons above on your own checkout, on your phone, as if you were a new customer. The fixes you find there will make every email, ad and social post you run work harder. If you pay for traffic, every abandoned cart is a paid click lost, which is why we look at checkout before touching bids in our guide to a small business Google Ads budget. And once the order is delivered, the same email tool can send the review request described in how to get more Google reviews.

We set up email flows as part of our content and email marketing work, and fix checkout problems through website development for Shopify and WooCommerce stores. If you'd like a second opinion on your checkout or your current flow, book a short call and we'll take a look together.