You open your store's admin at the end of the day and see it again: carts filled, checkouts started, and no order at the end. You know other stores send abandoned cart emails, and you have probably received a few yourself. What you do not know is how many to send, how soon, whether to put a coupon in them, or whether it is even allowed to email someone who never finished paying. The simple answer is to start with one plain email about an hour after the shopper leaves, showing what they picked and linking straight back to checkout. You can add a second and third message later, once the first one works. Before any of that, it pays to check what your platform already captures, because the switch may be sitting in your settings, turned off. By the end of the next few sections you can run that check in fifteen minutes and turn on a sequence you can measure.
Key Takeaways
Send a plain note about one hour after checkout is abandoned, with the items, the price and a working link back to checkout. Add a 24 hour and a 48 to 72 hour follow-up only once the first one is tested.
Shopify has an abandoned checkout automation in Messaging, WooCommerce 11.0 has an experimental one-email feature that is off by default, and Mailchimp can run a series from a connected store.
Test an incentive later, only where your margin allows, because automatic discounts can teach buyers to wait.
Count completed orders and profit after discounts, plus unsubscribes and duplicates, not opens. Vendor recovery figures are marketing claims, not benchmarks.
What should my first abandoned cart email say, and when should it go out?
Send the first email about one hour after the shopper leaves checkout. Mailchimp's marketing glossary on abandoned carts recommends sending the first email within one to two hours, while the shopper still remembers what they were looking at.
Keep that first message plain. It needs three things: the products they left, with the price, and one clear button that returns them to their checkout with the cart still filled. You do not need a clever subject line or a discount. A shopper who left because the phone rang or the kids needed dinner only needs a quick way back, and a working link does that job better than any copy trick.
If the first email works, you can add more. A practical starting sequence has three messages:
- About one hour after abandonment: The items, the price and the link back to checkout.
- Around 24 hours: The same link, plus answers to the questions that stop people buying, such as shipping cost, returns, sizing, stock, payment options or delivery time.
- Optional, at 48 to 72 hours: A final note. This is the place to test an incentive, if you test one at all.
Mailchimp's documented default series, listed in its guide to classic automation types, sends at one hour, one day and three days. Its abandoned cart feature page suggests a shorter pattern of about one hour, six hours and 24 hours. No study sets one correct timing for every store, so treat these as starting points to test against your own orders.
A starting abandoned cart email sequence
- 1
1 hour
The items, the price and one button back to checkout. No discount.
- 2
24 hours
The same link, plus answers on shipping, returns, sizing, stock or payment.
- 3
48 to 72 hours
An optional final note, and the only place to test an incentive.
How do I turn on abandoned cart emails in Shopify, WooCommerce or Mailchimp?
The switch lives in a different place on each platform, and on some it is already there waiting. Each one also has its own limits: when it sends, how many messages it allows, and which shoppers qualify. The steps below come from each platform's own help pages. Check the page for your platform before you start, because menus and plan rules change.
Abandoned cart emails in Shopify
Shopify lists abandoned checkouts under Orders, Abandoned checkouts, so you can see how many you had before you change anything. Its guide to recovering abandoned checkouts places the email under Apps, Messaging, Automations, in an automation called "Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify." Open Edit settings and choose how much time should pass between the abandoned checkout and the email. The email links the customer back to their cart. If the shopper completes a purchase before the email is due, Shopify does not send it. For more control, Shopify Flow has a Customer abandons checkout trigger you can build a custom sequence on.
Abandoned cart emails in WooCommerce
WooCommerce documents an abandoned cart recovery email in WooCommerce 11.0. It is experimental and disabled by default. To turn it on, go to WooCommerce, Settings, Advanced, Features, and select Abandoned cart recovery. Then open WooCommerce, Settings, Emails, Abandoned cart recovery, enable the email, and choose whether it sends automatically. Automatic sending happens two hours after an eligible checkout becomes a pending order, and WooCommerce sends no more than one recovery email per order. Each email carries an unsubscribe link, and sending one manually stops the scheduled copy from going out as a duplicate. If you want a second or third message, you will need an email tool or plugin built for sequences.
Mailchimp and Klaviyo
If your store is connected to Mailchimp, its guide to creating a classic abandoned cart email walks through it: open Automations, then Classic Automations, choose to turn on an abandoned cart email, select your store, and set a delay of one hour, six hours or 24 hours. The email must include Mailchimp's Cart content block, which pulls in the shopper's items. The classic feature is limited to eligible plans or accounts that already had classic automations, so check your plan first. Klaviyo builds abandoned cart flows from a checkout started event, which needs your store integration in place, a flow trigger, the email itself and filters that stop the flow when someone buys.
Squarespace and Wix handle this through their own commerce automation where your plan includes it, or through a connected email tool. Availability depends on your commerce plan, so check your plan's features before paying for anything extra.
| Platform | Where to switch it on | How many emails | When it sends |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Apps, Messaging, Automations | One built-in email; more through Shopify Flow | A delay you choose |
| WooCommerce 11.0 | Settings, Advanced, Features, then Settings, Emails | One per order | Two hours after the order is pending |
| Mailchimp (classic) | Automations, Classic Automations | A series | One hour, six hours or 24 hours for the first |
| Klaviyo | A flow on a checkout started event | A series | Set in the flow |
| Squarespace and Wix | Native commerce automation or a connected email tool | Varies by plan | Varies by plan |
Should I put a discount in an abandoned cart email?
Not in the first one. The first email should be the cart and the link, nothing more. A discount can win back a shopper who left over price, but if every abandoned cart gets a coupon automatically, buyers can learn that walking away from checkout earns them money off. That costs you margin on orders that would have come in at full price anyway.
If you want to test an incentive, put it in the last email of the sequence, and only on products where your margin can carry it. The point is to test one incentive and compare it against the same email without it. The second email often does more good by answering the question that stopped the sale. If shoppers leave at the shipping step, tell them the shipping cost and delivery time plainly. If they leave over returns, state your return policy in one line.
Is it legal to email someone who did not finish checking out?
It depends on where the shopper lives, what the email says, and what they agreed to when they gave you their address. What follows is general information from the regulators, not legal advice, and a store selling across borders should get advice for each country it sells to.
In the United States, an abandoned cart email will usually count as commercial email when its main purpose is promoting a purchase. The FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide for business says commercial email must use accurate header information, avoid deceptive subject lines, identify itself as an advertisement, include a valid physical postal address and give people a way to opt out. CAN-SPAM does not generally require permission before you send, but it does require you to honor opt-outs.
For shoppers in the UK, the ICO's guidance on direct marketing by electronic mail explains that PECR generally requires consent before sending direct marketing to individuals. There is a "soft opt-in" for existing customers who bought or negotiated for similar products, were given a clear chance to refuse when you collected their details, and get an opt-out in every message. An abandoned cart email can count as direct marketing, especially when it includes discounts, product suggestions or promotional wording. GDPR adds a separate requirement for a lawful basis to process personal data, and it gives people an absolute right to object to direct marketing. The European Data Protection Board covers how that lawful basis works in its guidelines on legitimate interest.
It is tempting to call these emails transactional and skip the question. Mailchimp's page about transactional email warns that abandoned cart emails may be treated as marketing under applicable laws. The safe default is to treat them as marketing: include your postal address and an unsubscribe link, honor opt-outs quickly, and write down how you collect consent for buyers in the UK and EU.
Why are my abandoned cart emails not bringing anyone back?
When a sequence is switched on and nothing comes back, the cause is usually in the setup rather than the wording. The failures below are listed in a practical order to check, starting with the ones that stop any email from reaching anyone. Most are small fixes once you find them. Work down the list before rewriting a single subject line.
No email address was captured
A cart can exist before the shopper has typed an email address, and a platform cannot write to someone it cannot identify. If your checkout asks for the email late, or not at all before payment, some abandoned carts will have no address attached. Moving the email field earlier in checkout is usually a small configuration change.
Two tools are sending the same email
If your store platform and a connected email tool each run an abandoned cart flow, the shopper can get two emails for one cart. Turning on a second tool does not add recovery; it adds duplicates. List every app and automation connected to your store and keep only one flow switched on.
The link is broken, or buyers still get the email
The recovery link should reopen checkout with the cart still full. If it lands on an empty cart, an expired page or a login screen, the email has failed. Check too that someone who pays in the meantime is dropped from the sequence. Shopify skips the email when the purchase happens first, and Mailchimp suppresses purchasers in its classic automation, but a custom setup may need that rule added by hand.
The email arrives late or lands in spam
An email sent a day late misses the moment the glossary advice aims for. An email that lands in spam never gets seen. Sender authentication and domain reputation can be small fixes or a bigger project, depending on the history of your sending domain.
How much can abandoned cart emails recover for a small store?
There is no reliable universal recovery rate, and the most quoted figures come from the companies that sell the software. Mailchimp's feature page reports an average of 34 times more orders per recipient from abandoned cart series than from bulk email alone, and an average of $619 in extra monthly revenue for users who set up the automation. The page does not publish a full sample, industry mix or controlled test behind either number, so use them as a reason to try, not as a forecast for your store.
You will also see Baymard Institute's figure, a global average cart abandonment rate of 70.19 percent from its checkout usability research, with more detail in its list of cart abandonment rate statistics. That number measures how many carts are left, not how many can be won back by email. Abandoned carts include people comparing prices, researching, adding things by accident, or reacting to shipping costs. A high abandonment count does not mean your store is broken, and it does not mean every cart is a lost sale.
The number that matters is your own. After two to four weeks, count completed orders that came from the recovery email, the revenue they brought, your margin after any discount, the unsubscribe rate, and any duplicate or mistimed sends. Open rates can be distorted by privacy features in email apps, so leave them out of the verdict. If you have been thinking about how often to send the rest of your email, the same principle applies there as in our post on how often to email your customer list: measure what the email changes, not how busy the inbox looks.
What can I check in my store in fifteen minutes?
You can do this before you change a single setting.
- Open your abandoned checkouts: In Shopify, go to Orders, Abandoned checkouts. In WooCommerce, check whether Abandoned cart recovery is enabled under Settings, Advanced, Features, then look at Settings, Emails, Abandoned cart recovery.
- Count last month: Write down how many abandoned checkouts you had and compare it with your completed orders.
- Look for email addresses: Confirm the records actually contain usable emails.
- Find every flow: Check Shopify Messaging, Mailchimp, Klaviyo and any plugin such as AutomateWoo or MailPoet for an abandoned cart automation that is already on.
- Turn on one flow: Keep a single plain email live and switch off any duplicate.
- Send yourself a test: Check the products, the link, the sender name, the unsubscribe link, how it looks on a phone, and that a completed purchase stops the email.
Turning on one native flow is usually a small job, often 15 to 60 minutes plus testing. Bigger work starts when the link breaks inside a custom checkout, when several tools share the same store data, or when the real problem is the checkout itself. If shoppers are leaving over shipping costs or a checkout that fights them on a phone, fix that first, because no email can repair it. Stores that need that deeper work often need custom e-commerce development on the checkout rather than more emails.
Are your abandoned cart emails set up right?
Pick an answer to begin.
1. When should the first abandoned cart email go out?
2. What should the first email include?
3. What is the best measure of whether your sequence works?
Frequently Asked Questions About abandoned cart emails
How many abandoned cart emails should I send?
Start with one, about an hour after checkout is abandoned. Once it works, a common test is three: about one hour, 24 hours and 48 to 72 hours.
Does Shopify send abandoned cart emails automatically?
Shopify has an abandoned checkout automation under Apps, Messaging, Automations. Open its settings and choose the delay before it sends. It does not send if the shopper buys first.
Does WooCommerce have abandoned cart emails built in?
WooCommerce 11.0 documents an experimental recovery email that is off by default. Once enabled, it can send one email per order, two hours after an eligible checkout becomes pending.
Should my abandoned cart email include a discount?
Not the first one. Send the cart and the link first, then test a targeted incentive in a later email only if your margin allows it.
What are some abandoned cart email best practices?
Send the first email within an hour or two, show the items with a working checkout link, answer shipping and return questions in the second, run only one flow, stop the emails once someone buys, and include your postal address and an unsubscribe link.
Can I legally email someone who abandoned checkout?
It depends on where they live, what the email says and what they agreed to. In the US, CAN-SPAM rules apply to commercial email; in the UK, PECR generally requires consent for direct marketing. Treat these emails as marketing and get advice for each country you sell to.
Final Thoughts
Abandoned cart emails work best when they start small: one plain email about an hour after checkout is left, with the items, the price and a link that reopens the cart. Shopify, WooCommerce and Mailchimp each have a way to switch that on, and your first task is to find out whether yours is already running, twice, or not at all. Keep discounts out of the first email, treat the messages as marketing under the law, and let recovered orders decide what comes next.
Done that way, the carts left in your admin each night stop being a mystery. You will know how many there were, how many came back, and what those orders earned after any discount, and you can grow the sequence from real numbers.
If you would like a hand, Web Leveling can check your store's flows, remove duplicates, test the recovery links and set up reporting that counts completed orders instead of opens. Our email marketing work covers the sequence, the consent handling and the measurement, and if a single native email is all your store needs, we will say so. We work with small and medium businesses across the country and overseas. Tell us what your abandoned checkouts look like, and we will help you work out the next step.
Terms
Abandoned cart email words in this post
Tap a term to see what it means.
Abandoned cart. Items a shopper added to a cart and left without buying.
Abandoned checkout. A checkout the shopper started, usually with an email address entered, and did not finish.
Recovery link. The link in the email that reopens checkout with the shopper's items still in the cart.
Purchase suppression. A rule that stops the emails once the shopper completes an order.
Soft opt-in. A UK rule that lets you email existing customers about similar products if they were given a chance to refuse and can opt out in every message.
Recovered order. A completed order that came from a shopper returning through the recovery email.
