Turn abandoned carts into conversions 

Every brand knows this struggle: a potential customer reaches the conversion point—and then clicks away before completing the action. But you don’t have to abandon hope when your customer abandons their cart! A timely, relevant abandoned cart email can transform those almost-there engagements into actual conversions.

A million distractions can cause customers to start a purchase or signup process and jump ship. If you write them off at that point, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Instead, build an abandoned cart strategy that reminds people why they came to you in the first place. Then, give them the incentive they need to get back into action.

If you shop online (and who doesn’t?), you’ve probably received abandoned cart emails. E-commerce businesses have long used an abandoned cart strategy to snag customers who were this close to a purchase. These messages are effective because a customer has proven they’re interested—it’s now just a matter of reigniting that gotta-have-it impulse.

But abandoned cart emails aren’t exclusive to the e-commerce industry. They can be powerful for all kinds of products and services. Anytime a customer starts a process and doesn’t complete it—signing up for an account, buying an add-on feature, or upgrading their plan—an abandoned cart email can save the purchase.

The best abandoned cart emails don’t just bring customers back to the point where they dropped off. Instead, they help remove whatever friction caused them to leave in the first place.

Timing an abandoned cart email is like baking a meringue: too early gives you a spongy, annoying mess, but waiting too long produces something dried-out and unappealing. You need to reach customers while their interest is still high but not so fast that they feel hounded.

So, what’s the best time to send your email? Of course, every business is unique, and no universal timestamp applies to all cart abandonment. Our suggestion? Start by calculating the average time between when your customers add something to their cart and when they complete the checkout process. Shoot for sending your abandoned cart email just after that cutoff.

💡 Pro tip: Your abandoned cart strategy hinges on reacting to real-time customer behavior, requiring accurate, up-to-date data. Otherwise, you could leave customers with a bad taste in their mouths. That’s where a customer data platform (CDP) can help.

If you’re wondering how to reduce cart abandonment, you might want to think outside the inbox. The classic abandoned cart strategy is email, but you have other options. You can reengage customers across SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages—and even combine them into an omnichannel campaign with multiple touchpoints.

Industry example: Say a customer using a banking app starts opening a savings account but abandons before they finish. A multi-channel abandoned cart strategy could look like this:

• Start by sending a push notification reminding the customer to finish the process. Use deep linking to send them back to the account setup screen in your app.
• If the customer clicks the push notification, greet them with an in-app message explaining how to finish setting up their account.
• If the customer doesn’t engage with the push or finish their application, follow up with an email highlighting the benefits of the savings account they were interested in.

💡 Pro tip: Use "Wait Until" conditions to stagger messages based on customer actions or inactivity. For example, if a push notification goes unanswered, Customer.io can automatically delay sending the following email until a certain time has passed or the user has not interacted further. This ensures that your omnichannel approach feels personalized and well-timed, improving customer experience while boosting conversion rates.

Like any email, your subject line determines whether the recipient will engage or ignore. Abandoned cart email subject lines are no time to be coy or vague. You’re trying to jog the customer’s memory, so your copy should be short, clear, and attention-grabbing.

Personalizing your subject line makes it more likely to reignite a customer’s interest. Mentioning specific details lets them know the message is relevant and worth their attention.

Take a look at these abandoned cart email subject lines for inspiration:

• Get {benefit} when you upgrade {service} today!
• ⏬ The price has dropped on {item} in your cart
• {Product} is still in stock, but not for long
• {Customer.first_name}, save $20 when you finish signing up by {time}
• Have questions about {service}? Let’s chat!
• Appointments for {day} are filling up fast!
• ⏰ Your {title of course or app} is waiting for you.
• Upgrade your {service} today to save an extra 20%.

Email personalization doesn’t stop at the subject line. You can inject relevant information tailored to each customer’s interests into your abandoned cart email.

For consumer goods, you might include a picture of the products in the customer’s cart—along with five-star reviews or inventory levels. For a SaaS product, you could reiterate the features included in the pricing tier the customer has already selected.

And for an online event, include the event's date and time in the customer's local time zone, plus a countdown timer to prompt action

Customer example: If you want to get uber-personal, you could trigger messages based on customer behavior beyond adding something to their cart. Notion took this approach with a feature-adoption campaign: they identified which features people were interested in but not buying, then triggered personalized campaigns to encourage adoption. Read the case study to learn how they did it.

💡 Pro tip: No matter your use case or industry, Liquid can be a powerful personalization tool in your email marketing toolbox. You can use Liquid to reference items in a customer’s cart and the exact price of those items, for example:

A bit of tinkering can yield a lot of improvement. Once your abandoned cart strategy is in place, implement a continuous testing process to optimize it over time.

A few elements of your abandoned cart emails you might want to experiment with:

• Subject line: length, wording, emojis, personalization
• CTA: wording, placement, button vs. text link
• Timing: how long after abandonment you send the email
• Graphics: colors, imagery, placement

It’s also worthwhile to test different strategies by segmenting your audience and trying a new approach with one cohort while comparing performance against a control group. For instance, you might experiment with things like:

• Messaging: scarcity/urgency compared to a gentle reminder
• Support: including customer support links compared to no support links
• Channels: email compared to SMS
• Personalization: using personalized content compared to generic
• Incentives: offering a discount compared to no discount

💡 Pro tip: The sky’s the limit when it comes to experimentation—but it’s best to focus on one variable at a time. Try these A/B testing tips and tricks to get the most out of your experiments.

Let’s examine how these best practices play out in the real world. These seven abandoned cart email examples showcase how to reduce cart abandonment across various industries. They all do what the best abandoned cart emails should: inspire customers to reconnect with their initial sense of engagement and act on it!

Industry: Fintech

Standout best practices: This abandoned cart email is an excellent example of making the most of the data you have. LendingTree knows the customer came to compare loan rates, but they don’t yet know what kind of loan the person wants. So, they offer options while tying everything to the customer’s original intention.

Industry: SaaS

Standout best practices: This is an excellent abandoned cart email that helps mitigate friction for the customer. Salesforce offers three different routes for learning the platform, and the gamification element makes it feel like a fun challenge instead of a chore.

Industry: E-commerce

Standout best practices: Cabi amplifies the impact of an abandoned cart recovery message by following multiple abandoned cart email best practices. The subject line is a short and snappy reminder—they lead with urgency, throw in a free shipping offer, and close with personalized content showing the customer exactly what’s waiting in their cart.

Industry: Edtech

Standout best practices: Skillshare focuses this cart abandonment email on overcoming its customers' main obstacle—the price. They know that once people experience the platform's benefits, they’re more likely to feel it’s worth the cost. So, they make it easy for the customer to reignite their initial interest with a free trial offer.

Industry: Healthcare

Standout best practices: Headspace focuses on support with their abandoned cart email. They prominently display a direct email for customers to contact with questions. Additional support options at the end ensure the customer has plenty of avenues for help if they’re hitting a barrier in the signup process.

Industry: Fintech

Standout best practices: Quicken's abandoned cart email uses a discount and personalized plan selection to entice customers to engage with them. Since the customer hasn’t pre-selected a plan, Quicken makes it easy by recommending one based on their profile.

Industry: SaaS

Standout best practices: Zapier works differently than many other SaaS products. Instead of buying a “package,” customers pay whenever a Zap is used. So, cart abandonment occurs when an account or Zap is set up but never used. Zapier’s email acknowledges that creating the first Zap might be complicated, so they share templates to simplify the process! The postscript with a link to documentation adds a personal touch, further easing the first Zap friction point.

Now that you understand how to reduce cart abandonment strategically, it’s time to build out the functionality. The best abandoned cart emails are part of one cohesive, personalized campaign requiring the right technology and execution. That’s where Journeys comes in—just follow these steps to get your campaign up and running!

To get started, you’ll need to create two events in Journeys: checkout_started and checkout_completed. These will determine when someone enters and exits the campaign. Both will require a unique identifying attribute like checkout_id.

With your events created, the build itself is quick and easy:

• Step 1: Create a new event-triggered campaign.
• Step 2: Choose the checkout_started event as the trigger; customers will enter the campaign when they begin the checkout process.
• Step 3: Set a conversion goal of checkout_completed for your campaign
• Step 4: Add a Wait Until step after the checkout_started trigger and set the timeframe for when you want a customer to get a message if they don’t complete checkout.
• Step 4: Create your logic with two branches. If the customer checks out the checkout_completed event with the same checkout_id as the triggering event within your set time frame, they’ll exit the campaign and receive no messages. They’ll get the abandoned cart email if they don’t check out.
• Step 5: Create your email to bring abandoned customers back into the checkout process. Note: you can always include other channels in your campaign, like in-app, push, or SMS.
• Step 6: Set your campaign live! Make sure to monitor your results and iterate for improvement regularly.

Want to craft a more complex workflow using additional data and integrations? Here’s a great example of how the process can work when you pair Shopify webhooks and Journeys for personalized campaign building. Watch Customer.io’s Solutions Architect, Jake Meyers, walk you through it.

An abandoned cart can mean a loss—of engagement, revenue, or a customer. But crafting a smart abandoned cart strategy can turn that potential loss into an opportunity.

Ready to put these best practices into action? Get started with a 14-day free trial of Journeys and build your abandoned cart email campaign now!