What is an abandoned cart email flow?
How does an abandoned cart flow start?
It starts from a rule. A person begins checkout, then stops. After a wait, the email platform sends the first message.
What counts as abandoned depends on the platform. Shopify's help centre treats a checkout as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer has given an email address2. Mailchimp's help pages say its abandoned cart email needs a connected store, and drops people who buy before it sends3.
This is one of the email automation flows: a sequence sent automatically when a customer does something or meets a condition. The context is in email marketing for ecommerce.
Platforms offer different delays, and guides disagree on when the first message and the follow-ups should go. Test it on your own customers rather than copying a schedule.
Who can receive it?
Not automatically everyone. In Shopify's abandoned checkout automation you choose which visitors it goes to2. Shopify's consent page tells merchants to send promotional content only to customers who agreed to marketing, records that consent through a checkbox at checkout, and asks stores that send abandoned cart reminders to update the consent wording4.
Whether to send beyond that is a decision for your counsel. The soft opt-in is an exception to the consent rule for a business's own customers, and national rules differ. Your counsel decides how it applies to you.
Does it work?
It depends on the question. Recovered orders are easy to count. Orders that would have happened anyway are not.
This is incrementality: the extra sales caused by an activity, over and above what would have happened without it. To measure it, hold some eligible people back and compare. The cart abandonment rate, the share of carts that don't turn into a purchase, shows the size of the pool. It does not show what the emails recover.
For ZFD: Our view is that recovered revenue is not the number to quote. Extra margin from people who would otherwise have left is.
Worked example
Easily confused with
Abandoned cart flow vs Cart abandonment rate
A metric, not a message. It measures how many carts don't convert.
Abandoned cart flow vs Checkout abandonment
A narrower measure of people who left after starting checkout.
Abandoned cart flow vs Retargeting ads
Paid reminders on other sites. The flow is email to people you can already contact.
FAQ
When should the first abandoned cart email go out?
Guides disagree. Pick a starting point, then test it against your own customers. The wider reasoning is in customer retention strategy ecommerce.
Is an abandoned checkout email the same as an abandoned cart email?
Can I email everyone who abandoned a cart?
Not automatically. Consent matters, and your counsel decides what applies to you.
Let’s find what’s actually working.
Next step. Check what recovered revenue means for your margin with the Is your ROAS real? calculator.