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Abandoned cart email

An abandoned cart email is an automated message sent to a shopper who added products to the cart or started checkout but left without placing an order.

How it works

The store or its email platform spots a cart or checkout that ends without an order. It can write only to shoppers whose address it has: subscribers, logged-in customers or people who typed their email at checkout. Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned once it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer enters an email.

Klaviyo suggests an email flow of two or three messages: the first 2–4 hours after checkout starts, the next 20–48 hours later. Each is skipped once an order is placed. A browse abandonment email does the same for shoppers who only viewed a product.

The harder part is counting. A shopper who came from an ad click and returns through the email can be claimed by both the email platform and Google Ads. The abandoned cart email guide covers who should get the order.

Where you see it

  • Shopify: Orders → Abandoned checkouts.

Example

Example store, not client data.

In a month, 900 shoppers with a known address leave a cart at the tableware shop. The two-email flow brings back 63 orders, 7%, worth 63 × 600 = 37,800. Klaviyo credits all 63 to email: each came within its default 5-day window after an open or click. Of them, 40 had also clicked a Google ad within its conversion window, so those 40 orders also sit among the 300 that Google Ads reports.

Not to be confused with

  • Remarketing — ads shown to past visitors of the site. The email needs the shopper’s address.
  • Cart abandonment rate — the share of carts left without an order. The email is one response to it.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Email brought 63 orders and Google Ads 300, so 363 in total.” Right: each system counts its own touches, so in the example 40 orders sit in both reports. The store’s order count is the ceiling.

Sources