Abandoned cart email examples: 12 things that actually work

70% of online carts get abandoned. That's a meta-analysis from the Baymard Institute, and honestly, your site can be gorgeous and your product solid, the majority of people who add to cart still won't finish checkout. Nothing weird about it, that's the average rate everywhere.

These people have already shown strong buying intent. They didn't just look at a product page, they put the thing in their cart. So you've got gold-tier info. That's where abandoned cart emails come in.

I see a lot of accounts where this part is either missing or poorly built. And every time, that's revenue going straight in the bin. Here's how I handle it on the agency side, with abandoned cart email examples that genuinely perform.

Why people ditch their cart

Before you fire off emails, you need to understand why people leave. Baymard dug into this, and once you strip out the 42% who are "just browsing" or "not ready to buy," the real reasons are pretty concrete.

Shipping costs that are too high. You hit checkout, see €8 of shipping added on, and that cools you off fast. Online buying doesn't handle nasty surprises well.

Delivery times that are too long. Blame Amazon if you want, but people want their stuff fast now. If your delivery estimate drags on, the guy goes somewhere else.

Lack of trust around payment. Card fraud is exploding, and people are hyper-sensitive to it. If your site looks sketchy, no security badge, no certificate, they walk off with their card.

Forced account creation. Making someone create an account just to pay is the best way to lose them. Always offer guest checkout.

A checkout that's too long. 17% of people abandon purely because the funnel is painful. An Apple Pay or Google Pay one-click button strips out all the hassle of typing card details on mobile.

If I'm laying all this out, it's because your abandoned cart emails need to attack these specific blockers. These emails should above all remove whatever stopped the person at the payment step, not just remind them they forgot something.

Three flows, not one email

When I set up cart recovery for a client, I don't drop a single email. I usually build three different flows, because people aren't all at the same level of engagement.

Browse Abandonment

This is when someone views a product but doesn't add to cart. Here the goal is to not be pushy at all. You send an email that reads more like a newsletter, resurfacing what the person looked at, no pressure. The guy was far from buying, so you don't rush him.

Cart abandonment

The person added to cart, then nothing. They're more-engaged than someone who just browsed, but they didn't make it to payment. An hour later, three hours later, you send them an email, "you forgot this in your cart." You put the product back, remind them of the useful info.

Checkout abandonment

This one's the hottest. People added to cart, clicked order, they were a hair away from buying. And they didn't. For these emails, you go straight to the point. Just give the info needed to reassure and clear the last blockers.

On timing, I don't treat the flows the same. On checkout abandonment, you can follow up faster and exclude anyone who already bought in the last 7 days. On cart abandonment, I go more like 28 days, because an add-to-cart is less committal than a payment that was started. At most you follow up with someone after 7 days if they started payment, but if they just added to cart, give them more room.

Abandoned cart email example

On a cosmetics brand account, I built a checkout email with just the photo, the price, three blockers removed and a button. It converts at 8%. Nothing more. That's pretty much the recipe that works every time, and it comes down to a few blocks working together.

Start by showing the product, a nice image, the price, the size, the colour. In eCommerce, the photo sells as much as the product. If your visual is garbage, your email falls flat. Then you clear the blockers, especially on checkout, where you need to cancel out anything that might stop them. Remind them of free shipping if you have it, the delivery times, return costs, available payment methods. These are usually the three or four blockers you find in payment abandonment, so you handle them one by one. Add social proof, customer reviews, ratings, content posted by other buyers, it reassures them on the product's value and on the fact that you're a real site. And one single button, pointing back to the cart, not three CTAs scattered everywhere. Finally, when relevant, a recommendation for an alternative product, because sometimes the guy abandoned just because the product wasn't quite right for him, and offering another option can turn the missed sale around.

On tone, I draw a real line between the flows. On checkout, it's not the moment to tell your life story, get to the essentials. On browse, you can afford a warmer email, closer to a newsletter. You set the tone to match the guy's engagement level, that's it.

A single email or a sequence

A single email is already good, but I never stop there. On each flow I build a small sequence, two or three emails that go out in a row if the person doesn't react.

The first is the simple reminder. The product, the price, a button. The second lands a bit later, and there you dial up the reassurance, you talk shipping, returns, payment methods again. The third, when relevant, you can add a small incentive, but I don't like pulling out the promo too early, otherwise you train people to wait for your code. You always exclude someone the moment they buy, so you don't keep following up for nothing.

Often, the problem is volume

One thing people forget, the problem is rarely the flow. Most of the time, the quality of the emails isn't the issue. What's blocking you is the number of people entering the flow.

I've seen accounts where checkout abandonment converted at 8% and cart abandonment at 3.5%, perfectly decent rates, except that across the whole year there'd been about twenty orders on checkout and a dozen on cart. The reason: people only entered these flows if they were identified, subscribed to the newsletter or already known to the site.

That's really where it plays out. If nobody leaves you their email or you haven't set the right events on your site, you can have the best flows in the world, they run on empty. Before you work on your templates, work on your opt-in and your data collection. That's where the delta is.

One important point while I'm at it, all of this runs on first-party data, behavioural data you collect once the person has given consent to be contacted. A lot of brands think abandoned cart emails are borderline illegal. That's false. You're using data collected with the customer's explicit consent, it's perfectly compliant.

How much it should bring in

On the numbers, here's where you should sit. Across all your automation flows, cart abandonment, checkout abandonment, browse abandonment, welcome, win-back, this should bring in at least 30% of your email revenue. Below that, you're losing revenue you could be recovering.

So here's how I attack the topic with a client.

First I check that the events are properly set on the site, add to cart, checkout started, product view. Without those, nothing triggers. Then I look at the volume of people entering the flows, and if it's low, I work on the opt-in before touching anything else. Only after that do I optimise the three flows, the timings, the blockers to clear, the design. And I measure the placed order rate on each flow to know which one drives the profitability.

Abandoned cart emails are one of the most profitable best practices in eCommerce. But start by making sure people actually enter them. The rest comes after.