A good cart abandonment email setup is a short series of three messages. Send the first 30 minutes to 4 hours after the cart is left, the second around 24 hours, and the last at 48 to 72 hours. Start with a plain reminder. Save any discount for the later emails, and only for the carts where it pays off. Use subject lines that name the product, and include proof like reviews and guarantees, because the reasons people leave carts are the same ones your emails need to answer.
About 70% of online carts are abandoned, according to Baymard Institute's average of 50 studies (last updated September 2025). An email flow won't fix the causes. That is the job of the cart and checkout itself. What a flow does is win back some of the shoppers who were close to buying.
A note on our data: LiftArchive's database holds on-site A/B tests, not email tests. So where we cite tests below, they are tests of the same offers, wording and proof you would put in an email, run on product, cart and checkout pages. Treat them as strong hints, then test them in your own flow.
How many cart abandonment emails to send, and when
Three emails is the common setup, and the vendor data backs it. Omnisend reports that a series of three abandoned cart emails brings 131% more orders than a single email.
The vendors give slightly different timing advice:
- Omnisend recommends the first email after 30 to 60 minutes, a second at 24 hours and a third at 72 hours. It also suggests only sending between 6 AM and 9 PM.
- Klaviyo describes a typical flow as a reminder email after 2 to 4 hours, a text with a discount after 24 hours, and a final message after 48 hours with other product suggestions or a feedback request.
A sensible default from both sets of advice:
- Email 1, at 1 to 4 hours: a plain reminder with the cart contents and one button back to checkout.
- Email 2, at about 24 hours: answer objections with reviews, your guarantee, shipping times and returns.
- Email 3, at 48 to 72 hours: a last nudge. This is where an incentive goes, if you use one, or a few other products to look at.
Two setup details matter more than the exact hours. First, the flow needs to stop as soon as the shopper buys. Second, you can only email shoppers whose address you have. In Shopify, a checkout counts as abandoned once it sits incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer gives their email.
That second point is why email capture matters so much. Dave Diederen saw a -20.51% drop in revenue per visitor when they removed a store's email popup. The popup was doing real work, and part of that work is feeding addresses into flows like this one. If you're thinking about cutting your popup, read our popup test results first.
Cart abandonment email subject lines
We don't have verified data that one subject line style beats another across stores, so we won't quote open-rate lifts for any formula. What the benchmarks do show is that these emails get opened. Omnisend reports a 35.75% open rate for abandoned cart emails in 2025, and nearly 4 in 10 shoppers who click go on to buy. So the subject line's job is to make the email look like a useful reminder, not an ad.
Some patterns worth testing, matched to each email in the series:
- Email 1 (reminder): "You left something in your cart", "Still thinking about the [product name]?", "Your cart is saved".
- Email 2 (reassurance): "What [number] customers say about the [product name]", "Free returns on your order", "Questions about your order? Here are answers".
- Email 3 (last nudge): "Your cart expires soon" (only if it really does), "10% off what's in your cart", "Before you go: a few picks for you".
On-site tests give some hints on wording. When savings were shown on the product page, Dave Diederen found that showing them as a percentage instead of a dollar amount lifted conversion rate by 7.55%. But in a different test with savings over $100, the dollar amount was net negative. The lesson for a discount subject line is to test both "10% off" and "$15 off". Neither format wins every time.
Be careful with fake urgency. A countdown timer had very different results from store to store. Dave Diederen recorded -35.61% revenue per visitor when adding a countdown timer for a European market, and Kasper Dolk saw conversion rate rise 25.61% after removing a checkout countdown timer. "Your cart expires in 2 hours" in a subject line is the same kind of pressure. Only use it if it's true, and test it. Our countdown timer page has the full set of results.
@DaveDiederen
@kasper_dolk@DaveDiederen
@RubendgrfDiscount or no discount?
Most stores shouldn't put a discount in the first email. Klaviyo warns that discounts can train shoppers to wait for a discount before buying. It suggests offering incentives only on high-value carts, where one recovered order is worth the margin.
Omnisend's guide suggests a plain reminder first, then 5% off in the second email and 10% off in the third. This step-up approach means shoppers who would have bought anyway buy at full price from the first email.
Our database shows why you should test offers instead of assuming they help:
- Rubendgrf saw +28% revenue per visitor from a one-click extra 10% discount banner above the add-to-cart button. A simple, clear offer can work.
- CROguy_ recorded -52.38% revenue per visitor (-$104,679/month) after changing a 2-pack offer to "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" at the same price. A more generous-looking offer lost a lot of money.
- Oliver Kenyon found that lowering the price and dropping a free gift ($82 vs $85 plus a gift) was worth +$43k/month. Shoppers sometimes value a lower total more than an extra item.
Baymard's survey lists extra costs like shipping, taxes and fees as a top reason shoppers leave during checkout. So for many stores, free shipping on the abandoned order is a better incentive than a percentage off. It answers the actual objection. Our pricing and discount tests cover more offer types.
@oliverkenyon@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@Rubendgrf
@CROguy_Abandoned cart email examples
Below are three example structures, one for each email in the series. We wrote them as starting templates, so they aren't copies of any brand's emails. Each one borrows an idea that won in an on-site test.
Example 1: the plain reminder
- Subject: Still thinking about the [product name]?
- Body: A product image, name, chosen variant and price. One line: "We saved your cart." One button: "Return to checkout".
- Why it works: It looks like a service message, not a promotion, and there's nothing to read past.
Example 2: the objection answerer
- Subject: What customers say about the [product name]
- Body: Two or three short reviews with star ratings, your guarantee in one line, shipping time and the returns policy, then the cart button.
- Why it works: The same proof wins on site. Dave Diederen saw +£68,640/month from adding "30-day money-back guarantee" under the checkout button, and +17.96% conversion rate from showing customer reviews on the checkout page.
Example 3: the last nudge
- Subject: Free shipping on your cart, until Friday
- Body: The cart contents, a named, dated offer ("Free shipping on this order until Friday"), and two or three related products underneath for shoppers who changed their mind about the item.
- Why it works: A clear, named offer tends to beat a vague one. Dave Diederen saw +11.12% conversion rate from naming the sale in a discount badge ("Summer Sale - Save 50%"), and +11.08% from changing cart copy to "Congrats! You unlocked FREE shipping!"
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederenTo see how your flow compares, Klaviyo's 2026 data from more than 110,000 customers puts average abandoned cart email revenue at $6.77 per recipient, with the top 10% at $13.70, and an average click rate of 6%. For context on the cart side, see our cart abandonment rate benchmarks.
Shopify cart abandonment email tools
On Shopify you have three common options: the built-in abandoned checkout email, Omnisend, or Klaviyo. The built-in option is the cheapest way to start. A dedicated email tool makes sense once you want a multi-email series, segments and SMS.
| Tool | Free option (as of November 2026) | Best for | Not for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify built-in abandoned checkout email | Abandoned checkout emails are always free and don't count toward the 10,000 free monthly emails | New stores that want one reminder running today | Stores that want branching flows, SMS or detailed segments |
| Omnisend | Free plan: 500 emails/month, 250 contacts. Standard from $11.20/month for 500 contacts | Small and mid-size Shopify stores that want email and SMS flows with pre-built templates | Brands that need very deep data and custom reporting, or stores with large lists on a tight budget, since price scales with contacts |
| Klaviyo | Free plan: up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends/month. Paid pricing comes from a plan builder | Larger stores that want detailed segmentation and benchmark reporting | Very small stores that will outgrow the free tier quickly and don't need advanced segments |
A few honest trade-offs. Shopify's built-in email is simple, and that's the point. You choose the delay and edit the template, but it isn't built for a full multi-step series with SMS and segmentation. Omnisend's free plan is small (250 contacts), so most stores with a real list will pay. Its Pro plan starts at $41.30/month for 2,500 contacts with unlimited emails. Klaviyo doesn't publish a simple starting price on its pricing page, so you'll need to price your own list size in its plan builder.
For a closer look at the two dedicated tools, see Omnisend vs Klaviyo. For apps that recover carts in other ways, like on-site reminders and push notifications, see our roundup of cart abandonment software.
Whatever tool you pick, set up the three-email series, keep the discount out of email 1, and treat subject lines and offers as tests. The on-site results above show how often an offer that sounds better ends up losing.