Abandoned Cart and Abandoned Checkout

Abandoned Cart automation is a series of emails sent to customers who added an item to their shopping cart but did not complete the purchase.

Using Abandoned Cart emails is an effective sales recovery strategy that has the potential to recover the revenue that was lost. With the right abandoned cart email strategy, you can get many customers who have abandoned their shopping carts to complete their purchases without additional work beyond the simple setup.

Abandoned Checkout emails are also sent out automatically to site visitors who started the checkout process but did not complete it. This is an effective way to reach your customers and recover lost revenue. Unlike Abandoned Cart automation, Abandoned Checkout will only trigger for people who started the checkout process but abandoned it.

This article will show you the main settings in the Abandoned Cart and Abandoned Checkout automations and explain the advanced features that will help you get your contacts back.

Setting up the Abandoned Cart in Omnisend is a pretty simple process. If this is your first time making an abandoned Cart flow, you might want to start with one of our presets. All settings are already set for you, and after some email customizations, your emails are ready to go.

To create the Abandoned Cart workflow, proceed to the Automations → click Create workflow → You will see a list of pre-built workflows.

Check a box next to Cart Abandonment → Pick Abandoned Cart preset → Customize workflow.

Abandoned Cart automation is triggered when the customer adds products to the cart and leaves your store before completing the purchase. To fulfill both conditions, Omnisend sets the Trigger and Exit Conditions:

Please note that another requirement is to recognize your customer or track the email address or phone number, so your client has to be identified.

All recognized contacts will enter your workflow as soon as they leave an unattended cart in your store but will exit if the exit condition is satisfied (if they place an order or proceed to checkout). Therefore, the customer who completes the order will exit the sequence on whichever step they have landed in automation.

Important! We only sync the phone number for all the native E-commerce integrations (Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Woocommerce) after the order has been placed. So, if a new customer gives us their contact information on the checkout page but then leaves their cart, we will only be able to send them an email. If the customer places an order, the phone number will be synced, and the next time the same customer leaves their cart, we'll also be able to send an SMS.

With the default settings, your Abandoned Cart sequence will be sent to all contacts, but you may also add some trigger and audience filters to target your emails to specific groups. Jump to the Advanced Settings section of the article for more information.

To create the Abandoned Cart workflow, proceed to the Automations → click Create workflow → You will see a list of pre-built workflows.

Check a box next to Cart Abandonment → Pick Abandoned Checkout preset → Customize workflow.

Abandoned Checkout automation is triggered when the customer adds products to the cart → proceeds to checkout → leaves your store before completing the purchase. To fulfill both conditions, Omnisend sets the Trigger and Exit Conditions:

Under trigger filters, you will be able to limit the automation to trigger only for specific customers who will match the trigger filter selected.

All of the trigger filter events are synced from your ecommerce store data, so you will be able to limit the trigger based on accurate order data. For example, imagine you'd like to send Abandoned Cart automation only to people with more than two products in their cart - easy! You select the Quantity trigger filter → select the operator "more than", and type in the number of products you need. This automation will only get triggered for customers with more than two products abandoned in their cart.

You can use multiple trigger filters and even combine them in single automation. Just don't forget to change the operator between rules. If you want your customers to match several rules to trigger this automation, use the "AND" operator and the "OR" operator if you'd like this automation to be triggered for customers who match either of the rules.

One of the best scenarios will be to differentiate your customers based on product collections of the items they have left in their carts or at the checkout. For this, go with the Line items/Product/Collections category → Title is → type in the name of the collection as stated in your e-commerce admin.

The trigger inactivity time option works as a delay for your automation to trigger. For example, you don't want to overwhelm your customers with emails, so you pick 1 hour as Trigger inactivity time. This way, the automation will only trigger after 1 hour since your customer has abandoned the cart. For the Abandoned checkout, this will mean that a customer has abandoned the checkout page for 1 hour as well. You can change this period to any that suits you more.

The Abandoned Checkout Engagement Split is an effective automation preset that allows you to proactively engage with customers who initiated the checkout process but did not purchase.

By reminding them about their expiring abandoned cart offer, you can effectively re-engage with them and encourage them to return to your store and complete their order.

Navigate to the Automations → New Workflow → type: Cart Abandonment → Select the Abandoned Checkout Engagement Split preset → Customize Workflow.

The automation is triggered for customers who have initiated the checkout process but did not place an order. The exit condition for this automation is when the customer places an order.

In the trigger settings, you can customize the time after which customers should trigger the automation once their checkout process is abandoned. This time is set to 1 hour by default, but you can adjust it according to your preferences.

Once customers' checkout process has been abandoned for the specified duration, they enter the workflow. The workflow consists of three strategically timed reminder emails designed to engage with the customers and remind them about their abandoned carts.

The first reminder email is sent immediately upon entering the workflow and includes a personalized reminder of the items left in the customer's cart. You can customize the email content to make it more compelling and include any specific details related to the abandoned items.

The second reminder email is sent after a delay of 23 hours from the first email. This email serves as a gentle nudge and provides an additional incentive to the customer by including a discount offer. The default discount value is 15%, but you can adapt it to your liking. Highlight the time-sensitive nature of the discount to create a sense of urgency.

After a delay of 2 days from the second email, the workflow splits the customers into two groups based on whether they clicked any links in the second email. Customers who did not click any links will proceed to receive the final email in the sequence. The last email is sent to customers who have not clicked any links in the second email.

Please note that the discount codes in both emails won't match, so we recommend limiting the offer to a specific expiry period.

The Abandoned Checkout Collection Filter Automation allows you to send targeted abandoned checkout emails tailored to the specific collection of products the customer abandoned.

Customizing the content based on the collection can create a more personalized and relevant experience for your customers, increasing the chances of recovering lost sales.

Tailored Communication. By identifying the specific collection of products that the customer abandoned, you can tailor your email communication to address their specific interests. This targeted approach increases the relevance and effectiveness of your abandoned checkout emails, making it more likely for customers to return and complete their purchases.

Navigate to the Automations → New Workflow → type: Cart Abandonment → Select the Abandoned Checkout Collection Filter → Customize Workflow.

The automation trigger is set for those who initiated the checkout process but did not order specific collection products. You need to select the name of the collection from the dropdown:

The exit condition for this automation is when the customer places an order. In the trigger settings, you can also customize the time after which customers should trigger the automation once their checkout process is abandoned. This time is set to 1 hour by default, but you can adjust it according to your preferences.

💡 Remember that all emails and delays in the workflow are fully customizable. You can modify the content, timing, and discounts to align with your branding and marketing strategies. Experiment with different email templates, personalized product recommendations, and compelling offers to optimize the effectiveness of your abandoned checkout emails.

Leveraging the Abandoned Checkout Collection Filter, you can create tailored and impactful abandoned checkout email sequences that resonate with your customers. This feature can help you recover lost sales, strengthen customer engagement, and drive conversions in a more targeted and personalized manner.

In the Abandoned sequences, you can add all types of messages — Email, SMS, and Push notifications. To add any of these blocks to the Automation sequence, you must drag and drop them into the workflow.

You can personalize the subject lines for your emails, SMS, and SMS text using custom properties that will be synced from your store in a few clicks. The data will be populated based on each client's information collected in the cart/checkout.

Note! In SMS, you can add the abandoned checkout URL link to direct customers to the checkout page with their abandoned products.

The SMS will have the link populated once customers trigger the automation.

Once a block is added, you must provide all the details, including your sender's email address, name, subject line, and preheader. If some data is still missing, you will see a warning message informing you about that, ex: 'Missing email information' or 'Missing SMS information.'

Sending a simple reminder might not be sufficient for your contacts to change their decision.

To edit the content of your email, click on the email block you created or preset one and click Edit content:

To help capture your contacts' attention, Omnisend pulls over the products your customers abandoned and the CTA button leading to the checkout page.

With these content blocks, you can not only offer a game-changing discount but also show off the products they've picked. While the link can be added to all messages, the Products can only be displayed in the email message; there's no way to show the products in SMS.

The Abandoned Products Item will bring the products your customers were browsing to the content of the email message. If you went with the Abandoned Cart preset or changed the automation trigger to Abandoned Cart, you will see this block in your Email message content or be able to add it from the content Items pool.

Once your email is sent, it will get populated with the abandoned products' images, descriptions, titles, and links. The Shop Now button within the Abandoned Products block already has a link set to the page of the product your customer was browsing.

Apart from the Abandoned Products block, you can add a button with the link to the store checkout page. The link can be added in personalization, as shown in the screenshot below. This button will lead each customer to their personalized checkout page with the products they have abandoned. This button is added to abandoned cart automation email presets by default.

You can also add this link to some other blocks' settings. For example, to the Shop Now button on the Discount Content block. Note this link should only be added to the Link field in the content block settings.

Note, if you send a test email, the Abandoned Cart products and the Complete your order button won't be populated with the products and the link to your store. The best way to test the flow is to trigger the sequence in your store. Jump to this section for more information.

As you know, you can target your automation to specific groups of contacts.

There are two ways to do that: use the Audience filter in the trigger block or a separate split block.

You will see similar options in both Audience and Split Condition settings. The primary difference is that contacts not satisfying the rule in the Audience setting won't enter the automation at all. At the same time, the Split Condition can be verified with the delay at any stage of automation. So you may want to use split after the email is already sent to everyone who entered the automation. With the help of split, you can divide customers who match the selected rule and those who don't into different paths and have different journeys.

To add the split, drag and drop it into the automation sequence:

With the help of split, the automation workflow lets you target your contacts based on the following:

💬 Check the dedicated instructions for more information on each of these block settings:

- Trigger and trigger filter;
- Audience filter and Exit conditions;
- Conditional Split and A/B testing.

One of the examples of the Trigger filter applications is splitting your sequence based on the Cart value. You may want to offer a percentage discount to clients abandoning low-value products, but this discount won't be the best solution for the high-value ones. Thus, by splitting your sequence based on the cart sum, you can send different discounts or even more messages to customers looking at more expensive products.
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To split your sequence based on the cart sum, drag and drop the Split block → select Trigger events → Total price and set the value.

Tip! The same filter can be added to the Trigger filters; however, it won't let you send different messages to those that didn't satisfy this condition.

After you turn on the automation, we also suggest measuring its performance. A/B testing is the best way to identify how your contacts respond to every variation in your sequence content.

After selecting the A/B test variable, choose the metric this variable can impact. For example, the delay setting or the Subject line can affect the open rate for the Abandoned Cart/Checkout email. If you wish to determine the best delay for the Abandoned Cart/Checkout email, only this parameter should be changed.
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As you can see from the screenshot presented below, you can send identical emails but with different delays.

If your open rate is high, but the conversion rate is low, you should reconsider the content of your messages, use personalization, and offer some incentives.

If you only want to check the message's layout, you can use the send test option in the email message editor. However, since you didn't abandon anything in your store, the email won't show the products or contain the checkout link.

Instead, you can test the Abandoned Cart workflow by leaving the cart in your store. For Abandoned Checkout - leave the checkout page. To speed up the process, we recommend changing the trigger inactivity time. You can add an Audience filter to the automation trigger settings to ensure the workflow doesn't get triggered for your contacts.

Remember that due to the Frequency setting restriction, each contact can trigger only one Abandonment workflow within 24 hours. This restriction prevents the workflow from being triggered multiple times within the same browsing session. Therefore, you can either disable this setting or use different email addresses while testing.

We also recommend starting a new session every time you test the workflow. The best way to achieve this is to open your store using the Incognito window of your browser.

Using abandoned cart reminders on Omnisend and your store platform (applicable for Shopify and Bigcommerce) is not recommended. When these two features overlap, they will overwhelm your customers. Before enabling the Abandoned cart on Omnisend, ensure your cart abandonment workflow is disabled on the store platform.

​Note enabling it on Omnisend does not automatically disable the one on Shopify.

Will the Abandoned Cart sequence be sent to non-subscribed contacts? Yes, but you can add an exit condition to the workflow to cancel the flow for non-subscribed customers.

Is it possible to not show the selected product in the Abandoned Cart sequence? Unfortunately, choosing which products can or cannot be shown in the Abandoned Products content block is impossible. You may only decide not to trigger the workflow for specific products.