Abandoned Cart Emails

The Abandoned Cart Saver is a built-in tool that sends an email invitation to customers who have added an item to their cart but left before completing checkout. The emails are customizable and can be combined with coupons to entice your shoppers to complete their purchases.

Requirements

Your store must be on a Plus plan or higher to use abandoned cart emails.

You must have the following permissions in your user account to manage different aspects of abandoned cart emails.

• To manage abandoned cart notification settings:
  • Manage Settings
  • Manage Abandoned Cart Settings
• To create, edit, and delete abandoned cart emails:
  • Manage Channels
  • Manage Abandoned Cart Notifications
• To attach coupon codes or coupon promotions to an abandoned cart email template:
  • Manage Legacy Coupons
  • Manage Promotions

To receive notifications when a customer abandons their cart, you must:

• enable Abandoned Cart Emails in your merchant notification settings
• toggle on Send abandoned cart emails in your abandoned cart email settings

How It Works

Once the Abandoned Cart Saver is enabled in your store, it will trigger under the following circumstances:

• A customer is logged into their account, adds an item to the cart, then leaves without attempting to purchase.
• A shopper encounters an error while checking out, leading to the creation of an incomplete order.
• For stores using the Optimized One-Page Checkout, guests add something to their cart and begin checkout by entering their email addresses.

If the customer consented to receive abandoned cart emails, they would be sent automatically to them, using the templates you have enabled in Marketing › Abandoned Cart Emails. By default, three templates send 1 hour, one day, and two days from when the cart was identified as abandoned.

There is no limit to the number of email templates you can create; however, a maximum of three templates per storefront can be active at any given time. When editing your email templates, you can manage the email's contents, specify when it should be sent, and include coupons to entice your customers to complete their orders.

When a customer purchases the contents of their cart, it is considered "converted" or "recovered." You can enable automatic notifications to your email address upon conversion from your Miscellaneous settings. To view statistics on abandoned cart values, commonly abandoned products, and abandonment and conversion rates in your store, go to the Carts report in Analytics › Carts.

Abandoned Cart Notification Settings

The Abandoned Cart merchant notification settings can be located in Settings › General under the Miscellaneous tab.

Localized Store Experiences: Abandoned and converted cart email notifications for merchants are available for all our supported languages.

• Require Consent — determines whether or not a checkbox appears on the checkout, allowing customers to opt-in and receive abandoned cart emails and other marketing emails. If this is enabled, will it override the Tick Newsletter Checkbox? Toggle in your store's newsletter settings. It is recommended for GDPR compliance.
• Abandoned Cart Emails— determines whether or not you are sent an email when a customer abandons a cart. If enabled, the following settings appear below:
  • Email me every time X carts are abandoned — determines how often you are emailed when customers abandon them. Enter the number of abandoned carts to be included in each email. Alternatively, select Email me every time a cart is abandoned to receive one notification per abandoned cart.
  • Stop sending when the shopper clicks the "Complete Order" link in the email — when checked, it prevents customers from receiving additional Abandoned Cart Saver emails if they click the Complete Order link in a previous email.
• Converted Cart Emails — determines whether or not you are sent an email any time a customer returns to complete a purchase after receiving an abandoned cart email.
• Send Emails To — determines what email address abandoned cart emails are sent to

Abandoned Cart Saver Emails

Abandoned Cart Saver email settings are located under Marketing › Abandoned Cart Emails.

This page lists your store's default global Abandoned Cart Saver email templates and a label showing whether they are enabled or disabled.

If you have more than one storefront, you can choose to have your storefront use your store's default global templates and settings, or you can enable and customize templates individually per storefront.

Localized Store Experiences: This feature is available for all our supported languages.

Use the dropdown list at the top of the page to switch between managing global and individual storefront templates.

If you have more than three templates, one of them will be set to inactive automatically. To activate it, you must deactivate one of the active templates first. Click the ⋯ settings button next to a template, then select Disable from the dropdown. You can enable a disabled template by clicking the ⋯ settings button, then selecting Enable. You can duplicate and delete email templates as well.

You can also enable or disable a template while editing it by clicking the ⋯ settings button at the top of the page and selecting Enable or Disable.

Along with enabling and disabling the Abandoned Cart Saver from Store Settings, you can quickly toggle it off and on from here.

Editing Email Templates

Editing code? We recommend saving a backup copy of your template in a plain text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit. You can also restore the default version of an email's global template with the instructions below.

Click + Add template to create a new email template. To edit an existing template, click the ⋯ settings button next to a template and select Edit Template.

Use the dropdown list at the top of the page to switch between managing this email template's global/default version or a storefront-specific version.

Click Send a test email to receive a copy of this template's resulting email to the inbox of your user account email address. You can also use the Preview tab when editing a template to see what it will look like.

SETTINGS

Use the Send in the dropdown to set when the email is sent to the shopper. You can select anywhere from 1 hour to 10 days after the order is considered abandoned. You cannot have multiple emails sent to the same customer simultaneously.

Add a Coupon code to encourage shoppers to complete their order. Select from any coupon codes and coupon promotions you've created.

PHRASES

Under the Phrases tab, you can customize the text used in the template. The Phrase name is an identifier used in the template code that outputs a string of text in the resulting email, called the Phrase value. The phrase name is not visible to the shopper.

You can change the Phrase name and Phrase value of existing phrases, or you can delete existing words by clicking the ⋯ settings button next to the phrase and selecting Delete phrase. You can create new phrases in a template by clicking the + Add new button at the bottom of the Phrases tab.

For example, you can add a phrase named "contact" to direct customers to contact you at a specific email address. In the phrase value, you can enter a term like "Contact us at info@mystore.com." It is also possible to add HTML in the phrase value if you want to create a clickable link like "<a href= "mailto:info@mystore.com">info@mystore.com</a>."

CODE

Under the Code tab, the Subject line and Email Body of each template can be customized. The subject has a maximum character limit of 255. Select variables are allowed, enabling you to show personalized information. Some variables can be used independently in a template, while others require additional formatting to show specific details. For example, the store name can be used separately, but listing the products in a cart requires different formatting.

Below is a table of standard variables used in email templates.

The template's body is customized by editing its underlying HTML and Handlebars code. It is divided between CSS styling at the top and HTML content at the bottom. We recommend making edits by copying the template code into a text editor and pasting the edited version back into the Email body box.

PREVIEW

Under the Preview tab, you can see a sample of the resulting email the template will produce, and then go back to the Phrases or Code tabs to make further changes if necessary.

Click Save when you're done making changes.

If you wish to restore the phrases and code in a global template to their original values, click the ⋯ settings button and select Reset to defaults.

To restore a storefront-specific template to global values, check the Use Global box.