Abandoned cart flows: advice for your first high-impact revenue win

 ​What is an abandoned cart flow and why does it matter?

An abandoned cart flow is an automated message sequence that reminds shoppers to complete a purchase after leaving items in their cart. It matters because it targets high-intent customers and can recover lost revenue with minimal effort.

This post is your practical guide to getting an abandoned cart flow live fast. As your tour guide, I’m going to cover what it is, why it works, and how to set up a version that starts recovering revenue right away. Buckle up!

Why abandonment cart flows matter

If you only build one revenue-generating flow in your first 90 days, make it abandoned cart.

Here's why: shoppers who add items to their cart but don't complete checkout are telling you they want what you're selling. They just got distracted, second-guessed themselves, or ran out of time. Without a system to follow up, you lose them, and the revenue goes with them.

While average abandonment rates hover around 70%, well-structured flows can convert 10%-15% of those abandoned carts (see benchmarks).

An abandoned cart flow brings those shoppers back automatically, so abandoned carts become completed purchases while you focus on other parts of your business. When your flow has access to a customer's full history (past purchases, browsing behavior, email engagement), you can personalize those messages in ways that generic automation tools can't match.

What an abandoned cart flow does (and who it's for)

An abandoned cart flow triggers when someone adds a product to their cart but doesn't purchase. After a short delay, so you don't interrupt active shoppers, the flow sends one to three messages reminding them what they left behind and nudging them to complete their purchase.

From the customer's perspective, it's simple: "Hey, you left this behind. Still interested?"

From your perspective, it's efficient because you're not chasing cold leads; you're messaging people who already wanted to buy.

Should I be using an abandoned cart flow?

Yes, this flow is a fit if:

• You sell physical or digital products online
• Your store is integrated with your marketing automation platform (most major ecommerce platforms are supported)
• You're seeing Added to Cart or Checkout Started events in your account
• You're prioritizing revenue and retention but don't have time to build complex flows from scratch

You don't need to start with both email and SMS. An email-only flow works well as a first version. If you have SMS consent and want to add it later, you can, but it's not required to see results.

Cart vs. checkout vs. browse abandonment?

These terms reflect different levels of buyer intent:

• Abandoned Checkout (highest intent): Started checkout but didn’t finish
• Abandoned Cart: Added to cart but didn’t check out
• Browse Abandonment (lowest intent): Viewed products only

Start with abandoned cart or checkout. You don’t need all three.

How to set up a "good enough v1" 

You don't need a complex, perfectly segmented flow to start seeing results.

Minimum requirements to build

• Ecommerce integration is live
• You're tracking cart or checkout events
• You have basic email templates set up

Fast path (recommended)

1. Start from a pre-built template: Pre-built abandoned cart templates pull real-time product data from your store automatically, so the cart items your customer left behind appear in the email without any manual setup.
2. Set your trigger: Use Added to Cart or Checkout Started.
3. Add a time delay: One to four hours is a safe starting point.
4. Add one to two messages:
   • Email 1: reminder plus product block
   • Email 2 (optional): urgency or incentive
5. Add basic filters and suppressions: At minimum, exclude people who already purchased.
6. Turn the flow live.

Timing strategy: when should messages send?

Here's a simple starting framework:

• Low average order value (AOV) or impulse buys: 30 to 60 minutes
• Typical direct-to-consumer (DTC): one to four hours
• High-consideration products: four to 24 hours

For a two-message flow:

• Email 1: one to four hours
• Email 2: 20 to 24 hours later

The goal here isn’t to build the final version. It’s to get something live and start learning from real customer behavior. This is a flow you’ll continuously iterate on. Timing, messaging, and incentives should evolve based on performance, not assumptions.

Should you include a discount?

Whether to include a discount depends on your margins and customer behavior.

The short answer: You don’t need a discount to start. It can improve performance in certain cases.

That said, in most cases, I’d recommend not leading with a discount. Discounts can improve performance, but using them too early can train customers to abandon carts expecting an incentive.

If you do use an incentive, use it intentionally:

• Reserve it for a second message, not immediately
• Limit it to first-time buyers or higher cart values
• Use it only if the customer hasn’t engaged

This approach helps you recover revenue without conditioning customers to wait for a discount before completing their purchase.

Details that improve your flow over time

Once your basic flow is live, these refinements help you recover more revenue and avoid annoying your customers:

Suppression and exclusions: At minimum, exclude anyone who already placed an order and respect unsubscribe status and channel consent.

A common mistake is skipping this step or setting it up incorrectly, which can lead to customers receiving reminders after they’ve already purchased. As you get more sophisticated, consider excluding recent support tickets, limiting repeat abandoners, and using Smart Sending to prevent over-emailing.

Dynamic product blocks: Your emails should automatically show the product image, name, price, and a link back to the cart. Common issues include missing product data from the integration, incorrect template tags, and poor mobile rendering. Test your flow before turning it live.

Segmentation: When your abandoned cart flow runs on a unified customer profile, you can segment by cart value, first-time versus returning customers, VIP status, or any other attribute you're tracking. For v1, keep it simple. Add complexity as you learn which segments respond differently.

SMS: SMS works well for cart recovery when it's coordinated with email—and coordination is only possible when both channels share the same customer data. Best practices for SMS in cart recovery:

• Only send to users who have given consent
• Use one SMS max in the flow
• Send it after the email
• Respect quiet hours

Because your SMS and email flows share the same profile data, you can suppress SMS for customers who already converted from email.

As you learn and iterate, more DTC brands are leaning into RCS, and it’s worth testing. It creates a more branded, visually rich experience that feels less like a traditional text and more like an extension of the overall journey.

What to measure

Focus on four metrics:

Placed order rate: The percentage of flow recipients who complete a purchase. This tells you whether your flow is working at its core job.

Revenue per recipient: Total revenue divided by total recipients. This helps you compare performance across different flow versions.

Click rate: A leading indicator—if people aren't clicking, they won't convert. Low click rates suggest your subject lines or email content need work.

Unsubscribe rate: If this spikes, you're messaging too aggressively or targeting the wrong audience.

Don't worry about benchmarking against other brands early on. Your first goal is establishing your own baseline, then testing changes to improve it.

As your program matures, look at abandoned cart performance alongside broader customer behavior. How do customers who convert from abandoned cart emails behave over time? Do they become repeat buyers, or are they one-time purchasers? If abandoned cart converters tend to be one-and-done buyers, you might get more long-term value from investing in post-purchase flows instead.

Three starting points depending on your situation

If you want the simplest possible v1: Use a single email triggered by Added to Cart, with a two-hour delay. Subject line: "Forgot something?" Include a product block with a clear call to action (CTA). This recovers revenue from your highest-intent abandoners right away. Once it's running, you can add a second email and test subject lines.

If you want to test an incentive: Use two emails: the first at two hours as a simple reminder, the second at 24 hours with a small discount. This builds urgency over time and uses the discount strategically. Once it's running, consider limiting discounts to first-time buyers only.

If you have SMS consent and want to use it: Send the email at two hours and an SMS at 20 hours. Because both messages pull from the same customer profile, your SMS can reference the exact products in the cart: "Still thinking it over? Your cart is waiting: [link]." SMS adds urgency and visibility, but watch your frequency and stay compliant with consent requirements.

Resources and next steps

Additional guidance:

• Getting started with flows – foundational explainer on triggers, filters, time delays, and flow statuses
• How to create an abandoned cart flow – primary setup doc; covers triggers, filters, timing, discount guidance, and turning the flow live
• How to create an abandoned "Added to Cart" flow for Shopify – Shopify-specific trigger (Added to Cart vs. Checkout Started); links to pre-built templates
• How to add SMS to your abandoned cart flow – compliance requirements, quiet hours, 1-SMS rule, and multi-channel setup
• How to make sure your flow is ready to start sending – pre-launch checklist; good "fast path" reference

After your abandoned cart flow is live, the typical next steps are building a welcome flow, then post-purchase, then browse abandonment.

Final takeaway: Done beats perfect when it comes to cart recovery.

A simple abandoned cart flow:

• Targets high-intent shoppers
• Drives incremental revenue quickly
• Gives you data to improve your next automation

Launch your v1. Then improve it.