Abandoned Cart Email: How to Use It, with Examples

An abandoned cart email is an automated reminder sent to a shopper who put items in their basket and left without buying. It shows what they left, links straight back to the basket and stops as soon as they order. In the UK, people also call it an abandoned basket email or a cart abandonment email.

A good one reaches someone you are allowed to email, arrives while they still remember the basket and answers the reason they stopped. The example throughout is Amelia Price's ceramics studio in Bristol, which sells hand-thrown mugs, bowls and jugs online. A typical left basket holds two speckled mugs and a jug, £64 in total, and her shoppers worry about fragile parcels.

What is an abandoned cart email?

It is a message a shop sends automatically when a shopper it can identify adds products to the basket and leaves without ordering. It has three parts: the items with their pictures, a button back to the basket, and a reason to return, such as an answer to a doubt or a reminder of free delivery.

For a small shop it is a strong first flow, because the shopper has already chosen the products. Our guide to email automation pairs basket recovery with the welcome series as the place to start.

Cart abandonment emails: basket, checkout and browse abandonment

You can only email a shopper you can identify. If an anonymous visitor fills a basket and closes the tab, no email tool can reach them. That gives three kinds of email.

Email	What starts it	Who you can reach	What you know
Abandoned cart (basket) email	Items added to a basket	Shoppers you can identify: logged in, subscribed or matched to a contact	The items
Abandoned checkout email	Checkout started, email given, no order	Anyone who typed an email at checkout	The items and the address
Browse abandonment email	Product pages viewed, nothing added	Identified subscribers only	Interest, not intent

For Amelia, the checkout row matters most: her new visitors type their email on the first checkout step, and some leave on the second.

Cart abandonment rate: why shoppers leave a basket

The Baymard Institute puts the average online cart abandonment rate at 70.22%, based on 50 studies (last updated September 2025). About seven in ten baskets never turn into an order, but much of that is browsing: in Baymard's survey of shoppers in the United States, 42% had left a cart because they were "just browsing" or not ready to buy.

Among the rest, extra costs such as delivery, taxes and fees came first, at 40%. Slow delivery followed at 20%, and being asked to create an account was also high, at 18%. These are American figures; we found no primary UK source.

To reduce cart abandonment before any email goes out, show the delivery cost early and allow guest checkout. For Amelia, £5.95 delivery on a £64 basket of fragile pottery is the likely reason, so her first email shows the free delivery threshold and her last one offers free delivery.

Are abandoned cart emails legal in the UK?

Yes, when you are allowed to email that shopper. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), a basket reminder counts as marketing, because it exists to win the sale. For a private individual or a sole trader you need consent or the soft opt-in, the exception for people who gave you their address while buying or asking to buy from you. Company addresses need neither, but you still say who you are and offer a way to opt out.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) guidance does not mention baskets. A shopper who filled a basket and typed their email at checkout has done more than browse, and a reasonable reading is that the soft opt-in can cover them. It only works if you offered a clear opt-out where you collected the address, so put the marketing box next to the email field, not on the last checkout step.

Every reminder also needs a simple way to unsubscribe. This is a summary, not legal advice; our guide to UK GDPR and PECR for email covers the rules in more depth.

Abandoned cart email timing and sequence

There is no single proven moment for the first email. The guides we read suggest anything from 30 minutes to four hours, and none publishes the test behind its number.

A practical default is one hour after the last basket change. That is long enough for a shopper who went to find their card, and short enough that they still remember the basket. It is also the wait MailGraf's ready flow uses, and a newer basket event restarts the clock.

Then send one to three emails, each with its own job. Here is Amelia's plan.

Email	When	Its job	What it holds
1	One hour after the last basket change	Remind	The items, the total, one button, the free delivery threshold
2	About a day later	Answer the worry	How fragile parcels are packed, returns, an invitation to reply
3 (optional)	Two or three days later	Help decide	Free delivery on this basket until a real date

A new subscriber who also leaves a basket can get welcome and reminder emails in the same two days, so keep the two flows apart. More emails also mean more unsubscribes, so track that number for each email.

Abandoned cart email template: what to include

A good cart abandonment email template has six parts:

• Subject line and preview text, which decide whether the email gets opened.
• The items: image, name, quantity and price, so the shopper sees their choice without clicking.
• One button back to the basket. One clear action is easier to take than three.
• An answer to one likely question: delivery, returns or packing, whichever stops your shoppers most.
• A human line and a way to reply. A real person who answers is a small shop's advantage.
• The footer: your shop's name, a contact address and the unsubscribe link.

A plain skeleton, with placeholders in square brackets:

Subject: Your [item name] is still in your basket
Preview text: [one fact: free delivery threshold, returns or packing]

Hello [first name, if you have it],

You left these in your basket:
[item image]  [item name]  x [quantity]  [price]
Total: [basket total]

[Button: Back to my basket]

[One line that answers the likely question]

Questions? Reply to this email and [your name] will answer.

[Shop name], [contact address]
[Unsubscribe link]

Discount, free delivery or neither

Start without an incentive. A reminder on its own often does the job and protects your margin, while shoppers who learn that a left basket brings a code start waiting for one. If delivery cost is the likely reason, free delivery on this basket answers it more directly than a percentage off.

Any deadline on the offer must be real. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK's consumer regulator, counts "any countdown timers, scarcity or 'act fast' messages" as urgency claims, and its letter to online businesses says businesses must be transparent when they make them. Our article on urgency claims covers what that means for email.

Abandoned cart email examples for a small shop

Here are three examples for Amelia's studio, plus one she should not send. The greetings carry no first name, because her new visitors gave only an email address.

Abandoned cart email subject lines

Good abandoned cart email subject lines name the item, say what is inside and leave the second fact to the preview text. Three more for Amelia, one for each email:

• Reminder: "Still thinking about the speckled mugs?"
• Answer: "If it arrives broken, we put it right"
• Last nudge: "The last email about your basket"

Avoid a deadline that is not real. Never put "RE:" or "Your order" on an email that is not about an order, because it suggests a conversation or purchase that never happened.

Shopify abandoned cart emails: what the built-in option does

Shopify includes a basic reminder. It can automatically email a link to a checkout left incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer gave their email, on the Online Store and Buy Button sales channels. Strictly, that is an abandoned checkout email, the middle row of the first table, and you switch it on under Apps > Messaging > Automations.

If it covers what you need, it is a reasonable start. A separate email platform makes sense when the reminder should sit with your other flows and lists, follow the same permission records and stay clear of your welcome emails. With MailGraf, a Shopify store sends its abandoned carts through Zapier, as shown below.

How to set up an abandoned cart email automation

Whatever the tool, a cart abandonment email automation follows the same steps:

1. The store sends an event when a known shopper's basket changes.
2. The flow waits, restarting if the basket changes.
3. The email shows the basket from the event.
4. An order ends the flow.
5. You decide whether the same shopper can enter again later.
6. You test it with your own email address.

Setting it up in MailGraf

MailGraf automations include a ready flow for baskets. Open Automations, find Cart reminder under Ready flows and click Use. The canvas opens with four steps: the cart event, a one-hour Wait, a reminder email and End flow.

The flow starts with the custom event trigger Contact sends a custom event, listening for cart_updated. MailGraf does not read the basket from your store: the store sends that event for a shopper who is already a contact. On Shopify, Zapier does this without code; on other stores, a developer can send it to MailGraf directly.

Two settings do the work. Restart the wait if the same event arrives again starts the hour over when a newer basket event arrives, so the email shows the latest basket. Under Exit when this event arrives, order_placed and order_paid end the flow.

The ready email holds a Cart items block from the Dynamic group. It shows each product's image, name, quantity and unit price, then a total, all from the event, and the Back to your cart button below it opens the shopper's own basket. Preview and a test send show a sample basket; a real one appears only through a real event.

Amelia's three-email plan fits the same flow:

1. After the first email, she adds a Wait of about a day.
2. A Condition sends the second email only to shoppers who did not click back to the basket.
3. The third email follows its own Wait and holds a Coupon block: one free delivery code and its end date, the same for everyone.
4. Under Re-entry, she adds a gap in Wait at least (days), so a shopper can get a reminder for a new basket later.

Sending Shopify baskets to MailGraf with Zapier

MailGraf has its own app on Zapier, so a Shopify store can feed the Cart reminder flow without code. Shopify is a premium app on Zapier, so the Zap needs a paid Zapier plan.

1. Trigger: Shopify's New Abandoned Cart. In Abandoned cart age (hours), set how old a cart must be before the Zap picks it up.
2. Filter (optional): let only shoppers who agreed to marketing at checkout carry on, if your checkout records that choice.
3. Action: MailGraf's Find or Create Contact, so the shopper exists in MailGraf. Send Event only works for someone who is already a contact.
4. Action: MailGraf's Send Event, with Event Name set to cart_updated. Under Order Items, map the cart's products to Product Name, Unit Price, Quantity and, if the trigger provides them, Image URL and Product URL. Under Event Properties, add the checkout link as cart_url, the basket total as total and the currency code, such as GBP, as currency.

A second Zap ends the reminders when the shopper buys: Shopify's New Paid Order as the trigger, then MailGraf's Send Event with order_paid. Add the order ID as order_id, plus total and currency, under Event Properties, and use the order ID as the Deduplication Key, so each order is recorded once. Because the first Zap already waits for the cart age you chose, shorten the flow's one-hour Wait, or the two delays add up. If you work with n8n, an n8n workflow can send the same cart_updated event from Shopify's checkout events instead.

The help article Create an automation shows how to start from a ready flow, including Cart reminder.

Abandoned cart recovery: what to measure

Three numbers show whether abandoned cart recovery works: orders per reminder sent, the revenue from those orders and unsubscribes per email.

Be careful with "recovered". Shopify counts a checkout as recovered when the customer completes the order, whether they clicked the email or came back on their own, and some of them would have bought anyway. If you have enough baskets, hold the reminder back from a small random share and compare how often each group orders. The difference is what the cart abandonment email really adds.

In MailGraf, the automation report's Stopped or failed box shows how many entries ended by exit event. In a cart reminder, those are baskets whose order arrived during the flow.

Frequently asked questions

Are abandoned cart emails legal?

In the UK, yes, when you may email that person: individuals and sole traders need consent or the soft opt-in, and company addresses need a named sender and an opt-out. A basket reminder counts as marketing, so it always needs an unsubscribe link.

How many emails should be in an abandoned cart flow?

One to three, each with its own job: a reminder, an answer to a likely worry and an optional last offer. All of them should stop as soon as the shopper orders.

When should you send an abandoned cart email?

One hour after the last basket change is a sensible start, because no single time is proven. Test the timing against your own orders.

Can a shopper stop abandoned cart emails?

Yes, every reminder needs a simple unsubscribe that does not ask them to log in. After that, they get no more marketing emails unless they opt in again.

Does Shopify send abandoned cart emails?

Yes, as an abandoned checkout email for checkouts left incomplete more than ten minutes after the shopper gave an email address. You switch it on under Apps > Messaging > Automations.

What is the average cart abandonment rate?

The Baymard Institute puts it at 70.22%, an average of 50 studies last updated in September 2025. Much of it is people browsing, so no email brings back every basket.