Abandoned-cart email: the setup, step by step
For the person who switches it on: the data to connect, the journey to set, the holdout to keep, and the numbers to read next to your newsletters.
- What to prepare before day one
- What goes live, in order
- What to measure in week one and week four
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What to prepare
Your product feed
Products with stock, prices and images, in the shopper's language. The email shows the cart items and the picks next to them from this feed.
One tag on the site
The tag records add to cart, cart viewed, checkout started and the order. The journey starts from these events and stops on the order.
Email from your own domain
Set the sending domain with its SPF and DKIM records a week ahead, so the first cart emails do not land in spam.
Consent and the list
Import customers with their consent. The cart email goes only to shoppers you may email; anonymous carts join the profile when the shopper identifies.
What goes live, in order
Check the events
Open a few test carts and orders and watch them arrive on the profile. No journey goes live on events you have not seen.
Set the journey
Trigger: a cart left without an order. Timing: the first email within the hour, one reminder the next day, and a frequency cap so nobody gets both on top of a newsletter.
Build one email
The cart items, then products picked for this shopper. One template; the agent fills it per recipient. No discount in the first version.
Keep a holdout
Part of the shoppers stay out of the journey from day one, so the lift is measured, not attributed. The share can be small.
Switch it on next to the newsletters
Your newsletter tool keeps its calendar. The cart email runs every day beside it, from the same memory of each shopper.
Read it per email
Orders and revenue per 1,000 emails sent, cart email and newsletter side by side, from the first week.
What to look at, and when
| When | What to look at | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Emails sent per day, delivered share, the time between the cart and the email | Emails go out within the hour and land in the inbox; the journey stops when the order arrives |
| Week 4 | Orders and revenue per 1,000 emails, cart email against newsletter, open rates for both | The cart email out-earns a newsletter per send, as in the supermarket chain (57 against 1.9 orders per 1,000) |
| Month 3 | The holdout read-out: orders from shoppers in the journey against the ones kept out | A lift shown in the holdout, with every order credited once |
Common mistakes
Sending from a new domain without a warm-up. The first weeks of a new sender decide its reputation, and a cart email that lands in spam looks like a cart email that does not work.
Letting the journey keep sending after the order. The stop condition is the order event; test it with a real purchase before the journey goes live.
Reading attributed revenue as lift. A shopper who was going to buy anyway still clicks the email. Only the holdout separates the two.
Putting a discount in every cart email. The store trains its shoppers to abandon carts. Start without one and test a discount later, on a segment.
See which of last week's visitors you missed
Thirty minutes, with your store and ad accounts open. Then 30 days free. A holdout group decides: if the agent doesn't add orders in 30 days, you don't pay.
Book 30 minutes
You'll talk to one of us.