Abandoned carts are a major revenue killer for eCommerce stores. Fortunately, you can easily convert those lost sales to revenue by sending Abandoned cart recovery emails.
However, store owners often wonder, How many Abandoned cart emails should I send to convince customers to recover their cart?
Sending a single cart recovery email isn’t enough; the recommended practice is sending emails to encourage customers to return to your store.
But manually triggering these emails is not a smart practice – you need an automated abandoned cart recovery tool to reach customers at the right time.
Retainful is an email marketing automation platform that helps automate your Abandoned cart recovery email campaign. Creating a campaign is easy, and once it is Live, Retainful will automatically send emails at specified intervals until the customer recovers his cart.
Don’t wait too long to send your first cart recovery email. In this article, you’ll learn how many Abandoned cart emails to send, the best time to send Abandoned cart emails, and how to create your first automated cart recovery email campaign to recover abandoned shopping carts.
Send cart recovery emails at well-timed intervals on autopilot with Retainful. Save time and win back lost sales.
What is an Abandoned cart email?
The abandoned cart email is a follow-up email sent to re-engage with customers who have abandoned their carts. Around 29.9% of Abandoned cart emails lead to cart recovery, making it a cost-effective solution to convert lost sales into revenue.

The ultimate goal of the best Abandoned Cart email is to remind customers of the cart they left behind and push them to return and recover their carts.
How effective are Abandoned cart emails?
Abandoned carts are not lost; they hold a potential sale in them. A minimum 10% of these abandoned sales can be converted to revenue by sending Abandoned cart emails.
- Compared to other emails, Abandoned cart emails have better open rates of 45%.
- Of the 45%, around 20% of emails get clicked through.
- Sending at least 3 emails as part of your cart recovery campaign will result in 70% of cart recovery.
These stats show the effectiveness of Abandoned cart emails and how they can play a vital role in your Abandoned cart recovery campaign.
How Many Abandoned Cart Emails Should I Send?
It is a good practice to figure out the number of emails you want to send before you start creating the campaign. Experts say that an email after one hour of cart abandonment is enough for loyal customers to take action.
But if your store is relatively new, you need more than one.
So, most marketing experts recommend sending 3 to 5 abandoned cart emails at a specific frequency to yield better conversions.
There you have it. You need to send at least 3 to 5 Abandoned cart recovery emails at well-timed intervals to convince customers to recover their carts.
How many emails should be in abandoned cart flow?
So, now you know how many abandoned cart emails to send, but what is the best time to send an Abandoned Cart email?
You must determine when to send abandoned cart emails if you want more conversions. Sending them too early will frustrate your customers; you cannot wait for a week either; the customer might’ve moved on to the next store.
Timing is key, and you must perfectly time your abandoned cart emails to increase their open and click-through rates.
We tested emails by sending them at various frequencies to determine which one yielded better conversions. Finally, we concluded with the following sequence as it had better open and click-through rates than other frequencies.
Best time to send an abandoned cart email,
- The first email – after one hour of cart abandonment
- The second email – on the next day of cart abandonment
- The third email – two days post cart abandonment
- The fourth email– after five days of cart abandonment
- The fifth email – after a week of cart abandonment

Experts say that the quicker you send the best Abandoned Shopping Cart emails, the better the conversion.

So, the best Abandoned Shopping Cart email practice is not to wait too long to send a cart recovery email to customers, as you might lose them forever.
What to say in abandoned shopping cart emails?
Now you know how many emails to send and the best time to send abandoned cart emails.
Now let’s get to the content – What should you include in your abandoned cart email?
You cannot send the same email repeatedly to a customer, and you won’t be able to convert them. The best Abandoned Shopping Cart email practice is to write emails that are unique to each other.
Here’s what you must say in your abandoned cart emails,
1st Email – Reminder email
Abandoned cart timing – 1 hour after cart abandonment
You don’t need to stress much about the 1st abandoned cart email. All you have to do is just remind the customers of what they left behind in their cart. It is more like a ‘Did you forget something’ email.
Sending 1 hour after cart abandonment is one of the best times to send Abandoned Cart emails as it has a higher chance of a conversion.
Reminder Abandoned cart email example:

2nd Email – Urgency email
Abandoned cart timing – 1 day after cart abandonment
All Right, it’s been a day, and your customers have not reverted to your reminder email. So, now you need to get their attention and introduce a sense of urgency in your email to urge your customers to take action.
You can show that your inventory is running out of stock or offer a limited discount to trigger the customers.
Urgency Abandoned cart email example:

Sometimes, customers might think they don’t need the product right now and decide to drop the purchase, which can increase cart abandonment. So, convince the customer that they won’t get this opportunity again and push them to purchase.
A three-email sequence is found more effective in recovering the abandoned carts. Use Retainful’s optimised, ready-made email workflows to recover abandoned carts in your WooCommerce store.
3rd Email – Discount Email
Abandoned cart timing – Two days after cart abandonment
It seems like your customer needs a little more push to purchase the product, so trigger them with offers. Customers love discounts – `offer a discount for the product to push the customer to buy it.
Sometimes, customers might abandon their cart due to high prices and a lack of discounts. So, offering a discount in your 3rd abandoned cart email will give you a better chance to recover your abandoned cart.
Discount Abandoned cart email example:

4th Email – Scarcity Email
Abandoned cart timing – Five days after cart abandonment
The next email is the Scarcity email. Create a sense of scarcity, and make customers believe the product is running out of stock.
It will make them feel that if they don’t purchase now, they’ll end up losing it. So, indicate the scarcity in bold, it will push customers to return to your store in a hurry, and they’ll purchase the product.
Scarcity Abandoned cart email example

5th email – Miss You Email
Abandoned cart timing – Week after cart abandonment
You’ve tried everything, and still, your customers have not responded. Put one last effort and show your customers that you are still thinking about them and their purchase.
If they still don’t return, it is safe to conclude your campaign. Sending any more Abandoned shopping cart emails will only frustrate them more.
You can use re-engagement email campaigns to bring them back after a few weeks. Though you might not be able to recover the cart after a few weeks, you can still win them back and encourage them to purchase again.
Miss You Abandoned cart email example:

So, this is how you build your Abandoned Cart emails. All the emails in your campaign must serve different purposes under one common goal, to convince them to recover their carts.
How do I send an abandoned checkout email?
As said earlier, you need an Abandoned cart recovery plugin to send emails at the right time. Retainful is one of the best cart recovery plugins to automate your abandoned cart email campaign for both WooCommerce and Shopify stores. It has pre-built email and workflow templates to help you get started within minutes.

Now that the ultimate question, how many abandoned cart emails should I send, is answered. Let’s look at how to create an Abandoned cart recovery campaign to send emails to customers.
Steps to create Abandoned cart recovery email campaign
Creating an Abandoned cart recovery email campaign is simple with Retainful. In just 4 simple steps, you can configure and launch your campaign,
Ensure these prerequisites are done,
- Created an account in Retainful
- Connect your WooCommerce store with Retainful
- Connect Shopify store with Retainful
Let’s proceed with configuring the campaign.
Step 1 – Go to Retainful dashboard – Automations. Click Create workflow button on the following page.

Step 2 – The following page includes a collection of pre-built email workflows. Select the ‘Abandoned Cart Recovery’ workflow template from the list. Name your cart recovery campaign, and you’ll be taken to the Customer journey builder.

Step 3 – Retinful’s pre-built Abandoned cart recovery workflow will have three emails by default.
You can add more emails to your workflow if needed. Additionally, options are available to add coupons, wait for action, and conditional splits from the Customer journey builder.

- To add email & coupon block, wait action, and conditional splits, click the ‘+’ symbol.
- Click here to add dynamic coupon codes to your emails.
- Edit your emails to increase open rates by clicking here.
Step 4 – Click ‘Start Workflow’ in the top right corner after configuring the campaign.

Now your campaign is live, Retainful will automatically send Abandoned cart recovery emails with dynamic coupon codes at timed intervals.
Find more about creating Abandoned carts emails at Retainful documentation.
Create beautiful cart recovery emails with Retainful’s drag and drop email editor and convert abandoned sales into revenue within minutes.
Final Takeaway
Store owners often wonder, how many Abandoned cart emails should I send? Determining this before you start your campaign will help you track your conversions better.
In this article, you got to see how many Abandoned cart emails should be sent as part of your email campaign. Remember, sending a single shopping cart recovery email will never work.
That’s why we sent multiple emails to find the best time to send abandoned cart emails. After thorough research, we found an abandoned cart email frequency that can yield maximum conversion. You got to see the recommended sequence in this article.
Sending a cart recovery email one hour after cart abandonment has better conversion rates. So, don’t wait. Create an Abandoned cart recovery campaign right now using Retainful and send emails before the customer moves on to the next store.
Often we get asked, how do I improve my Abandoned cart email? Are you wondering the same? Click here to find out.
The First email you should send within an hour of abandonment. A commonly abandoned cart recovery campaign consists of three emails in 1hr, 24hr, and 72hr cycles.
50-60% of people who engage with abandoned cart emails buy. That’s enormous, considering cart abandonment is a big issue faced by eCommerce.
You can improve your abandonment cart email with personalization, enticing subject lines, catching CTA, and including social proofs in your email.
Not too long and not too short, a convincing copy with product image and CTA is essential in every email, and you can include product recommendations and social proof. But avoid crafting long and salesy emails.