Abandoned cart email examples and template for Shopify

What should an abandoned cart email say?

Say the obvious thing, plainly.

An abandoned cart email is an automated message that reaches a shopper who started a checkout and stopped. It names the product, shows it, links straight back to the cart, and answers the one objection that stopped them. Klaviyo’s pre-built flow waits four hours before the first message, then sends two or three in total.

The mistake is writing it as an advert. The reader was in your checkout twenty minutes ago. They do not need to be sold the brand again. They need the cart back, in one tap, and one reason to finish.

Everything below is written out so you can copy the shape and swap the specifics. Examples first, template second, the Shopify and Klaviyo setup after that.

What do good abandoned cart emails look like?

Four that work, and the reason each one works.

The four that earn their place: the plain reminder, the objection answer, the proof email, and the last call. Each has one job and one link. None of them opens with a discount. Written out below with the reason each works, so you can swap in your own product and send them.

Example 1. The plain reminder. Sent first, about four hours out.

Why it works: it assumes nothing. Most abandoned checkouts are interruptions, not objections. A phone rang. This email costs the reader two seconds and gets the easy ones back before you spend a discount on them.

Example 2. The objection answer. Sent about 22 hours out.

Why it works: it names the real reason people stall. Every store has two or three of these, and you already know them from your support inbox. This email is where they belong, not in a FAQ page nobody opens.

Example 3. The proof email. Sent about 46 hours out.

Why it works: real reviews with one honest note read as true. Three glowing lines read as marketing. Keep this email short and let the reviews carry it.

Example 4. The last call. Sent about three days out, and only in some sequences.

Why it works: it names the end. That is honest, it lowers unsubscribes, and it is the only email in the sequence where a small code makes sense if you use one at all.

Notice what none of them do. They do not open with a discount. They do not restate the brand story. They do not ask the reader to do two things.

What is a good abandoned cart email template?

One structure, six lines, filled in per store.

Every abandoned cart email uses the same six parts: subject that names the product, one line of context, the cart contents with an image, the one objection this email answers, one button to the cart, and a reply line. Change the middle part per email in the sequence and leave the rest alone.

Fill this in:

• Subject. Name the product, not the cart. “You left the [product] in your cart” beats “Did you forget something?”
• Preview text. A second line, not a repeat of the subject.
• First line. Say what happened, with no drama. “You started a checkout for [product] and did not finish.”
• The cart. Product image, name, variant, quantity. This is the part that does the work.
• The one thing this email adds. Reminder, objection, proof, or end date. One per email.
• The button. One. Straight to the recovery link, not to the homepage.
• The reply line. “Reply to this email if something got in the way.” It gets you the reason, in their words.

Three emails is enough for most stores. The fourth is worth adding only when the first three have run long enough to compare against.

Rebuilding this flow from a blank page again? The free course runs one of these jobs end to end from your own products and your own objections, and you keep whatever it produces. Start the free course. Free. No pitch. You write the brief once.

How do you set up abandoned cart emails on Shopify?

Two routes. Pick one and finish it.

Two routes. Shopify has a built-in abandoned checkout automation you switch on under Apps, then Messaging, then Automations, where you set who receives it and how long to wait, which takes about ten minutes. Klaviyo replaces it with a multi-step flow triggered on Started Checkout. Run one, never both.

Route one, Shopify’s own automation. Open your Shopify admin, go to Apps, then Messaging, then Automations, and edit the abandoned checkout automation. You choose the recipient group in Send to and the delay in Send after. Shopify’s guide to recovering abandoned checkouts has the current path, and there is a separate setting for applying a discount to recovery emails if you decide you want one. You can see whether each one sent under Orders, then Abandoned checkouts.

This route is fine. It sends one email, it takes ten minutes, and it beats the store that has nothing.

Route two, Klaviyo. Build a flow triggered on Started Checkout, which fires once a shopper enters contact details and moves to the shipping step. Klaviyo’s abandoned cart flow guide walks the build. Two filters matter more than the copy:

• Placed Order zero times since starting this flow. Without it you email people who already bought.
• Has not been in this flow in the last X days. Without it a browser who checks out twice a week gets the sequence twice a week.

There is a second, earlier trigger. Added to Cart fires when the item enters the cart, before any contact details exist, so it only reaches people you can already identify. Klaviyo’s Added to Cart flow for Shopify needs behavioural event tracking switched on. Treat it as a separate, lighter flow, and keep the filters tight so it does not sit on top of the checkout sequence. The filters and triggers for every Klaviyo flow are the same wiring problem repeated, which is why it is worth learning once.

Turn one off. If you switch Klaviyo on, switch Shopify’s automation off. Two systems watching the same event send two emails about the same cart, and the shopper does not care whose fault it is.

Should an abandoned cart email include a discount?

Not in the first one. Often not at all.

A discount in the first abandoned cart email pays a shopper for something they were probably going to do anyway, and it teaches repeat buyers to abandon on purpose. Answer the objection first. Keep any code for the last of the three emails, with a real end date.

The argument for discounting early is that it lifts the recovery number. It usually does. It also lifts the number of people who learn that leaving a cart produces a code, and that lesson is permanent.

A cleaner order:

1. Fix the reason people stall. Shipping cost shown late, an account wall at checkout, a slow payment step. These get you more than any code.
2. Answer the top objection in email two.
3. Only then test a code in the last email, with an end date you honour.

If you sell a considered purchase, replace the discount with the guarantee. “Try it, tell us, we replace it” moves more first orders than 10 percent off, and it costs nothing when the product is good.

Why do abandoned cart emails stop working?

Usually the wiring, not the words.

The common failures are all mechanical: two systems sending for one cart, a missing exit condition so buyers keep receiving, a recovery link that expires, an email that goes to people who never consented, and a flow nobody has read since the day it was switched on.

Check these five before you rewrite a single line:

• Double sending. Shopify’s automation and a Klaviyo flow both live.
• No exit condition. People who bought stay in the sequence and get email three.
• Broken link. The recovery URL points at a homepage or an expired checkout.
• Consent. The flow sends to people who entered an email at checkout but never opted in to marketing. That is a deliverability problem before it is a legal one.
• Nobody reads it. The flow was written eighteen months ago, the product line changed, and the emails still name a product you stopped selling.

That last one is the real one. A flow is written once and then forgotten, which is exactly why it needs a written brief and a scheduled read. Clockwork treats a flow like that as a job with context attached, so the next run starts from your products, your objections and your last corrections instead of a blank page, and anything it is unsure about comes back held with the reason. Nothing goes live without your yes. Clockwork’s own marketing runs on that shape of work, which is why the record and the held row exist at all.

Once the abandoned checkout flow is running, the next one to build is the welcome email series, because it owns the moment before this one. Both sit inside the wider ecommerce email marketing system.

What should you build first?

One sequence, three emails.

Write the three emails, wire the Started Checkout trigger, add the two filters, switch off whatever else was sending for the same cart, and turn it on. Then leave it until enough real checkouts have passed through to be worth reading. That is usually weeks, not days.

Write the brief before the copy. Trigger, filters, delays, the job of each email, and who approves a change. The brief is what turns the next review into a read instead of a rebuild.

FAQ: what else do people ask about abandoned cart emails?

The four questions that decide the build.

The usual questions are how many emails to send, how long to wait, the difference between abandoned cart and abandoned checkout, and whether these emails need consent. Short answers: three, four hours for the first, the trigger point is the difference, and yes for marketing mail.

How many abandoned cart emails should you send?

Three covers most stores: a reminder at four hours, an objection answer at about a day, and proof at about two days. A fourth is a last call with an end date. Beyond four you are spending list goodwill on a cart the shopper has already decided against.

What is the difference between an abandoned cart and an abandoned checkout?

An abandoned cart is an item added with no checkout started, so you often have no email address for that person. An abandoned checkout is further along: the shopper entered contact details and stopped. Shopify’s built-in automation and Klaviyo’s Started Checkout trigger both work from the second one.

Do abandoned cart emails need marketing consent?

Treat them as marketing mail and get consent. Rules vary by region and by how the address was collected, so check what applies to your buyers. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide gives you 10 business days to honour an opt-out. Sending to people who never opted in raises complaints, and complaints cost inbox placement.

Can you send an abandoned cart email by SMS instead?

You can, and it needs its own consent, separate from email. SMS has different rules in most regions and a lower tolerance for repeat sends. If you run both, put a filter on the flow so one person gets one channel per cart, not both messages an hour apart.

Keep reading: what should you build next?

The rest of the system, in build order.

The abandoned checkout flow is one of five worth building. The welcome series comes first, because it owns the moment before this one. The hub page holds the whole system, flows and campaigns together, and the Klaviyo page holds the triggers and filters behind all five.

• Welcome email series best practices for Shopify for the flow that runs before this one.
• Klaviyo flows: which to build, in what order for the triggers, filters and overlap rules.
• Ecommerce email marketing: build the flows first for the whole system and the order to build it in.