Programs & flows
Cart abandonment
Also known as: cart recovery · abandoned checkout
A triggered email program for users who added items to cart but didn't complete checkout — the highest-ROI email program most e-commerce brands run, with 10-30% recovery rates typical for well-built flows.
Cart abandonment is a triggered email program for users who added items to their cart but did not complete checkout. Typical sequence: email 1 at 30-60 minutes (friendly reminder + cart contents + clear CTA), email 2 at 24 hours (social proof, reviews, optional urgency), optional email 3 at 48-72 hours (discount or free-shipping offer). Recovery rates vary by category but healthy programs see 10-30% of abandoners complete purchase. The key design decisions: trigger timing (30-60 min is the sweet spot), discount timing (not on email 1 — trains users to abandon), and suppression rules (don't email on checkout-attempt failures caused by payment-method errors; those need their own recovery flow). Different from browse abandonment — cart abandonment catches users at a much higher intent level, with measurable downstream revenue.
Read next
Abandoned cart emails: what actually works
Cart abandonment is the easiest program to get wrong because the defaults work well enough to hide the problem. Here's the structure that actually moves incremental revenue — timing, sequencing, and the discount policy most teams have backwards.
Browse abandonment: the program that sits between ads and cart
Browse abandonment catches the users who viewed a product and left without adding to cart. Smaller per-user lift than cart abandonment. Ten to twenty times the trigger volume. For most programs it's the biggest revenue lever you haven't shipped yet.