Cart abandonment
A shopper adds items to a cart but doesn't complete checkout — triggering an email sequence to recover the sale.
Cart abandonment is the ecommerce event of a shopper adding items to their cart and then leaving without completing checkout. Industry-wide cart abandonment rates run 65–80%. The cart-abandonment email sequence is the highest-ROI email program in DTC, recovering 14–22% of abandoned carts depending on average order value and sequence quality.
A standard sequence is 3–4 emails: a 1-hour reminder (no discount), a 24-hour gentle push (addresses objections like sizing or shipping), a day-3 discount email, and a day-5 final call. Sequences with more than 4 emails see diminishing returns and rising unsubscribe rates.
The most common mistakes: leading with a discount in email 1 (trains buyers to wait), faking urgency ("only 2 left!" when there aren't), and pretending the cart will expire when it won't. Real stock, real deadlines, and real discounts compound trust over time. Browse abandonment is a related but distinct trigger — the shopper viewed products but didn't add to cart, and the messaging shifts from "finish your order" to "still thinking about it?"