Abandoned cart copy

What abandoned cart copy is

Abandoned cart copy is a short automated sequence, usually two or three emails, sent to someone who filled a basket or started a checkout and did not pay. It is triggered by what the customer did rather than by a date, and once built it runs for years.

It is the best-earning email most shops will ever send, for an unremarkable reason: everyone who receives it had already chosen a product, decided to buy it, and got far enough to give you an address. No other list you own is that qualified.

It is not a re-engagement campaign, which goes to a whole list that has gone cold. This goes to one person about one basket, and it is one member of the broader family of automated series triggered by something a customer did.

When you need one

You need this when baskets are regularly filled and left, and nothing at all is sent to those people, or what is sent is the default template that came with the platform. Most shops are in the second position and assume the job is done.

It is worth doing in particular when your product needs a decision rather than an impulse: boots that have to fit, a part that has to be the right one, a service with a start date. Those baskets are abandoned for a reason the customer could tell you, and an email that answers it recovers a good share of them.

You do not need this if almost nobody reaches the checkout. A recovery sequence only works on customers you already have, and if there are ten abandoned baskets a month the money belongs on the product pages. You also do not need it yet if the checkout itself is what drives people away; fix the last screen before the money first, because recovering people into a checkout that will lose them again is expensive.

What goes in the emails

One rule governs all of this. They did not forget. A person who filled a basket and closed the tab remembers perfectly well what they were doing, and an email opening with “Oops, you left something behind” tells them you think they are careless. It is the standard template, it is mildly insulting, and it is a wasted send, because it addresses a problem the customer does not have.

What actually happened is one of four things: the shipping cost surprised them, they were not sure it was the right item, they wanted to check with somebody, or they meant to come back and the moment passed. The sequence answers those, in that order, without accusing anyone of forgetting.

• The first email, within an hour or two. Short, plain, from a person. What was in the basket, a link that restores it, and the one fact most likely to have been the sticking point: the delivery cost and time, or the return window.
• The second, a day later. The answer to the doubt. Sizing, fit, compatibility, what is included, what other buyers said. A review or a photograph earns more here than any amount of persuasion.
• The third, after two or three days. The last one. A plain offer of help from a named person, a telephone number, and an easy way to say they are not interested.
• The exits. What removes someone immediately: they bought, they replied, they unsubscribed, the item went out of stock. A sequence that emails somebody about a basket they have already paid for does more harm than not sending at all.
• The discount decision. Whether to offer one, and if so on which email and to whom. Putting it in the first email teaches your regular customers to abandon baskets on purpose.

What you get

The emails. Two or three, each as a document with the subject line and two alternatives, the preview text, a body of usually a hundred to two hundred words, and the one link. Written in your voice from a named sender.

The trigger and exit map. One page: what starts the sequence, how long between each email, what stops it, and what happens to somebody who reaches the end without buying. This is what your sending platform is built from.

A test plan and the legal note. Which subject lines to test first and how to read the result. Canadian anti-spam law sets rules about consent for commercial email; I write within them and tell you where a question needs a lawyer rather than a copywriter.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Calgary shop sells climbing and hiking gear online. Baskets are filled and left regularly, mostly on the shipping step and mostly by people buying boots.

The sequence is three emails. The first goes ninety minutes later from the shop manager’s own address: the boots that were in the basket, a restore link, the delivery cost, and the fact that returns are free for thirty days. The second goes the next morning and is entirely about fit — how the brand’s sizing runs against two common alternatives. The third goes three days later and runs to four lines: still here, here is the telephone number, and a link saying “not this time” that quietly ends the sequence. No discount appears anywhere, because the owner does not want to train people to wait for one. Three emails, one map, one number watched: orders placed within a week of a basket being abandoned.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, what the checkout does now, and whether anything is being sent already. No charge.
2. Abandoning a basket myself. I go through your checkout as a customer, leave it, and read whatever your platform currently sends, along with the support inbox. Two working days.
3. The draft sequence. All the emails and the map, five to seven working days after the call.
4. One round of revisions. Usually about the discount question, and about what your returns policy really lets you promise.
5. Handover. Final emails, the map and the test plan, with a short call to whoever builds it in your sending tool.

Two to three weeks from the first call to a sequence ready to build.

What it costs

Abandoned cart copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. It depends on the number of emails, whether different product groups need their own sequence, and whether I also build it in your platform. The pricing page explains how quoting works for services without a published band, and the number is fixed in writing before I start.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. The doubts these emails have to answer are the doubts the checkout should have handled, so the next job is often the checkout screens themselves. The customers the sequence recovers then need a first week that does not end in a refund, which is onboarding copy. And the automated sends now have to be scheduled against the newsletter so nobody receives three messages in a day, which is what an email calendar is for. The sequence is finished work on its own and none of these is assumed.