How to Retarget Abandoned Checkouts with Email and SMS

Abandoned checkout emails and SMS messages have better click-through rates than other types of messages because they are personalized with something your Contact has already shown active interest in!

Higher click-through rates mean higher engagement and revenue, so read on to learn how to build the perfect abandoned checkout Automation using email and SMS!

🚦 Before Getting Started

Install your eCommerce store's integration or use Sendlane's custom integration to develop your own store

1

Add an Abandoned Checkout Automation Trigger

Select the abandoned checkout trigger from your eCommerce integration's tab of trigger options
Select the store you want to set up an abandoned checkout automation for
Select an optional Limit Per Subscriber to set the volume of abandoned checkout content Contacts receive
Select an amount of time to wait after a customer starts checkout before considering the checkout abandoned
Click Done

2

Add Abandoned Checkout Automation Nodes

Below is an example of a basic flow for your abandoned checkout Automation using email and SMS:

Email Nodes

Start with an email node that links your Contacts back to the checkout they’ve abandoned. Use the abandoned checkout block in the Email Builder to automatically insert a picture of the product your Contact has in their checkout, then add a button block to link them back to their cart. Only one abandoned checkout block is allowed per email.

Check out our guide to Automation Email Nodes for more details!

Wait Nodes

Add a wait node of 24 hours after your first email node and 2 days after your SMS node to give your Contacts time to open the messages, click through, and check out.

Check out our guide to Automation Wait Nodes for more details!

SMS Node

Add an SMS node after your first email to capture your Contacts’ attention in case they missed your first email. Add another Wait node of 2 days after your SMS node to give your Contacts time to check out.

Add a link to your SMS message to make it easy for Contacts to check out! You can use a link like http://www.website.com/checkout if your store has a universal checkout link structure or a link back to your store’s home page. If the Contact didn't abandon their checkout on their phone, their cart will not be populated when they click the link in the SMS message.

Check out our guide to SMS Content best practices for more details!

Goal Node

Add a goal node to check for a completed purchase for one week after your Contact abandoned their checkout.

Check out our guide to Goals for more details!

3

Review Performance

In each email* and SMS node in your Automation, you can see the number of messages that went out, the node’s click rate, and the node’s total revenue captured.

* Email nodes will also show the node’s open rate.

💡 Use Conditional Splits to create nodes for specific products

Conditional Splits allow you to target specific products for specialized content!

Create a Conditional Split node and set the conditions for:

Condition: eCommerce solution
Resource: Checkout
Filter: Product or Product Collection, depending on what you want to target
Operator: Select In to specify products or product groups present in the abandoned checkout
Select Items or Groups
Click Done
Create messages under each path:

Yes Path	No Path
Customers who had the selected products or product groups in their abandoned checkout	Customers who DID NOT have the selected products or product groups in their abandoned checkout

Additional Resources

Troubleshooting

The abandoned checkout block isn't available!

The abandoned checkout block may not appear in your elements sidebar for two common reasons:

Your eCommerce integration is not set up correctly. Review your eCommerce store's integration with Sendlane for possible connection issues.
You already added an abandoned checkout block to your email. Only one abandoned checkout block is allowed per email.