How to Retarget Abandoned Carts with Email and SMS

Abandoned cart 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 cart 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 Cart Automation Trigger

Start your abandoned cart Automation by adding your eCommerce integration’s Abandoned cart trigger and confirming the following options:

  • Store Select your store
  • Limit Per Subscriber Select an optional limit on the volume of abandoned cart content Contacts receive
  • Consider Abandoned After Select an amount of time to wait after a customer puts a product in their cart
2

  Add Abandoned Cart Automation Nodes

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

Email Nodes

Start with an email node that links your Contacts back to the cart they’ve abandoned. Use the abandoned cart block in the Email Builder to automatically insert a picture of the product your Contact has in their cart, then add a button block to link them back to their cart. Only one abandoned cart 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/cart if your store has a universal cart link structure or a link back to your store’s home page. If the Contact didn't abandon their cart on their phone, their cart would 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 cart.

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.

Additional Resources

Troubleshooting

The abandoned cart block isn't available!

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

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