How to Retarget Shopify Abandoned Cart Customers
Sendlane's deep data integration with Shopify allows you to use automations to send targeted emails directly to those contacts who have abandoned their shopping cart.
With this automation, you can send emails to your prospective customers including the product they were interested in along with a link to quickly and seamlessly complete their purchase.
Before Getting Started
Prior to creating an abandoned cart automation, you'll need to have your Shopify integration completed.
Creating an Abandoned Cart Automation
- Click Automations on the left hand side of your dashboard and choose New Automation
- Choose the eCommerce tab within the template options and select Recover abandoned carts
- You will notice that the trigger at the beginning of the automation is Customer Abandoned Checkout. Click on the trigger box to configure these details:
- Select a Shop: Choose your Shopify store from the dropdown menu
- Limit Per Subscriber: How often you'd like for this automation to be triggered for a subscriber
- Consider Abandoned After: How long after the customer has abandoned the shopping cart that you'd like the automation to start (i.e., 1 hour, 3 hours)
- Click on the first email within the automation to edit/create the content that you'd like to send to your customer. Click Edit Email at the bottom of the window that opens to the right
- Choose a title, subject line, and preheader for your email, select the appropriate sender profile and scroll down to click Edit Email again at the bottom of the window
- Within this section of the email builder, you will notice an area that shows Product Name and Price with a placeholder for an image. The information from the product your customer added to their shopping cart will be automatically populated into the email when sent.
- Feel free to add or edit your email to your liking (add a company logo, email signature, etc.)
- Once you have completed the content for this email, click Save and Continue
- Don't forget to set your automation to Active in the upper right hand corner!
- To schedule additional follow-up emails, click on the "+" at the bottom of your automation and choose Send Message → Email
- Now you can choose to create an email from scratch or duplicate your previous abandoned cart email to make any necessary tweaks!

Please Note
This will display up to 4 different products in your abandoned cart email at a time!
Troubleshooting
Cart was abandoned but the automation didn't trigger
If you have noticed that a cart has been abandoned but the automation was not triggered, it is likely that the customer has not clicked through to provide their contact information or did not agree to receive promotional emails.
Keep in mind, in order to send emails to a contact, we need to obtain the contact's information. Also, being a permission-based platform, the contact must have opted-in/agreed to receive promotional emails during the check out process.
Additional Resources
- Designing an Abandoned Cart Email to Increase Conversions
- The Definitive Guide to Abandoned Cart Emails for eCommerce
- Off-the-Wall Abandoned Cart Emails that Work
- The Marketing Automation Hustle podcast: Six Step Abandoned Cart Series Guaranteed to Improve Cart Recovery
- Hey Shopify… Meet Sendlane!
- Introducing Deep Data For Shopify!
- Case Study: How Shopify Builds Credibility With Customers Using Email
- We Saw It Coming - Why Shopify No Longer Works With Mailchimp
- Automatically Retarget Your Shopify Abandoned Cart Customers in Sendlane
- Sendlane + OneClickUpsell - The Shopify App You Need to Boost Your eCommerce Sales
- How Shopify Uses Diverse Content To Keep Their Newsletters Feeling Fresh
- The Art of Upselling in Shopify: Boosting AOV with Carthook
TL;DR
Automations → New Automation → eCommerce → Recover Abandoned Carts → Configure trigger settings → Click email → Edit email → Create title, subject, etc. → Edit email → Tweak content → Save and continue → Set automation to Active